The rumor campaign surrounding Che Guevara’s disappearance continued to grow during 1965. Spectacular stories began to circulate abroad, with the intention of creating divisions within the revolution. They alleged a political falling-out between Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, that Fidel had placed a gag on Che, deported him, or even had him killed. These accusations were echoed in certain left-wing circles, often simply reported as fact.
At a mass rally on September 28, 1965, Fidel announced that in a few days he would make public a letter Che had written him before leaving Cuba. “At that forthcoming occasion we will speak to the people about comrade Ernesto Guevara,” Fidel said. “The enemy has speculated a great deal and spread many rumors as to whether he’s here or there, whether he’s dead or alive. At times they are confused, at times they seek to confuse, and at other times they make insinuations. We are going to read a document from comrade Ernesto Guevara that explains his absence during these months. This will take place at the meeting I just referred to. [Shouts of ‘Now!’] Now, no. Because I didn’t bring the document here. I’m simply announcing it… I told you that at that time we would read this document and discuss some of the issues.”
The meeting referred to by Fidel was a televised ceremony to present the members of the Central Committee of the newly formed Cuban Communist Party. Che Guevara’s name had been conspicuous in its absence from this list. This excerpt is from Fidel’s speech on October 3, 1965, to that meeting. Che’s family was present in the audience. On that date, Che was still in the Congo.
Absent from our Central Committee is someone who possesses in the highest degree all the necessary merits and virtues to be on it but who, nevertheless, is not among those announced as members of our Central Committee.
The enemy has been able to conjure up a thousand conjectures. The enemy has tried to sow confusion, to spread discord and doubt, and we have waited patiently because it was necessary to wait.
This differentiates the revolutionary from the counterrevolutionary, the revolutionary from the imperialist. Revolutionaries know how to wait; we know how to be patient; we never despair. The reactionaries, the counterrevolutionaries, the imperialists, they live in perpetual despair, in perpetual anguish, perpetually lying, in the most ridiculous and infantile way.
When you read the things said by some of those officials, some of those US senators, you ask yourself: But how is it possible these gentlemen are not in a stable instead of belonging to what they call congress? Some of them come out with absolute nonsense. And they have a tremendous habit of lying, they cannot live without lying. They live in fear.
If the revolutionary government says one thing, which is what it has consistently been saying, they see fierce, terrible things, a plan behind all this! How ridiculous! What fear they live in! And you have to wonder: Do they believe this? Do they believe everything they say? Or do they need to believe everything they say? Or can’t they live without believing everything they say? Or do they say everything they don’t believe?
It’s difficult to say. This would be a matter for doctors and psychologists. What do they have in their brain? What fear is it that makes them see everything as a maneuver, as a belligerent, frightening, terrible plan? They don’t know that there is no better tactic, no better strategy than to fight with clean hands, to fight with the truth. These are the only weapons that inspire confidence, that inspire faith, that inspire security, dignity, and morale. And these are the weapons we revolutionaries have been using to defeat and crush our enemies.
Lies. Who has ever heard a lie from the lips of a revolutionary? Lies are weapons that help no revolutionary, and no serious revolutionary ever needs to resort to a lie. Their weapon is reason, morality, truth, the ability to defend an idea, a proposal, a position.
In short, the moral spectacle of our adversaries is truly lamentable. The soothsayers, the pundits, the specialists on the Cuba question have been working incessantly to unravel the mystery: Has Ernesto Guevara been purged? Is Ernesto Guevara sick? Does Ernesto Guevara have differences? And things of this sort.
Naturally the people have confidence, the people have faith. But the enemy uses these things, especially abroad, to slander us. Here, they say, is a frightening, terrible communist regime: people disappear without a trace, without a sign, without an explanation. And when the people began to notice his absence, we told them that we would inform them at the appropriate time, that there were reasons for waiting.
We live and work surrounded by the forces of imperialism. The world does not live under normal conditions. As long as the criminal bombs of the US imperialists fall on the people of Vietnam, we cannot say we live under normal conditions. When more than 100,000 US soldiers land there to try to crush the liberation movement; when the soldiers of imperialism land in a republic that has legal rights equal to those of any other republic in the world, to trample its sovereignty, as in the case of the Dominican Republic, the world doesn’t live under normal conditions. When surrounding our country, the imperialists are training mercenaries and organizing terrorist attacks in the most shameless manner, as in the case of [the attack by counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles on the Spanish merchant ship] Sierra Aránzazu, when the imperialists threaten to intervene in any country in Latin America or in the world, we do not live under normal conditions.
When we fought in the underground against the Batista dictatorship, revolutionaries who did not live under normal conditions had to abide by the rules of the struggle. In the same way—even though a revolutionary government exists in our country—so far as the realities of the world are concerned we do not live under normal conditions, and we have to abide by the rules of that situation.
To explain this I am going to read a letter, handwritten and later typed, from comrade Ernesto Guevara, which is self-explanatory. I was wondering whether I needed to tell of our friendship and comradeship, how it began and under what conditions it began and developed, but that’s not necessary. I’m going to confine myself to reading the letter.
It reads as follows: “Havana…” It has no date, because the letter was intended to be read at what we considered the most appropriate moment, but to be strictly precise it was delivered April 1 of this year—exactly six months and two days ago. It reads:
Havana
Year of Agriculture
Fidel:
At this moment I remember many things—when I met you in the house of [Cuban revolutionary] María Antonia, when you proposed I come along, all the tensions involved in the preparations. One day they came by and asked me who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of that fact struck us all. Later we knew it was true, that in a revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many comrades fell along the way to victory.
Today everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature. But the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I say goodbye to you, to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine.
I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. The only ties are of another nature—those that cannot be broken as can appointments to posts.
Recalling my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient integrity and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.
I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean [missile] crisis. Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant than you in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your way of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.
Other nations of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility at the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part.
I want it known that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of my loved ones. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever one may be. This comforts and more than heals the deepest wounds.
I state once more that I free Cuba from any responsibility, except that which stems from its example. If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you. I am thankful for your teaching, your example, and I will try to be faithful up to the final consequences of my acts.
I have always been identified with the foreign policy of our revolution, and I continue to be. Wherever I am, I will feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I shall behave as such. I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children. I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and to have an education.
I have many things to say to you and to our people, but I feel they are unnecessary. Words cannot express what I would want them to, and I don’t think it’s worthwhile to keep scribbling pages.
¡Hasta la victoria siempre! [Ever onward to victory!]
¡Patria o Muerte! [Homeland or death!]
I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervor.
Che
Those who speak of revolutionaries, those who consider revolutionaries as cold, insensitive, and unfeeling people will have in this letter the example of all the feeling, all the sensitivity, all the purity that can be held within a revolutionary soul.
And all of us could answer:
Comrade Guevara: It is not responsibility that concerns us! We are responsible to the revolution. We are responsible for helping the revolutionary movement to the best of our ability! And we assume the responsibility, the consequences, and the risks. For almost seven years it has always been like that, and we know that as long as imperialism exists, and as long as there are exploited and colonized peoples, we will continue running these risks and we will calmly continue assuming that responsibility.
It was our duty to comply with and respect the feelings of that comrade, to respect that freedom and that right. That is true freedom—not the freedom of those who seek to impose chains, but the freedom of those who leave to take up a rifle against the chains of slavery!
That is another freedom our revolution proclaims, Mr. [President] Johnson! And if those who wish to leave Cuba to go live with the imperialists, those whom the imperialists sometimes recruit to serve in Vietnam and the Congo, can do it, let everyone know that every citizen of this country, whenever they make a request to fight—not at the side of the imperialists but at the side of revolutionaries—this revolution will not deny them permission to go!
This is a free country, Mr. Johnson, really free for all!
And that was not the only letter. Besides this letter, and the occasion on which it was to be read, we have other letters greeting various comrades, as well as letters addressed “to my children,” “to my parents,” and to other comrades—letters he wrote for his children and his parents. We will deliver these letters to these comrades and these relatives, and we are going to ask them to donate them to the revolution, because we believe they are documents worthy of being part of history.
We believe this explains everything. This was what fell to us to explain. As for the rest, let our enemies worry about it. We have enough tasks, enough things to do in our country and with regard to the world, enough duties to fulfill. And we will fulfill them.