These letters are taken from Che Guevara’s Latin America Diaries (or Otra Vez) and the book by Che’s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Aquí va un soldado de América [Here Comes a Soldier of the Americas]. Written during his second trip through Latin America (between October 21, 1953, and his departure for Cuba in December 1956), despite their intimate, very personal tone, they clearly express Che’s emerging political ideas and the seeds of his future trajectory.
Letter to his mother
Guayaquil, Ecuador
[October 21, 1953]
I am writing you this letter (who knows when you’ll read it) about my new position as a 100 percent adventurer. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the news in my last epistle.
The gist is: As Calica García (one of our acquisitions) and I were traveling along for a while, we felt homesick for our beloved homeland. We talked about how good it was for the two members of the group who had managed to leave for Panama, and commented on the fantastic interview with X.X., that guardian angel you gave me, which I’ll tell you about later. The thing is, [“Gaulo”] García1 — almost in passing—invited us to go to Guatemala, and I was disposed to accept. Calica promised to give his answer the next day, and it was affirmative, so there were four new candidates for Yankee opprobrium.
But then our trials and tribulations in the consulates began, with our daily pleas for the Panamanian visas we required and, after several psychological ups and downs, he seemed to decide not to go. Your suit—your masterpiece, the pearl of your dreams—died heroically in a pawnshop, as did all the other unnecessary things in my luggage, which has been greatly reduced for the good of [our] trio’s economic stability—now achieved (whew!).
What this means is that if a captain, who is a sort of friend, agrees to use an old trick, García and I can travel to Panama, and then the combined efforts of those who want to reach Guatemala, plus those from there, will drag along the straggler left behind as security for the remaining debts. If the captain I mentioned messes it up, the same two partners in crime will go on to Colombia, again leaving the security here, and will head for Guatemala in whatever Almighty God unwarily places within their reach. […]
Guayaquil, [October] 24
After a lot of coming and going and many calls, plus a discreet bribe, we have the visa for Panama. We’ll leave tomorrow, Sunday, and will get there by the 29th or 30th. I have written this quick note at the consulate.
Ernesto
Letter to his Aunt Beatriz
San José, Costa Rica
December 10, 1953
Auntie-auntie-mine,
My life has been a sea of conflicting decisions until I bravely abandoned my baggage and, pack on my back, set off with my compañero García on the winding road that has led us here. In El Paso, I had the chance to travel through the realms of United Fruit [Company], which once again convinced me of how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and lately lamented Stalin not to rest until I see these capitalist octopuses wiped out. In Guatemala, I shall improve myself and achieve what I lack to become a true revolutionary.
I must tell you that, apart from being a doctor, I am also a journalist and lecturer, activities which bring (though only a few) US dollars.
Along with all the rest, hugs, kisses and love from your nephew, he of the iron constitution, empty stomach and shining faith in a socialist future.
Ciao,
Chancho2
Letter to his Aunt Beatriz
Guatemala
January 5, 1954
…In any case, money doesn’t mean much to me because I’m following the burro’s example (I keep going for six pieces of straw a day). This is a country where you can breathe deeply and fill your lungs with democracy. The United Fruit Company controls all the newspapers, and if I were Árbenz, I’d close them down in five minutes because they are shameless; they say whatever they want and are creating the kind of atmosphere that the United States wants, painting this as a den of thieves, communists, traitors, etc. I won’t tell you that this is a country that breathes abundance or anything like it, but there are possibilities for working honestly on interesting things. And, if I manage to cut through the somewhat troublesome bureaucracy, I’ll stay here for a while.
Letter to his Aunt Beatriz
Guatemala
February 12, 1954
My very dear, always adored and never duly praised aunt,
I was really pleased to receive your last letter, the culmination and complement of the two previous “capitalist” ones, of which I only received one, meaning that the democratic post office employee made a just distribution of wealth.
Don’t send me any more money as it will cost you all the silver in Peru. I can find all the dollar bills I need here paving the ground, and I can tell you I ended up with lumbago after so much bending over to pick them up at the beginning. Now I only take one in every 10, just to maintain public hygiene standards because so much paper flying about and on the ground is a hazard.
My plan for the coming years: at least six months in Guatemala, if I don’t find anything that is well enough paid to permit me to stay for two years. In the first case, I’ll go and work in another country for a year, which might mean, in diminishing order of probability, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba and the United States.
If the two-year plan comes off, after a visit to the three latter countries, along with Haiti and Santo Domingo, I’m off to Western Europe, where I’ll stay until I’ve blown the final monetary cartridge. If there is time and cash in the meantime, I’ll come and pay you a visit by some bargain-basement means, a free flight or boat or working as a doctor.
In this general plan, there are two highly variable factors that could change things one way or the other. The first is money, which, for me, is not of primary importance, but it does cut short stays and modify itineraries, etc. The second and more important is the political situation.
MY POSITION IS IN NO WAY THAT OF A DILETTANTE, FULL OF HOT AIR AND NOTHING ELSE. I HAVE TAKEN A DEFINITE POSITION IN SUPPORT OF THE GUATEMALAN GOVERNMENT AND WITHIN IT, IN THE PGT GROUP, WHICH IS COMMUNIST. I ALSO HAVE CONNECTIONS WITH SOME INTELLECTUALS OF THOSE [SAME] LEANINGS WHO BRING OUT A MAGAZINE HERE, AND I WORK AS A DOCTOR IN THE UNIONS. THIS HAS PUT ME AT LOGGERHEADS WITH THE TOTALLY REACTIONARY MEDICAL COLLEGE. [Che’s emphasis] I can imagine everything you will have to say and remark upon at this point, but at least you can’t complain about me not being frank.
In the field of social medicine, and on the basis of my limited personal experience, I am working on a very pretentious book, which I think will take me two years’ work. It is called El función del médico en América Latina [The Role of the Doctor in Latin America] and, so far, I only have the general plan and the first two chapters written. I think that, with a bit of patience and methodicalness, I can say something good.
A fearless hug from your proletarian nephew.
Important P.S.: Tell me what you’re thinking of doing with the apartment and if it’s possible to send books for you to keep for me. Don’t worry, they aren’t incriminating.
Letter to Tita Infante
Guatemala City
March 1954
[Written on paper bearing the stamp of the Production Development Institute of Guatemala]
In spite of everything, my beloved Tita, we are growing old.
Almost a year has passed since I left, and I haven’t made much progress in anything, but I suppose you would like to hear about exotic adventures, so I’ll tell you about my projects, adventures and misfortunes.
First, please forgive me for not having replied earlier. Several things happened that prevented me; I wanted to send you a chronicle of Guatemala but didn’t have time; then I tried to track down a native writer who could do it for me, to publish somewhere over there, but that failed too, because the person who invented work came here to die many years ago. Still later, a magazine—I can’t remember its name—asked me to write about what is happening in Guatemala, and I thought about sending you a copy, but I haven’t written it yet and don’t think I’ll finish it soon, because I want to do it well.
I’m telling you all this because I think that Guatemala is a country that is worth knowing well and understanding thoroughly. I think that your fears are not unjustified, in view of the belligerent and, so far, victorious situation of the Republic. On March 1, in his annual message to Congress, President Árbenz announced in unequivocal terms that the Communist Party was cooperating with the government and that it was necessary for the government to defend the rights of the members of that political group against any kind of sanction.
In general, the communists are adopting a cautious position and, if it weren’t for the outcry that the national press has raised against “meddling by foreign doctrines,” they wouldn’t be noticed. But they are the only political group in Guatemala that has approached the government to fulfill a program in which personal interests play no part (although there may have been a demagogue among its leaders), in sharp contrast to the three other party groups, that are veritable nests of intrigues—to such an extent that each of them has split into at least two antagonistic wings—and are so shameless that they have entered into pacts with the opposition to obtain the presidency of Congress (there is only one chamber).
For your information, if you don’t know more about the problem than I do, the PGT [Guatemalan Workers’ Party] has a lot of influence in sections of the three other parties, through elements that have leftist tendencies and are willing to help in the complete socialization of Guatemala—a very difficult task because, among other reasons, there is not much human quality in the revolution (I especially refer to the intellectual meaning of the term).
This is a country with a typical agricultural economy that left the almost “orthodox” fetters of feudalism behind only recently and which has only one crop of any weight on the world market: coffee. It is not excessively pessimistic to say that a considerable drop in the price of that product will topple the government unless emergency measures are taken, and this is what will happen if there is an international boycott backed by the gringos. I think that Guatemala’s most difficult moment will come three years from now, when they must elect a new president. The names that are being tossed around don’t inspire confidence for continuing the revolution in its present magnificent form. If you’re interested and aren’t afraid that it will cause trouble for you there, I can send you some interesting publications, but I won’t send them until I hear from you.
I thought I’d write you using just one sheet of paper, because I’m in quite a dire financial position and another sheet will raise the postage by 10 centavos, but I’d like to know some things:
First, how are you doing as a student now, in March (and in all the months that will pass before you answer me), and what are your plans—or lack thereof? I’m asking this because, in your letter, you said you were in a desperate situation that was very romantic and dangerous. I advise you, if you want to be a fatalist then be one in the positive sense and don’t worry so much about the useless passing of the days or about failure of any kind; it’s hard to stop the days passing, and that is what you want to do when you lament them one by one. If you look one or two years back, you’ll see how much progress you’ve made. Forgive my doctoral tone.
Second, what about the members of your intellectual group and the magazine they founded, and what’s Paz [a mutual friend] doing and how is he?
Third, what’s Montenegro doing? I wrote him a letter, but he didn’t reply; then I wrote Dicstein, and he didn’t answer either, so I don’t know anything about the tiny group you knew there in the doctors’ den. When you decide to write me again, read my questions and answer them.
As for me, all of my efforts to work as a doctor have failed because of the inflexible spirit of the law, which was made to satisfy a group of oligarchs in all their prerogatives. They are the heirs of those who wanted the typically bourgeois revolution of ’44 and who are now determined not to let any of the spoils get away from them for anything. As for my circumstantial occupations, I have drawn close to your work, with terrible results for the statistics: 98 percent of the children have hookworms or other intestinal parasites. Moreover, I’ve tried to break the backs of the poor vinchucas (or Triatomas), looking for Trypanosoma cruzi and rangeli, which are also found in great numbers. That’s it as regards medicine.
Apart from that, I’ve done what I can not to starve to death, so that, in the end, I can deal the great blow. I think I’m going to Petén, a jungle area in Guatemala, hired as a nurse for a pittance, but I’ll get deep into the woods with the workers who extract chicle, gum and wood. It’s an area with a very old Mayan culture (Yucatán has a much more modern version of this “lost in the jungle”), and I’ll have a chance to study tropical diseases of all kinds there. All that is needed—here, something’s always needed—is for the union to agree to my appointment, since it’s an important post in the boss union game. I hope to convince them that I’m not as terrible a person as they imagine (because the owner recommended me), and, if things turn out all right, the mosquitoes will be alighting on my body within a fortnight, and I’ll be communing with Mother Nature once again. The only thing that saddens me a little is to think that if I had done the same thing in Venezuela, I’d have earned $800 instead of $125. It’s tough to have so little money!
Tita, I send you fraternal thoughts and await news through the same consular means. I hope your afflictions will end soon.
Until I see you again,
Ernesto
Letter to his mother
Guatemala
June 20, 1954
Dear vieja [old lady],
This letter will reach you a little after your birthday, which might pass a little uneasily on my account. Let me say there is nothing to fear at the moment, but the same cannot be said of the future, although personally I have the feeling that I’m inviolable (inviolable is not the word, perhaps my subconscious is playing a bad joke on me).
To paint a picture of the situation: For the first time, five or six days ago, a pirate aircraft from Honduras flew over Guatemala, but did nothing. The next day and on successive days they bombed several Guatemalan military installations, and two days ago a plane machine-gunned the lower neighborhoods of the city, killing a two-year-old child. The incident has served to unite all Guatemalans behind their government, and others who, like myself, have been drawn to the country.
Simultaneously, mercenary troops led by an ex-army colonel (dismissed from the army some time ago for treason) left Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, crossed the border, and have now penetrated quite deeply into Guatemalan territory. The government, proceeding with great caution to ensure that the United States cannot declare Guatemala the aggressor, has limited itself to protesting to Tegucigalpa and sending a full report of events to the UN Security Council, allowing the attacking forces to advance far enough that there would be no so-called border incidents. Colonel Árbenz certainly has guts; he’s prepared to die at his post if necessary. His latest speech only reaffirmed this fact, which everyone already knew, bringing a measure of calm. The danger does not come from the number of troops that have entered the country so far, as this is minimal, or from the planes that have done no more than bomb civilian homes and machine-gun people; the danger lies in how the gringos (in this case, the Yankees) manipulate their stooges at the United Nations, since even the vaguest of declarations would greatly benefit the attackers.
The Yankees have finally dropped the good-guy mask Roosevelt had adopted, and now commit atrocities everywhere. If things reach the extreme where it’s necessary to fight the planes and modern troops sent by the [United] Fruit Company or the United States, then a fight it will be. The people’s spirits are very high, and the shameful attacks, along with the lies in the international press, have united even those who are indifferent to the government. There is a real climate of struggle. I have been assigned to the emergency medical services and have also joined the youth brigades to receive military instruction for whatever comes next. I don’t think the tide will reach us, although we’ll see what happens after the Security Council meets, which I think is tomorrow. At any rate, by the time this letter reaches you, you’ll know what to expect in this regard.
For the rest, there’s nothing much new. As the Argentine embassy is currently not functioning, I’ve received no fresh news since a letter from Beatriz and another of yours last week.
I’m told that at any minute I’ll get the job at the health department, but the offices have been so busy with the commotion that it seems a little imprudent to hassle them about my little job when they’re busy with much more important things.
Well, vieja, I hope you had the happiest birthday possible after this troubled year. I’ll send news as soon as I can.
Chau
[Unsigned]
Mexico
November 1954
Vieja, my vieja,
[…] Even Beatriz is engaging in reprisals, and those telegrams she used to send no longer come.
To tell you about my life is to repeat myself because I’m not doing anything new. Photography is bringing in enough to live on and there is really no basis for believing I might be able to give it up anytime soon, although I’m working every morning as a researcher in two hospitals. I think the best thing for me would be to slip into an unofficial job as a country doctor, somewhere near the capital. This would make it easier to devote my time to medicine for a few months. I’m doing this because I’m perfectly aware of how much I learned about allergies with Pisani. Now I have compared notes with people who’ve studied in the United States, and who are no fools with regard to orthodox knowledge, I think that Pisani’s method is light years ahead. I want to get practical experience with the nuts and bolts of his systems so that I can land on my feet wherever that might be [...].
I’m slaving away here, busy every morning in the hospital and in the afternoons and Sundays I work as a photographer, while at night I study a bit. I think I mentioned I’m in a good apartment, I cook my own food and do everything myself, as well as bathing every day thanks to the unlimited supply of hot water.
As you can see, I’m changing in this aspect, but otherwise I’m the same because I don’t wash my clothes very often, and wash them badly when I do, and I still don’t earn enough to pay a laundry.
The scholarship is a dream I’ve given up on, as I had thought that in such a large country all you had to do was ask for something and it was done. You know that I have always been inclined to make drastic decisions, and here the pay is great. Everyone is lazy, but they don’t get in the way when other people get things done, so I’ve got a free rein either here or in the country where I might go next. Naturally, this doesn’t make me lose sight of my goal, which is Europe, where I’m planning to go no matter what happens.
As for the United States, I haven’t lost an ounce of hostility, but I do want to check out New York, at least. I’m not in the least worried about what might happen and know that I’ll leave just as anti-Yankee as when I arrive (that is if I do get in).
I’m happy that people are waking up a bit, although I don’t know what direction they are moving in. Anyway, the truth is that Argentina is as insular as you can get even though in general terms the picture we get from here seems to suggest that they are taking important steps forward and that the country will be perfectly able to defend itself from the crisis the Yankees are about to set off by dumping their surplus food […].
Communists don’t have your sense of friendship but, among themselves, it is the same or better than yours. I have seen this very clearly and, in the chaos of Guatemala after the government was overthrown and it was every man for himself, the communists maintained their faith and compañeroship and they constitute the only group that continued to work there. I think they deserve respect and sooner or later I’ll join the party. What mainly holds me back from doing so, for the moment, is that I’m desperate to travel around Europe and I couldn’t do this if I submitted to a rigid discipline.
Vieja, until Paris.
Letter to his mother
Mexico
[late 1954]
Vieja, my vieja,
It’s true, I’ve been too lazy, but the real guilty party, as always, is Don Dinero [Mr. Money]. Anyway, the end of this wretched financial year of 1954—part of which has treated me beautifully (like your face)—coincides with the end of my chronic hunger. I’m working as an editor at the Agencia Latina for 700 Mexican pesos a month (equivalent to 700 Argentine pesos), enough to live on with the added bonus that I work for only three hours, three days a week. I can therefore spend whole mornings at the hospital, where I am creating swellings using Pisani’s method. […]
I’m still working as a photographer, but also spending time on more important things, like “studying,” and some strange little things that pop up around the place. There’s not much left over, but this December I hope to round it out to 1,000 and, with a bit of luck, we’ll do a bit of photography at the end of the coming year (at the beginning, I meant to write). Contrary to what you might think, I’m no worse than the majority of photographers here, and the best among my compañeros, although yes, in this group you only need one eye to win the crown.
My immediate plans involve staying some six months or so in Mexico, which I find interesting and like a lot, and in this time apply, by the way, for a visa to visit “the children of the super power,” as Arévalo calls them. If I get it, I’ll go. If not, I’ll see what other concrete plans I can make. I haven’t abandoned the idea of slipping behind the Iron Curtain to see what’s happening there. As you see, there’s nothing new since earlier reports.
I’m very enthusiastic about the scientific research, which I’m capitalizing on because it won’t last. I have two research projects on the run and may start on a third—all related to allergies—and very slowly I’m collecting material for a little book that will come to light (if ever) in a couple of years with the pretentious title, The Role of the Doctor in Latin America. I can speak with some authority on the subject, considering that, although I don’t know much about medicine, I do have Latin America sized up. Of course, apart from a general plan and three or four chapters, I’ve written nothing, but time is on my side.
With regard to the changes in my thinking, which is becoming sharper, I promise you that it will only be for a short time. What you are so afraid of can be reached in two ways: the positive one, when you convince someone directly, or the negative one, through disillusionment with everything. I came along the second path, only to be immediately convinced that it is essential to follow the first. The way that the gringos treat Latin America (remember that the gringos are Yankees) was making me feel increasingly indignant, but at the same time I studied the reasons for their actions and found a scientific explanation.
Then came Guatemala and everything that is difficult to recount. I saw how the object of one’s enthusiasm was diluted by what those gentlemen decided, how a new tale of red guilt and criminality was concocted, and how the same treacherous Guatemalans set about propagating the story to get a few crumbs from the table of the new order. I can’t tell you the precise moment I put reasoning aside and acquired something like faith, not even approximately, as the journey was long and there were many backward steps. […]
Letter to his mother
Mexico
September 24, 1955
Dear vieja,
This time it seems my fears have come true, and the enemy you’ve despised for so many years has fallen. The reaction here did not take long to register: all the daily papers and foreign dispatches jubilantly announced the fall of a sinister dictator; the North Americans breathed a sigh of relief for the $425 million they can now extract from Argentina; the bishop of Mexico City was gloating at Perón’s downfall; and all the Catholic right wingers I’ve met in this country were visibly overjoyed. My friends and I, no. With natural anxiety we followed the fate of Perón’s government and the navy’s threats to shell Buenos Aires. Perón fell as people of his stripe fall, without Vargas’s posthumous dignity or Árbenz’s energetic denunciations, when he named in minute detail those guilty of aggression.
Progressives here have defined the denouement that has occurred in Argentina as “another victory for the dollar, the sword and the cross.” I know that today you will be happy and breathing the air of freedom. […]
Not long ago, I suggested in another letter to you that the military would never hand power over to civilians without a guarantee of its caste’s domination. As things stand today, it will only hand over power to a government springing from the Democratic Party, which is to say, one of the recently founded Social-Christian parties, where I imagine [...] is active, a future honorable member of the Chamber of Deputies and perhaps, in the course of time, leader of the Argentine Party, yet to be founded.
Wherever you are, you’ll be able to say whatever you feel like saying, with the absolute impunity that comes from belonging to the ruling class, although for your sake I hope you are the black sheep in the fold. In all honesty I confess that Perón’s fall has left me deeply embittered, not on his account but because of what it means for the Americas. However much it pains you, and apart from the forced capitulations of recent times, Argentina was a champion for all of us who believe that the enemy lies to the north. To me, having lived through Guatemala’s bitter hours, Argentina was a distant mirror image. When I saw that, together with the loyalist news (strange to call it that), Córdoba’s voice was to be heard—theoretically an occupied city—I began to lose any clear picture of the situation. But afterwards, everything developed along exactly the same lines: the president resigned, a junta, posing as the resistance, began to negotiate but then collapsed, superseded by a military man with a little sailor by his side (the only variation with respect to Guatemala).
Then Cardinal Copello proudly addressed the nation, calculating how his business would fare under the new junta. The worldwide press—in this hemisphere—launched its well-rehearsed lines; the junta refused to give Perón a passport but declared freedom for everyone. People like you will believe this is the dawning of a new day; I assure you that Frondizi no longer does, since in the possible event that the Radicals come out on top, he won’t be the one who achieves it but rather it will be Yadarola, Santander or someone else with the blessing of the military serving the interests of the Yankees and the clergy. Perhaps there won’t be any violence at first, because it will be exercised in a circle far removed from your own. [...]
The Communist Party will, in time, be put out of commission, and perhaps the day will come when even Papa might feel he made a mistake. Who knows what will have become of your wandering son in the meantime. Perhaps he will have come back to earth on his native soil (the only one possible), or have begun a life of true struggle [...].
Perhaps one of the bullets so common in the Caribbean will shorten my life (this is neither idle talk nor a concrete possibility, as there are plenty of bullets flying around here). Perhaps I’ll just continue to wander around for long enough to gain a thorough education and take the pleasures I have assigned to myself for this life, before seriously devoting myself to pursuing my ideal. Life travels at a tremendous speed, and one cannot predict where one will be next year or why.
I don’t know if you’ve received the formal news of my marriage and the arrival of an heir—from Beatriz’s letter it would seem not. In that case, let me tell you officially, so you can let other people know: I married Hilda Gadea and we will soon be having a child.
I received the newspapers from Beatriz, which I’m very interested in. I’d like some kind of analysis about recent events, and above all a weekly copy of [the Argentine Communist Party’s] Nuestra Palabra.
Chau,
Kisses to all the family. Hilda sends her greetings.
Letter to his parents
Mexico State Penitentiary
July 6, 1956
Dear viejos [old folks],
I received your letter (Dad) here in my new and exquisite mansion of Miguel Schultz [prison], along with a visit from Petit who informed me of your fears. To give you an idea, I’ll give you an account of the matter.
Some time ago, quite a while ago, a young Cuban leader invited me to join his movement, a movement for the armed liberation of his country, and naturally, I accepted. In my task of providing some physical training for the bunch of guys who will be setting foot in Cuba some day, I spent the last months maintaining my cover as a teacher. On June 21 (when I had been away from my home in Mexico City because I was at a ranch on the outskirts), Fidel was arrested with a group of compañeros and the address we were staying at was found in the house, so we all fell into the net. I had with me documents accrediting me as a student of Russian, which was enough for them to regard me as an important link in the organization, and the news agencies that Dad admires so much began to holler all over the place.
This is a synthesis of what has happened. The future falls into two categories, the medium term and the immediate. With regard to the medium term, let me tell you now that my future is joined to that of the Cuban revolution. [I will] either triumph with it or die there. (This explains the somewhat enigmatic and romantic letter I sent to Argentina some time ago.) As for the immediate future, I have little to say because I don’t know what is to become of me. I am in the judge’s hands and it will be easy for them to deport me to Argentina unless I manage to obtain exile in some intermediate country, which I consider would be good for my political health.
In any case, I have to leave for my new destination, stay in this prison or leave it a free man. Hilda will go back to Peru, which now has a new government and has declared a political amnesty.
For obvious reasons, there will be less correspondence from me from now on, and besides, the Mexican police have the charming habit of confiscating letters, so don’t write about anything except family matters or banalities. Give Beatriz a kiss and tell her why I’m not writing and not to worry about sending newspapers for the moment.
We’re about to declare an indefinite hunger strike because of the unjustified detentions and the torture to which some of my compañeros were submitted. Group morale is high.
For the moment, keep writing to me at home.
If for any reason I think that I won’t be able to write anymore, and then I end up among the losers, consider these lines as my farewell, maybe not very grandiloquent but sincere.
I have spent my life stumbling about seeking my own truth and somewhere along the way, with a daughter to perpetuate me, I have closed the cycle. From now on, I wouldn’t consider my death as a frustration, or only in the sense that [Turkish poet Nazim] Hikmet did: “I shall take beneath the earth only the sorrow of an unfinished song.”
Kisses for everyone,
Ernesto
Mexico
July 15, 1956
Vieja,
[…] I’m neither Christ nor a philanthropist, vieja. I’m exactly the opposite of a Christ and philanthropy looks [illegible] to me, but I fight for what I believe in, I fight with all the weapons at my disposal, and I try to lay out the other guy instead of letting myself get nailed to a cross or whatever. As for the hunger strike, you are totally wrong. We started it twice and the first time they freed 21 of the 24 detainees; the second time they announced that they would free Fidel Castro, the head of the movement, which will happen tomorrow, and if they do what they said, only two of us will be left in prison. I don’t want you to believe, as Hilda suggests, that the two of us who remain have been sacrificed. We are simply the ones whose papers aren’t in order and so we can’t access the resources that our compañeros can. My plans are to leave for the nearest country that will grant me asylum, which might be difficult given the inter-American fame I’ve been lumbered with. From there I’ll prepare myself for whenever my services are required. I’m telling you yet again that it’s likely I won’t be able to write for a quite a while.
What really distresses me is your lack of understanding about all this and your advice about moderation, egoism, etc.—in other words, the most execrable qualities an individual could have. Not only am I not moderate, but I shall try never to be so. And if I ever see in myself that the sacred flame has become a timid little votive flicker, the least I can do is to vomit on my own shit. As for your appeal to moderate egoism, which means common and spineless individualism (the virtues of X.X.), I have to say that I’ve tried hard to eliminate him. I don’t mean so much the unfamiliar craven type, but the other one, the bohemian, unconcerned about his neighbor, filled with a sense of self-sufficiency because of a consciousness, mistaken or otherwise, of his own strength. During this time in prison, and during the period of training, I totally identified with my compañeros in the struggle. I recall a phrase that I once thought was ridiculous, or at least strange, referring to such a total identification between members of a group of combatants, to the effect that the idea of “I” was completely subsumed in the concept of “we.” It was a communist moral principle and naturally might look like doctrinaire exaggeration, but it was (and is) really beautiful to have this sense of “we.”
(The splotches aren’t tears of blood but tomato juice.)
You are deeply mistaken to believe that moderation or “moderate egoism” gives rise to great inventions or works of art. All great work requires passion and the revolution needs passion and audacity in large doses, things we have as collective humankind. Another strange thing I noted was your repeated mention of God the Father.
I really hope you’re not reverting to the fold of your youth. I also warn you that the SOSs are to no avail: Petit got the wind up, Lezica dodged the issue and gave Hilda (who went there against my orders) a sermon on the obligations of political asylum. Raúl Lynch behaved well from afar, and Padilla Nervo said they were different ministries.
They would all help but only on the condition that I abjure my ideals. I don’t think you would prefer a living son who was a Barabbas rather than a son who died wherever doing what he considered his duty. These attempts to help only put pressure on them and me.
But you have some clever ideas (at least to my way of thinking), and the best of them is the matter of the interplanetary rocket—a word I like.
Besides, there’s no doubt that, after righting the wrongs in Cuba, I’ll be off somewhere else; and it’s also certain that if I were locked up in some bureaucrat’s office or some allergy clinic, I’d be fucked. All in all, I think that this pain, the pain of a mother who’s aging and wants her son alive, is a feeling to be respected, and I should heed it, and more than that, I want to attend to it. I would like to see you, not just to console you, but also to console myself in my sporadic and shameful homesickness.
Vieja, I kiss you and promise to be with you if nothing else develops.
Your son,
Che
Mexico
[Approximately October 1956]
Dear Mamá,
Your prickly son of a bad mother is not, on top of everything else, a good-for-nothing; he’s like Paul Muni who said what he had to say in that tragic voice, and disappeared into the distance, his shadow lengthening to the tune of such an evocative soundtrack.
My current profession means I am always on the go, here today, there tomorrow, etc., and my relatives… well I haven’t been to see them because of this (and also, I confess, because I probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at the kinds of worthy institutions I would wipe from the face of the earth if I got the chance to do so. I don’t want you to think that this is just a passing aversion; it’s real mistrust. Lezica has shown that we speak different languages and have no common points of reference.)
I have given you this lengthy bracketed explanation because, after my opening line, I thought you might imagine I’m on the way to a becoming a morfa-burgués.3 Being too lazy to start over and remove the paragraph, I embarked on a lengthy explanation that now strikes me as rather unconvincing. Full stop, new paragraph.
Within a month, Hilda will go to visit her family in Peru, taking advantage of the fact that she is no longer a political criminal but a somewhat misguided representative of the admirable and anticommunist party, the APRA.
I’m in the process of changing the focus of my studies: whereas previously I devoted myself for better or worse to medicine, and spent my spare time informally studying Saint Karl [Marx], this new stage of my life demands that I change the order. Now Saint Karl is primordial; he is the axis and will remain so for however many years the spheroid has room for me on its outer mantle. Medicine is more or less a trivial and passing pursuit, except for one small area on which I’m thinking of writing more than one substantive study—the kind that causes bookstore basements to tremble beneath its weight.
As you’ll recall, and if you don’t remember I’ll remind you now, I was working on a book on the role of the doctor, etc., of which I only finished a couple of chapters that whiffed of some newspaper serial with a title like Bodies and Souls. They were nothing more than poorly written rubbish, displaying a thorough ignorance of the fundamental issues, so I decided to study. Again, to write it, I had to reach a series of conclusions that were kicking against my essentially adventurous trajectory, so I decided to deal with the main things first, to pit myself against the order of things, shield on my arm, the whole fantasy, and then, if the windmills don’t crack open my nut, I’ll get down to writing.
I owe Celia the letter of praise I will write after this if I have time. The others are in debt to me as the last word has been mine, even with Beatriz. Tell her that the papers arrive like clockwork and that they give me a very good idea of all the government’s beautiful deeds. I cut out the articles carefully, following the example of my pater, and now Hilda is emulating her mater.
A kiss for everyone, with all the appropriate additions and a reply— negative or positive, but convincing—about the Guatemalan.
Now all that remains is the final part of the speech, which refers to the man, which could be titled: “What next?”
Now comes the tough part, vieja, the part I’ve never shunned and always enjoyed. The sky has not darkened, the stars have not fallen out of the sky, nor have there been terrible floods or hurricanes; the signs are good. They augur victory. But if they are wrong—and in the end even the gods can make mistakes—I think I’ll be able to say, like a [Turkish] poet you don’t know: “I shall take beneath the earth only the sorrow of an unfinished song.”
To avoid pre-mortem pathos, this letter will appear when things get really hot, and then you’ll know that your son, in some sun-drenched land in the Americas, is swearing at himself for not having studied enough surgery to help a wounded man, and cursing the Mexican government for not letting him perfect his already respectable marksmanship so he could knock over puppets with better results. The struggle will be with our backs to the wall, as in the hymns, until victory or death.
Another kiss for you, with all the love of a farewell that still resists being total.
Your son
1. Eduardo “Gaulo” García was a friend from Argentina.
2. Argentine slang meaning “pig.”
3. Argentine slang for a lazy bourgeois who does nothing but eat.