On the Trail of Che Guevara
PAP correspondent R. Kapuściński reports:
LATIN AMERICA IS UNDERGOING ITS GREATEST POLITICAL SHOCK in the course of the past decade. Right now, a profound internal crisis has hit most of the countries in this region . . .
OVER THE PAST WEEK THERE HAS NOT BEEN A SINGLE DAY IN LATIN AMERICA WHEN PEOPLE HAVE NOT BEEN KILLED OR WOUNDED IN STREET FIGHTING BETWEEN THE POPULATION AND THE ORGANS OF REPRESSION OF THE LATIN-AMERICAN REGIMES.
THE MAIN FEATURE OF THE DISTURBANCES HERE IS THEIR LARGE NUMBERS – on a regional scale, the wave of protest has now involved millions of people.
IN AN EFFORT TO BLOCK THE BLOW, THE DICTATORSHIPS IN SOME COUNTRIES HAVE UNLEASHED HARSH INTERNAL TERROR. In Brazil a fascist terrorist organization has been mobilized, the so-called CCC, Comando de Caça aos Comunistas (‘The Command for the Hunting of Communists’), a local version of the Ku Klux Klan.
THE PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS’ MOVEMENT IS GAINING INCREASING STRENGTH and represents one of the most interesting features of the political situation on this continent . . . Brazilian prisons are packed full of priests, monks and nuns. They are persecuted and tortured . . .
IT IS WORTH NOTICING THE DISTINCT MOBILIZATION OF THE URBAN GUERRILLAS . . . The most active urban guerrilla movement now exists in Brazil, Guatemala and Uruguay.
UNTIL NOW IN WORLD POLITICS, LATIN AMERICA – WITH THE EXCEPTION OF CUBA – HAS PLAYED THE ROLE OF A SATELLITE OF THE USA . . . At present it has ceased to be a force of that kind, while at the same time taking on a new function as an independent political force.
[T]he focus of the fight being waged by the Third World against the forces of neocolonialism has at this point in time shifted from Africa and Asia to Latin America . . .1
Could a romantic who is racing about the world in pursuit of revolutions possibly have encountered a better time?
Kapuściński arrives in Latin America at a red-hot moment in the Cold War. Barely eight years earlier, Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba broke free of dependence on the United States, creating an opportunity to overthrow the semi-feudal status quo in other countries in the region and prompting the hope of building a different kind of socialism – spontaneous, with the broad participation of the masses, without despotism or an omnipotent bureaucracy. Proletarians and peasants from other countries, often in alliance with segments of the regionally small middle class, start to rise up against local dictatorships or in opposition to governments that, while formally democratic, are run in the interests of a narrow élite. Villagers and workers from plantations demand agricultural reform and the dismantling of the latifundia, or large estates. The big-city world of labour calls for broad social legislation, examples of which it seeks not only in Cuba but also in the experiences of the recently overthrown Argentinean caudillo Juan Perón. Rebellious ideas from protesting Paris, agitated Berkeley and the burning ghettos of Chicago and Los Angeles reach the better-off middle classes. Even if they live relatively affluently, these people want to live more freely: to say what they want, write, publish and sing. The year 1968, which ‘rocked the world’, is just around the corner.
In Latin America, all these ‘dangerous’ aspirations have a particular context: they are spreading in a region of dramatic inequality, far greater than in the US and Europe – a region which Uncle Sam regards as his own backyard. Latin America has been treated as Washington’s sphere of influence since the early nineteenth century. In the 1820s President James Monroe formulated a doctrine according to which the US assigned itself the right to intervene in any country in the Western hemisphere if American interests were threatened. Prominent Cold War–era politician Zbigniew Brzezinski once called this doctrine the equivalent of the Eastern European ‘Brezhnev doctrine’. The latter assigned to the Soviet Union the right to engage in armed intervention (‘fraternal aid’) in any Warsaw Pact country if the local communist government – that is to say, the interests of Moscow – was in danger.
The victory of the revolution in Cuba, its romantic legend and infectious influence on emancipation movements in Latin America – leftist, communist or democratic, as well as those inspired by Catholic liberation theology – arouse concern in Washington, because it turns out that a few badly armed guerrilla units, with a handful of conspirators in the cities and support from peasants on the land, are capable of overthrowing dictatorships which are backed by the US and armed to the teeth. Thanks to the Cuban revolution’s turn towards Moscow, followed by the missile crisis of 1962, which almost led to nuclear conflict between the US and the USSR, a small island in the Caribbean becomes the obsession of American politicians.
From now on, Washington will conduct a war against communism in Latin America. In practice, this involves supporting even the most bestial of tyrants as long as they are capable of stifling movements for social liberation, not just communist or pro-Soviet movements but also the softest movements for agricultural reform, social legislation, democratic elections and the dismantling of the post-colonial ownership structure. Under the influence of US policy and local uniformed warlords, a number of thoroughly moderate democrats in Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador become sworn revolutionaries, painted red.
Kapuściński arrives in Latin America (first stop: Santiago de Chile) a month after the death of Che Guevara, the missionary of socialism executed without trial in Bolivia, where he was trying to kindle the revolutionary flame. Students and rebellious workers pour onto the streets of the Latin American cities. In some – most violently in the Tlatelolco area of the Mexican capital – they are shot dead like animals in hunting season. In Peru it results in a semi-revolutionary experiment with social reforms introduced by a progressive military. In Bolivia a civilian–military alliance undertakes a similar attempt, with the support of the workers, the peasantry, the students and sections of the army. Whereas in Chile, the elections will shortly be won by democratic Marxist Salvador Allende, and hopes for revolutionary change take a peaceful route.
This is the time and place where History is happening.
A little while longer, and he might not have gone.
‘What are you still doing here?’ Roma Pańska, the éminence grise of the PAP, accosts him in a corridor at the agency’s headquarters. It is November 1967.
‘I’m getting ready to leave.’
‘Really, Rysiek! Don’t get ready, don’t wait, don’t delay, just get out of here at once or it’ll be too late!’
‘But . . .’
‘Grab your bags and vamoose this instant!’
A couple of weeks earlier, Michał Hoffman asked Kapuściński if he wanted to go on another posting, to Latin America.
‘Of course!’
The agency has a correspondent in Mexico named Edmund Osmańczyk, but the whole continent is boiling over, so it may be worth opening a second office in the south of the region. Kapuściński is to take a look around. Meanwhile, in Poland, the gathering wave of Moczar-ism does not pass the PAP by. Kapuściński has good connections, especially among patrons of the movement, but when shocks and purges are happening it is better to step aside and disappear. Anyway, who will get the chop? How will it end? Where will his protector pals land?
So he grabs his bags and disappears a few days later. Along the way, he sorts out a visa for Chile – the PRL is on good terms with Chile, where a socially orientated Christian Democrat party is in power, so he gets an entry permit at once – and adios!
Once again, as in India, Kapuściński is deaf and dumb. He makes a deal with his bosses in Warsaw: for three months he won’t write anything, to give him time to learn Spanish.
In Santiago de Chile he meets Polish emigré Marian Rawicz.
‘Marian, I’m in a hopeless situation, I’m sitting here in Santiago, I’m a foreign correspondent, but I can’t even understand what they write in the papers, and in three months I’ve got to start sending in reports for my agency.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Please, please, I’ll pay you properly, just devote a couple of hours a day to me for the next three months and teach me Spanish.’
They meet daily, while day and night Kapuściński devotes himself to words and grammar. He listens to the radio and starts to decipher the newspaper headlines. Having had French lessons in Dar es Salaam, Spanish isn’t all Greek to him.
Two and a half months later, at the Chilean Institute for International Affairs, he gives a talk in Spanish on the political situation in Poland.
First blood: during an exchange of information with other journalists, he is given a leak about a potential coup d’état. In Chile the left-wing Christian Democrats are in power, President Eduardo Frei Montalva is conducting mild agricultural reform and introducing social legislation beneficial to the poor, but for the masses awakened by the changes and the general fever throughout the continent, it is not enough. It is becoming likely that the country’s next leader will be a veteran of the left, Senate president Salvador Allende. The army in Chile upholds the legal order; here it is not just another political party, as is the case in many other countries in the region. Despite this, the right wing manages to convince a group of officers that the country is threatened by the Red plague. At the head of the conspiracy is General Roberto Viaux.
Kapuściński reports from Santiago:
Chilean public opinion is following the development of events with growing concern . . . At the military garrisons the officers are holding stormy meetings, the course of which is not being made public. Yet people are saying that within the army two tendencies are clashing at the moment – one group thinks it necessary to carry out a full coup, overthrowing President Frei, dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution, whereas the other one is in favour of a partial coup, which means establishing a military government, but with President Frei staying in office.2
He warns that this report is destined only for the PAP’s Special Bulletin, and cannot appear in the press: issuing this sort of speculative information, harmful to the good reputation of the country hosting the correspondent, could lose him his accreditation.
A few days later, he picks up the phone. Ambassador Dudziński is on the line.
‘You’ve been thrown out.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know, but they called from the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs: you’re going to be deported.’
It is a repetition of what happened to Kapuściński in Kenya.
By mistake, the editor on duty at the PAP’s Warsaw headquarters has tossed the restricted report into the normal service. On 10 May 1968, news about the threat of a coup d’état in Chile is published on the front page of Trybuna Ludu. Chile’s embassy in Warsaw informs its government, and someone at the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs decides to take away the accreditation of the reporter who issued the news.
Kapuściński is panic-stricken. There is political turmoil in Poland, he is persona non grata in Chile, and if he is deported, no country in the region will give him accreditation. For a correspondent, this is professional death.
‘I went to see Allende, who was then president of the Chilean Senate,’ he will recall many years later. ‘The jovial Allende clapped me on the back and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll do something about it, we’ll sort it out somehow.” ’
Kapuściński is summoned to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
‘For things like this, we expel a correspondent within twenty-four hours,’ a senior official tells him in a dry, formal tone. ‘This time we’re going to be more lenient.’
He gives Kapuściński to understand that someone important has intervened in the matter and that he is not going to be punitively expelled; however, he is to leave ‘voluntarily’. Kapuściński suspects that it was Allende who arranged the ministry’s generosity.
After leaving Chile, he goes to Rio de Janeiro, where he stays for several months. From there he writes to a close friend, ‘I feel much freer here than within the much-vaunted Chilean democracy, which is a crappy regime, not a democracy – I simply hate Chile, but I’m in love with Brazil.’3
Before leaving Santiago for good, he reads in the bi-weekly Punto Final a sensational current publication: Che Guevara’s Bolivian diary. For eleven months, until almost the final days before the defeat of his guerrilla unit and his execution, Guevara kept notes.
Kapuściński travels to Bolivia on the pretext of attending a conference for enterprises involved in tin mining. His real reason is different: to tour points along Che’s guerrilla trail.
Nothing is known about the trip except the undetailed account he himself provides years later. The only event he mentions is being captured by the army and a drunken officer’s attempt to execute him by firing squad. Che’s successors, who will soon found a new unit, claim it is impossible for a correspondent from a communist country to have moved about freely in the areas where Guevara’s unit was defeated. In 1968 this terrain was still militarized, and the presence of a white foreigner would have been noticed immediately. Journalists were treated as accomplices of the rebels, so a reporter from the Eastern bloc would have been regarded as a spy. Perhaps he only made it to Santa Cruz, the capital of the province, but never set off into this terrain?
Guevara fascinates Kapuściński: a romantic warrior fighting for a just world who died for his ideals. Shortly after the diary is published, Kapuściński leaves for Lima, where he shuts himself in a hotel and spends a month translating the final text written by the most famous martyr of the socialist revolution. He sends the translation to Warsaw; it ends up in the PAP’s Special Bulletin, but there are problems publishing it for a wider audience.
The comrades in the Kremlin do not regard Guevara as a romantic hero: he was outside their control and did not act on orders from Moscow – as Moscow was aware. He brought about revolutions wherever he wanted, not where or how the Soviet comrades expected. Towards the end of his life, he lambasted the Soviet Union for its exploitation – as with other empires – of the small socialist countries subordinate to it and for handing the ideals of socialism over to bureaucracy. Che’s death in Bolivia suited everyone: the politicians in Washington, Moscow and even Havana, where he was turned into a legend – the myth of the sacred socialist revolution.
The Bolivian Diary appears in Polish bookshops thanks to Frelek’s intervention with Zenon Kliszko, who does, however, set a condition: the text must be provided with an introduction.
In the introduction, Kapuściński performs an intellectual balancing act. On the one hand, he writes with admiration about Che, his idealism and the idea of armed revolution in Latin America. However, Moscow opposes this idea, and, in accordance with its instructions, so do the Latin American communist parties. This is a time of contention between the Soviet Union and Cuba. The Soviet comrades do not want to inflame conflict with America; it is the era of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between the two superpowers, and Latin America is the United States’ sphere of influence. Havana, on the contrary, is fuelling and encouraging armed uprisings on the model of the Cuban revolution. Guevara meant to incite an uprising of this kind in Bolivia, but he was defeated and killed.
How can Kapuściński write warmly about Che while also keeping to the ‘Moscow line’ opposing armed revolutions? He finds a way: he praises Guevara as an idealist (‘The diary is one of the most beautiful documents of our era, written by a soldier of the revolution’); and at the same time criticizes Fidel Castro for condemning the Bolivian Communist Party, which in accordance with instructions from Moscow did not provide support for Che’s guerrillas (‘Fidel Castro’s attacks on the Bolivian CP are simply unjust’).4
‘Rysiek was ashamed of that introduction later on,’ says Józef Klasa, who has his own passion for Latin American affairs and was ambassador to Mexico in the 1970s.
For most of his time in Latin America, Kapuściński will feel torn between sympathies for the Latin American revolutionaries with guns in their hands and a sense of loyalty to the pro-Moscow decision-makers in Warsaw. This dilemma – and initially, his lack of a sense of direction or a feeling for the subtlety of local arguments – is noticeable in some of his reports.
The one that results in his having to leave Chile is written in accordance with the ‘Moscow line’: it praises the moderate Chilean Communist Party, obedient to directives from the Kremlin, whereas it accuses the more radical Socialist Party of ‘a blind policy of opposition for opposition’s sake’.5 In turn, his fascination for Guevara is an expression of sympathy for the ‘Christs with rifles on their shoulders’ who are not loved by Moscow, the warrior-idealists who, with gun in hand, contrary to the dictates of their Soviet comrades, are fighting for a fairer world, more favourable to the people, especially to the poor.