Jesús Montané was a leading figure in the Cuban Revolution, both in the 1950s in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship and also for four decades after the 1959 revolution until his death in 1999. This preface was written for the first edition of Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro, and recounts his first meeting with Che Guevara in Mexico in 1955.
When Fidel Castro left Havana for exile in Mexico on Thursday, July 7, 1955, because his life was in danger in Cuba, he was about to meet Che.
The group of survivors of the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada garrison—an action with which we had tried to initiate a people’s armed insurrection—had been confined in the prison on the Isle of Pines, until our release on Sunday, May 15.
Prior to his departure for Mexico, Fidel remained in Havana, waging a daring, dangerous political battle through parts of the mass media. He denounced the crimes the Batista dictatorship had committed against those who had attacked the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons, the abuses against those who opposed the oppressive system, the exploitation by which workers were victimized, and the lack of guarantees for peaceful political struggle. He challenged the government to hold a general election immediately. His main aim was to force the dictator Fulgencio Batista to show what lay behind his demagogic statements about a democratic opening in the country.
All of that activity was in line with a carefully planned tactic to force the dictatorship to reveal its despotic, criminal nature. It also showed that our freedom wasn’t due to any kindly gesture by the regime. The government had been forced to free us because of a nationwide campaign calling for amnesty for political prisoners.
Not all of the political forces saw the situation so clearly, however, and not all of them really intended to pay whatever price might be required to solve the prevailing crisis. Former President Carlos Prío Socarrás, who had been overthrown, was preparing to return to Cuba; this implied his renunciation of the use of arms and his acceptance of the rules Batista had imposed for a “normalization” that, in practice, would amount to the indefinite prolongation of his stay in power. One way or another and for various reasons, the other opposition political parties were also moving toward a line of negotiations that would never lead to a positive solution of the problem.
That was the situation in which Fidel waged that tactical-political battle. The result was a foregone conclusion, as he knew that the dictatorship wasn’t about to allow any real opposition to exist. One by one, all possibilities of normal political struggle were closed off. The police began to harass and arrest some of his closest followers. His brother Raúl was falsely accused of having engaged in terrorism and had to go into exile. Fidel’s phone was tapped; he received anonymous death threats; he was kept from participating in mass meetings; radio and television programs in which he was to participate were cancelled; and finally, the daily La Calle, the only paper in which he could air his views, was shut down.
He had foreseen this, so while conducting the public political battle right from the day we got out of prison, he also dedicated himself to another, secret task: that of creating the July 26 Movement, an underground organization that would bring together the most radical sectors of young people from all over the country to begin a people’s armed insurrection. The July 26 Movement’s function would be to organize, train, and arm the people for that confrontation while a small armed contingent was formed and trained outside Cuba to return, initiate, and lead the revolutionary war.
Those were the special circumstances in which Fidel reached Mexico in the first week of July 1955. In that same month, he met the young Argentine doctor Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, whom the few Cubans who knew him were already calling Che.
Coming from Guatemala, Che had reached Mexico on September 21, 1954. He had completed his medical studies at the University of Buenos Aires on April 11, 1953. On June 12, he received his diploma as a doctor, and on July 6 he left the Argentine capital and his country, never to return. The day on which we attacked the Moncada garrison [July 26, 1953], Che happened to be in Bolivia, where, 14 years later, he was to die heroically, once more setting an impressive example as a true internationalist.
In the middle of December 1953, Che had his first, chance contact with several Cubans who had taken part in the July 26 actions. They had gone into exile and were living in San José, Costa Rica. But Che really developed an ideological affinity with the Cuban Revolution while in Guatemala City from January 3, 1954, when he met Antonio “Ñico” López.
After taking part in the attack on the Bayamo military garrison—an operation supporting the attack on the Moncada garrison—Ñico López managed to escape and obtained political asylum in Guatemala. Over 6 ft. tall and extremely thin, the 21-year-old was one of our best-loved comrades. Since he came from a very low-income family, Ñico hadn’t been able to study very much, but he was one of Fidel’s young followers who had the most radical thinking; he was also very dynamic and brave. He worked sporadically as a porter in a food market in Havana and turned his hand to many other things to support himself and his family.
Ñico was the first person who talked to Che about our revolutionary movement and about the armed actions that the young lawyer Fidel Castro had led in Cuba. Ñico and Che began a friendship in Guatemala which was strengthened in Mexico and ended only with Ñico’s death on December 8, 1956, after the cabin cruiser Granma had taken us to Oriente province.
When Jacobo Árbenz’s democratic, nationalist administration was overthrown in Guatemala, Che went to Mexico. Ten months later, he met Fidel there in the home of María Antonia González, a Cuban émigré, in circumstances which he himself described:
From there [Guatemala], I escaped to Mexico, when FBI agents were arresting and killing everybody who might constitute a threat to the United Fruit Company’s government. In Mexico, I saw some members of the July 26 Movement whom I’d met in Guatemala, and I became friends with Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother. He introduced me to the head of the movement when they were already planning the invasion of Cuba.
I talked with Fidel all night. By the time the sun came up, I was the doctor of his future expedition. In fact, after the experiences I’d had during my long trek through Latin America and its finale in Guatemala, I didn’t need much persuading to join any revolution against a dictator, but Fidel impressed me as an extraordinary man. He tackled and did impossible things. He had exceptional faith that, once he left for Cuba, he would get there; once he got there, he would fight; and, by fighting, he would win. I shared his optimism. It was necessary to take action, struggle, make things happen, stop crying, and fight. And, to show the people of his homeland that they could believe in him, because he did what he said, he launched his famous slogan, “In 1956, we will be free or martyrs” and announced that before the end of the year, he would land somewhere in Cuba at the head of his expeditionary army. [Excerpt from Jorge Ricardo Masetti’s April 1958 interview with Che in the Sierra Maestra. It appears in Masetti’s book Los que luchan y los que lloran: El Fidel Castro que yo vi (Those Who Fight and Those Who Cry: The Fidel Castro I Saw), Editorial Madiedo, Havana, 1960].
Che had turned 27 on June 14, 1955, a month before that meeting; Fidel would turn 29 a few days later, on August 13. They were of the same generation, but their practical-ideological identity, which would grow ever deeper with the passing of time, was more important than this link.
Che didn’t write very much about that period, but a comparison of what little he did write with Fidel’s documents of that period provides a key to the fellow feeling that immediately sprang up between them.
During those early days after their meeting, Fidel wrote as follows to those of us in the national leadership of the July 26 Movement who remained in Havana:
The norm governing my actions here is and will always be extreme care and absolute discretion, as if we were in Cuba. I’ve managed to keep a very low profile. As you advance there, we will advance here. I think that everything can be done perfectly well, as outlined.
That’s why I didn’t make any public statements on arrival. A sense of propriety also kept me from doing so. Nobody has the right to cry about Cuba’s troubles anywhere in the world as long as there is a Cuban who can take up a rifle to remedy them. If we were to talk to the Mexicans about our shameful political situation, they might ask us what the Cubans are doing about it. As if they had few problems themselves! If worst comes to worst, it may be said of us in the future that we gave our lives trying to do something impossible—but never that we cried from impotence.
Don’t Fidel’s statements, made on July 14, 1955, express the same personality and temperament that we later discovered were Che’s too? On August 2 of that same year, in another letter, Fidel wrote:
I think that I’m carrying out my task fully. In this case, I’m referring not to writing letters and manifestos from this isolated little room but rather to another, no less important task. Simply and discreetly, I’m optimistic about what I’ve done. I consider what is done outside to be so important and delicate that I endure the bitterness of this absence with resignation and turn my grief into energy, into a passionate desire to see myself fighting on Cuban soil as soon as possible. Once again, I promise that, if what we desire isn’t possible and we are alone, you’ll still see me come in a boat and land at some beach with a rifle in my hand.
That was the Fidel Castro whom Che met in Mexico in the summer of 1955. It’s easy to imagine what someone, who viewed the democratic Latin American politicians—each one more demagogic than the last—with scepticism, who had known the Bolivian revolution as it was turning back upon itself, and who had witnessed and suffered with the crushing of the incipient Guatemalan nationalist project, felt when he met that young Cuban who, like himself, was living in the poverty of exile; who had already attempted to begin an armed insurrection in his country; who had been imprisoned; who spoke of his revolutionary project with faith, enthusiasm, and as much confidence as if he had already carried it out victoriously; and who was preparing to renew the war of liberation in his homeland even though he didn’t have any great economic resources and was struggling in incredibly disadvantageous conditions.
I arrived in Mexico City in the second week of August 1955. It was the first time I had ever left Cuba. I had carried out my instructions to set up a clandestine printing apparatus for the July 26 Movement in Cuba, and I went to Mexico to take up my new responsibilities as general treasurer of the movement and aide to Fidel.
There, in the very small group of people who had our chief’s confidence, I met Che. In a very short time, Che had already demonstrated exceptional political and personal qualities. You have to consider the rigorous security measures under which we did our work in exile to understand the deep impression Che must have made on Fidel for him to be incorporated so quickly in the circle of his most trusted comrades. And Fidel wasn’t mistaken. Che would never do anything to betray that trust.
A few days after I arrived there, on August 19, Che married Hilda Gadea, a Peruvian economist he had met in Guatemala. Che invited me to the wedding, and I was one of the witnesses, along with two Mexican doctors who worked with Che and the Venezuelan poet Lucila Velasques, a friend of Hilda’s. The ceremony was held in the municipal palace of Tepotzotlán, a small town near Mexico City.
When my wife, Melba Hernández, arrived, our relations with Che grew stronger—so much so that Che, Melba, and I often went places together, including the library of the Mexican-Russian Cultural Exchange Institute in Mexico City.
Much has been said about Che’s strong sense of humanity, character, willpower, courage, political ideas, determination to build a better society, and lack of interest in material things, and I can add little to what has been repeated so many times over the years.
However, my memories of the time we spent together in Mexico lead me to say that none of Fidel’s followers there made a greater effort than Che during our long hikes, exhausting sessions of mountain climbing, personal defense combat practice in the Bucarelli Street gymnasium, target practice, and classes on the theory of guerrilla warfare in which the group engaged with great tenacity over a period of several months.
Moreover, though not a Cuban, he was unconditionally ready to come with us and fight for our freedom, thus contributing to our revolution’s inspiring tradition of internationalism. Just as, after graduating, he gave up plans to go to Venezuela, where he could have found a very well-paying job, and went to Guatemala instead to participate in that revolutionary process which was cut short; and as in Mexico, when he had finally emerged from months of economic insecurity and hunger and had obtained a job at the general hospital and a post as a teacher of medicine, he renounced those rosy material and professional prospects and the tranquility of family life with his wife and newborn daughter and dedicated himself to the cause of the Cuban people.
In June 1956, Fidel, Che, and more than 20 others were arrested. Fidel had put him in charge of training the group of future expeditionaries at Las Rosas Ranch, in Chalco. Of all the group, Che was the last to be freed, and, when he was released, he could not go home. He had to remain in hiding, moving from house to house, until November 25, when he left for Cuba as one of the expeditionaries on board the Granma.
A letter he wrote to his parents on July 6—the first of his documents in which he referred to Cuba and his commitment to the Cuban Revolution—described that time in prison:
Some time ago—quite some time ago—a young Cuban leader invited me to join his movement, a movement which sought the armed liberation of his country. Of course, I accepted. Dedicated to physically preparing those young men who would go back to Cuba, I spent the last few months maintaining the myth of my professional post. On July 21 (when I hadn’t been home for a month, because I was on a ranch outside the city), Fidel and a group of comrades were arrested. Our address was in his home, so we were all eventually caught in the roundup. I had documents accrediting me as a student of Russian at the Mexican-Russian Cultural Exchange Institute, which was enough for me to be considered an important link in the organization, and news agencies that are friends of dad’s made a hullabaloo all over the world.
That was a synthesis of past events; future ones are divided into two groups: mid-term and immediate. In the mid-term future, I’ll be linked to Cuba’s liberation. I’ll either triumph with it or die there… I can’t say much about the immediate future, because I don’t know what will happen to me. I’m in the judge’s hands, and I may easily be deported to Argentina if I don’t get asylum in another country, which would be good for my political health.
Whatever happens, I must meet my new destiny, whether I remain in this prison or go free…
We’re on the eve of declaring a hunger strike in protest against the unjustified arrests and the torture to which some of my comrades were subjected. The group’s morale is high.
If for any reason (and I don’t think this will happen) I can’t write again and have the misfortune to lose, look on these lines as my farewell—not very grandiloquent, but sincere. I have gone through life searching for my truth by fits and starts and now, having found the way and with a daughter who will perpetuate me, I have come full circle. From now on, I wouldn’t consider my death a frustration, but, like Hikmet, “I will take to my grave only the regret of an unfinished song.”
Che wasn’t deported to Argentina, nor did he have to seek asylum in another Latin American country. He set out with us on the Granma and, on December 2, 1956, arrived at Belic, an inhospitable, swampy area in Oriente province. On the December 5, he was wounded in the first battle and, in the retreat that day—as he himself described it—in choosing the box of bullets instead of the backpack of medicine, he also chose the destiny that would lead him to become known as the Heroic Guerrilla. He was the first fighter in the incipient Rebel Army who, in the Sierra Maestra, earned the [highest] rank of major and the command of a column, and his name appeared many times more in the records of Cuba’s liberation in the next two years of the war.
Fidel trusted Che so much as a guerrilla leader and fighter that, at the most critical moment of the struggle in the Sierra—when the enemy launched its 1958 summer offensive against the Rebel Army’s First Front—he gave him two extremely important missions involving great responsibility: organizing the first and only school of recruits in that front’s territory, and heading the defense of the western sector of rebel territory against one of the three main thrusts of the enemy advance. Carrying out both missions, Che once again proved worthy of that trust. After the enemy offensive had been defeated and the conditions had been created for taking the war to the rest of the country, Fidel named Che to lead one of the two guerrilla columns that were to undertake the difficult march toward the middle of the island of Cuba. Their successful campaign in the final months of 1958 made a decisive contribution to the military collapse of the dictatorship and to the triumph of the revolution.
After the January 1, 1959, triumph, Che put all of his talent and energy into promoting the economic, political, and social transformation of our country, holding a series of important posts in which he did a brilliant job. For six years, up to 1964, he made notable contributions in the spheres of theory and practice of our society’s transition from underdeveloped, neocolonial capitalism to socialism, joining Fidel as a spokesperson for the impoverished peoples of the Third World.
He was only 39, at the height of his powers, at the time of his death in Bolivia in October 1967. It is impossible to imagine how much his loss has meant to the world revolutionary movement. He set us Cubans an example of the new human being without whom the society of the future, communism, would be impossible. Along with Julio Antonio Mella and Camilo Cienfuegos, he stands as a symbol for our young people, and his is the only name mentioned specifically in our Pioneers’ [children’s organization] pledge: “We will be like Che.”
For all these reasons, we should make everything about him known. I think that Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro will be an important contribution to contemporary revolutionary writings, and that certainty led me to write this preface to this volume for English-speaking readers.
In 1987, a Cuban publishing house and David Deutschmann of Ocean Press, Australia, joined forces to publish Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution [now published as the Che Guevara Reader, in association with the Che Guevara Studies Center of Havana]. Now, Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro has appeared as a companion piece.
I am confident that this new book will also become an important reference work for all who seek to understand Che’s life and the fascinating Cuban political experience. It is a collection of excerpts from speeches, interviews, and writings by our commander-in-chief that are related to Che. Nobody could have more authority than Fidel for evaluating Ernesto Guevara de la Serna in depth. We should recall that Che himself recognized this authority when he ratified his sense of identity with Fidel in his farewell letter of April 1965:
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.
The text of that letter, which was made public several months after it was written, completely refuted the infamous international campaign that the enemies of our revolution had launched claiming that Fidel and Che had quarrelled and that this was why Che had left Cuban public life. The countless disinformation campaigns and lies with which US imperialism and its accomplices have sought to harm the Cuban Revolution throughout the past 30 years have always been cause for indignation, but this lie was one of the worst, for it tried to besmirch a unique, close friendship between two great figures in our history.
Because it reveals details of how the relationship between two exceptional men began and developed, Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro is a definitive epitaph for that infamous lie. In addition, it is the most complete and consistent document defining Che, his strong sense of humanity, and the reasons why he has become a symbol of revolutionary staunchness for all who struggle for a world of justice, in which the honor of humanity will always prevail.
Jesús Montané Oropesa
Havana, May 1989