Che was interviewed several times in Cuba, by both Cuban and foreign members of the press. These excerpts are from Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti’s interview with Che conducted in the Sierra Maestra mountains in April 1958, an interview which Masetti later included in his book Los que luchan y los que lloran [Those Who Fight and Those Who Weep], along with interviews with Fidel Castro and other leaders.
When I woke up, I was disappointed. I had slept peacefully until 5:00 a.m. and had not heard any gunfire at all. The government troops had made a brief incursion but returned at once to their barracks on discovering that Che was not at La Otilia and that he was preparing an ambush.
I had been eagerly listening for the sound of gunfire, lying in the semidarkness of the room, while Virelles, with his machine gun’s safety catch off, promised himself a trip to Buenos Aires just to hear some tangos. Around 2:00 a.m., Sorí Marín and I stretched out on the only two mattresses available. Placed together, they could have accommodated three people, but not the five I found when I woke up. Virelles had gone to take up his post while Cantellops snored in an armchair. Llibre appeared, scratching himself at the foot of the bed, and told me in distress how he had spent the whole night trying to scratch a bunch of lumps that had mysteriously appeared on his stomach.
In a few minutes, what had looked like a dormitory became a dining room, office and infirmary. Everyone was standing now and the only thing they were asking, whatever they were doing, was whether the Commander had arrived.
Guevara arrived at 6:00 a.m. While I watched admiringly as a group of lads busied themselves—doing something I had given up a long time ago, washing their faces—groups of sweaty rebels loaded up with their light packs and heavy weapons began to arrive from different directions. Their pockets were swollen with bullets and cartridge belts hung across their chests without even the protection of buttonless shirts.
They were the people who had set out to ambush Sánchez Mosquera’s troops the previous night and were coming back exhausted, tired and still bristling with the desire to fight the troops of the detested colonel. Shortly afterwards, Ernesto Guevara arrived, riding a mule, his legs dangling, the curve of his back extended by the barrels of a Beretta and a rifle with telescopic lens, like two poles supporting the frame of his apparently large body.
As the mule approached I could see that, hanging from his waist, was a leather cartridge belt loaded with cartridges, and a pistol. From his shirt pockets two magazines protruded, while a camera hung from his neck and, from his chin, a few hairs that hoped to form a beard.
He calmly dismounted the mule, setting foot on the ground with his enormous muddy boots, and as he came over to me I calculated that he would be 178 centimeters tall. I noted that his asthma did not seem to inhibit him in any way.
Sorí Marín introduced us, watched by 20 soldiers who had never seen two Argentines together and who were somewhat disappointed to see that we greeted each other with a certain reserve.
The famous Che Guevara looked to me like a typical middle-class Argentine kid and also a rejuvenated caricature of Cantinflas.1
He invited me to breakfast with him and we began to eat, almost in silence.
The first questions, logically, came from him. And, logically, they were about the political situation in Argentina.
My answers seemed to satisfy him, and not long after we started talking, we realized that we agreed on many things and that really, we were not two dangerous characters. Soon we were chatting away quite freely, although with the slight reserve typical of two Argentines of the same generation, and we began to use the familiar tú form.
One of the peasant soldiers, who was trying to listen in, made some humorous comment to Guevara about how funny the Cubans found our way of talking. Our mutual amusement united us almost at once in a less inhibited exchange.
Then I told him why I had traveled to the Sierra Maestra. The desire to clarify, especially for myself, what kind of revolution had been taking place in Cuba over the last 17 months; who was responsible; how was it possible to keep going for so long without the support of any foreign nation; why the Cuban people did not overthrow Batista once and for all if they really supported the revolutionaries; and dozens of other questions, many of which had already been answered on my journey to La Otilia where I had experienced at close quarters the terror in the towns and the gunfire in the mountains; seen unarmed guerrillas participating in suicidal ambushes to get hold of some weapon with which they could really fight; and listened to illiterate peasants describing, each in his own words, but all of them clearly, why they were fighting. I had realized that I was not in the midst of an army of fanatics that would accept anything from its leaders, but among a group of men who were aware that any deviation from the honest line they were so proud of would mean the end of everything and of the new rebellion.
But, in spite of everything, I was distrustful. I refused to let myself be totally carried away by my sympathy for the fighting peasants until I could submit to the severest scrutiny the ideas of the people who were leading them. I refused to admit once and for all that some Yankee consortium was not bending over backwards to support Fidel Castro, even though, on several occasions, planes given to Batista by the US aeronautical mission had fired on the places where I was.
My first specific question to Guevara, the young Argentine doctor turned hero Commander and creator of a revolution that had nothing to do with his own country, was:
“Why are you here?”
He had lit his pipe, and I my cigarette, and we settled down to a formal conversation that we knew would be a long one. He answered me in the calm way that the Cubans believe is characteristically Argentine, but which I would describe as a mixture of Cuban and Mexican mannerisms.
“I am here simply because I believe that the only way to rid the Americas of dictators is to overthrow them—helping to bring about their fall by whatever means necessary—the more direct the better.”
“Are you not afraid that your intervention in the internal affairs of a country that is not your own might be seen as interference?”
“First of all, I consider my country to be not only Argentina but the entire Americas. My country’s history is as glorious as that of Martí, and it is in his land precisely that I abide by his doctrine. Besides, if I give myself, everything that I am, if I offer my blood for a cause that I consider just and popular, if I help a people to rid itself of a dictatorship that does indeed permit the interference of a foreign power that backs it with arms, with planes, with money and with military instructors,
“I cannot concede that my commitment should be described as interference. No country has yet denounced US meddling in Cuban affairs and not a single newspaper has accused the Yankees of helping Batista to massacre his own people. But a lot of people are bothered about me. I am the interfering foreigner who is helping the rebels with his own flesh and blood. The people who supply arms for an internal war are not interfering. But I am!”
Guevara uses the pause to light his pipe, which has gone out. Everything he has said comes from what seem to be constantly smiling lips, without any stress on the words and in a totally impersonal manner. I, however, was totally serious. I knew that I had a lot of questions still to ask, but I already considered them absurd.
“And what about Fidel Castro’s communism?”
Again the smile was clearly discernible. He took a long draw on his pipe and answered me in the same matter of fact tone as before.
“Fidel is not a communist. If he were, he’d at least have a few more weapons. But this revolution is exclusively Cuban. Or, better said, Latin American. Politically, Fidel and his movement might be described as ‘revolutionary nationalist.’ Of course he is anti-Yankee inasmuch as the Yankees are antirevolutionary. But, in fact, we are not brandishing some kind of proselytizing anti-Yankeeism. We are against the United States”—he stressed this to give perfect clarity to the idea—“because the United States is against our peoples.”
I remained silent so that he would go on talking. It was terribly hot and the warm smoke of the fresh tobacco was as invigorating as the coffee we were drinking from big glasses. Guevara’s “S”-shaped pipe hung there smoking and swaying in harmony with the rhythms of his Cuban-Mexican banter as he continued.
“The main target of this communist nonsense is myself. Every single Yankee journalist who has come to the Sierra has begun by asking me about my activities in the Communist Party of Guatemala—taking it for granted that I was active in the communist party of that country—simply because I was and am a sincere admirer of the democratic government of Colonel Jacobo Árbenz.”
“Did you occupy any position in that government?”
“No, never.” He talks on calmly without taking his pipe from his mouth. “But when the US invasion happened, I tried to get together a group of young men like myself, to fight the [United] Fruit Company mercenaries. In Guatemala it was necessary to fight and hardly anyone fought. It was necessary to resist and hardly anyone resisted.”
I continued to listen to his account without asking further questions. There was no need. “From there I escaped to Mexico, as the FBI agents had already begun to detain people, ensuring that all those who might represent a danger to the United Fruit government were killed at once. In the land of the Aztecs I once again met up with some of the July 26 [Movement] people, whom I’d met in Guatemala, and became friendly with Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother. He introduced me to the leader of the movement when they had already begun to plan their invasion of Cuba.”
Since his pipe had gone out again, he paused to light a cigarette and offered me one. In order to show that I still existed behind the dense curtain of smoke, I asked him how he had come to join forces with the Cuban revolutionaries.
“I passed one whole night talking with Fidel. By dawn I was the doctor of his future expedition. In fact, after the experiences of my travels throughout Latin America and the finishing off of Guatemala, it didn’t take much to persuade me to join any revolution against a dictator, but Fidel impressed me as an extraordinary man. He faced and resolved the most impossible situations. He had the extraordinary faith that, if he left for Cuba, he was going to make it. That, once he arrived, he was going to fight. And that, in the fighting, he was going to win. I shared his optimism. It had to be done, we had to fight, to make it happen. To stop crying about it and to fight back. And to demonstrate to the people of his country that they could trust him, because he did what he said he would do, and he spoke his famous words: ‘In [19]56 we will be free or we will be martyrs,’ announcing that before the year was out he was going to disembark somewhere in Cuba at the head of his expeditionary army.”
“And what happened with the disembarkation?”
The conversation had now attracted more than 30 listeners. Sitting on the ground, with their weapons between their knees, their caps protecting their eyes from the reflections of the sun, “Che’s men” smoked and listened attentively, without proffering a single word. A young, bearded doctor set and bandaged a finger perfectly, attending to nothing but what he was hearing. Llibre, a passionate admirer of the leaders of the revolution but a vigilant doctrinarian, analyzed each of Che’s words and scratched at the pimples on his stomach with nails discolored by the clayey earth. Virelles listened as he slept. Guillermito, a beardless youth with very long hair, cleaned his rifle with the same attention that the doctor gave to setting the finger. From somewhere, mingling with the smell of tobacco, wafted that of the pork they were frying in a pan in the open air.
Guevara went on with his account, with a cigarette in his mouth and his legs comfortably stretched out.
“When we arrived, we were dispersed [by the army]. We had had an atrocious voyage on the cabin cruiser, the Granma, which carried the 82 members of the expedition plus the crew. A storm threw us off course and most of us were suffering from seasickness. Our water and food had run out and, to make matters worse, when we reached the island, the boat became stranded in the mud. They were shooting at us without let up, from the air and the coast and, before long, only half of us were left alive, or half-alive if you consider the state we were in. All in all, out of the 82, only 12 of us were left with Fidel. And, at the beginning, our group was reduced to seven because the other five had scattered. This was all that was left of the invading army of the audacious July 26 Movement. Lying there on the ground, without being able to fire for fear of giving ourselves away, we waited for Fidel’s final instructions, while we could hear the navy firing and the bursts of the air force machine guns in the distance.”
Guevara let out a short laugh as he remembered.
“What a guy, this Fidel: you know, under cover of the noise of the machine guns he stood up and said to us, ‘Listen how they’re shooting at us. They’re terrified. They’re scared of us because they know we’re going to finish them off.’ And, without another word, he picked up his gun and his pack and led our little column away. We were looking for Turquino Peak, the highest and most inaccessible mountain in the Sierra Maestra, where we established our first camp. The peasants watched us go by without any show of friendliness. But Fidel didn’t flinch. He greeted them with smiles and only took a few minutes to start up a more or less cordial conversation. When they refused to give us food, we continued our march without protest. It didn’t take long for the peasants to realize that these bearded ‘rebel’ guys were exactly the opposite of the troops that were looking for us. While Batista’s army laid their hands on everything they fancied in the peasants’ huts—including the women, of course—Fidel Castro’s people respected the peasants’ property and paid generously for everything they consumed. We noted, not without surprise, that the peasants were disconcerted by our behavior. They were used to the treatment meted out by Batista’s army. They were slowly becoming real friends and, as we had more encounters with groups of government troops in the mountains, many expressed their desire to join us. But these first ambushes when we were seeking arms began to bother the troops, and they marked the start of the most ferocious wave of terrorism imaginable.
“Every peasant was considered a potential rebel and was killed. If they found out that we had gone through a particular zone, they burned down the huts that we might have reached. If they came to any property and didn’t find any men there because they were working or in the village, whether they imagined or not that they had joined our ranks, which were swelling every day, they shot everyone who remained at home. The terrorism practiced by Batista’s army was, without a doubt, our most effective ally at that time. It was the most brutally eloquent demonstration for the peasant communities that it was necessary to bring down the Batista regime.”
The sound of a motor claimed the attention of us all.
“Plane!” some of them shouted and everyone ran inside La Otilia. In a matter of seconds, the animals’ harnesses and the packs disappeared from the coffee drying floor, and nothing could be seen around the camp except the sun-bleached trees, the cement drying floor and the red clay track.
A dark gray plane appeared from behind the ridge and made two wide sweeps over La Otilia, quite high, but without firing a shot. Minutes later it disappeared.
We came out of the house as if we had been locked up for hours.
I reminded Guevara of my intention of meeting Fidel as soon as possible, to record my report and then return to the transmitter plant to try to get it directly to Buenos Aires. In a few minutes they found me a guide who knew the Jibacoa area, where Fidel was probably operating, and a more or less strong mule without too many sores.
“You’ll have to leave now,” Guevara told me, “to reach the first camp before it gets too late, and tomorrow morning you go on to Las Mercedes. They might be able to tell you there where to find Fidel. With luck, you’ll locate him in three days.”
I mounted the mule and said goodbye to them all, arranging to meet Guevara in La Mesa some days later when I would return with my recorded report. I gave Llibre several rolls of exposed film and two recorded tapes so that he could keep them for me in the transmitter plant.
It was about midday and the pork was frying again now that the plane scare was over. The smell of fat that had previously made me so nauseous, now seemed delicious. The incredibly pure Sierra Maestra air was a great tonic for my stomach. Sorí Marín brought me half a dozen bananas that this time—and I never understood why—were called malteños.
Guevara urged the guide to be very careful as we approached Las Minas.
“He’s the first compatriot I’ve seen in ages,” he shouted, laughing, “and I want him to survive at least until he can send the report to Buenos Aires.”
“Chau,” I called from the distance.
And about 30 voices answered, laughing and shouting, as if it were the funniest farewell they could imagine.
We branched off the path leading to La Otilia and crossed a coffee field. The beans were still green and gave off the pure aroma of fresh plants. While I was distracted—trying to peel malteños some 40 centimeters long—the branches sometimes tried to snatch my cap. But the proximity of Las Minas, although it didn’t remove my appetite, captured my attention much more than the question of guiding the mule or peeling the bananas. My guide, with a nickname more fitting for a leggy French showgirl than for a bearded and almost toothless peasant (“Niní”), was a few meters ahead, mounted on a small, short-legged mule. Suddenly he dismounted and slid noiselessly toward me over the cushion of leaves. Before he got to me I had also dismounted and we moved away from the animals at once. The sound of branches hitting something like the steel helmet of a soldier could now be heard clearly. Niní released the safety catch of his pistol.
“Hey, compay!” he suddenly shouted.
A peasant advanced with difficulty through the coffee trees trying, as much as he could, to prevent the branches from hitting the light rectangular box of white wood that he carried on his shoulder.
“What’s news?” he replied, gasping for breath. […]
1. Mexican comic film actor, famous for his portrayal of the impoverished Mexican peasant.