\n<\/p>\n
Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Source: Public domain, Museo Che Guevara, available <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Cuba 1960-1964<\/strong><\/p>\n The Che Guevara of 1959 was a completely different man. He was no longer the \u201cyoung Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.\u201d He was now a high-ranking official in the new Cuban administration<\/span><\/a> with close access to its leader, Fidel Castro. Over the next few years he would hold several posts: commander of the La Caba\u00f1a fortress, where he oversaw the revolutionary tribunals that purged the army of Batista sympathizers; president of the National Bank of Cuba; and Minister of Industries. He had few successes in these roles, and it was at La Caba\u00f1a that he acquired his fearsome and ruthless reputation. In the first months after the revolution, Che presided over dozens, and by some accounts hundreds, of executions.<\/p>\n It is a matter of debate whether Che was any more ruthless than other members of the new Cuban government. Neither Che\u2019s own comments nor those of his comrades at the time paint a merciful picture. Asked about Che\u2019s part in the legal process, fellow prosecutor Miguel \u00c1ngel Duque de Estrada said simply that \u201che [Che] was in charge\u2026 his word was final.\u201d In the first hundred days of Che\u2019s tenure, no fewer than fifty-five executions were carried out.<\/p>\n His role at La Caba\u00f1a, and the vigor with which he applied himself to it, revealed a major change in Che\u2019s personality and moral code. Only six years before the revolution, in 1953, Che had qualified as a doctor, a profession dedicated to the betterment and prolonging of life. By the time he took charge of the tribunals he had clearly abandoned that commitment, privately admitting to his father: \u201cAs for my medical career, I can tell you that I deserted it a long time ago.\u201d Perhaps we have our answer. Che could have refused the role, but ambition persuaded him otherwise.<\/p>\n However, the Cuban people were also in a vengeful, unforgiving mood toward the former government, and sought reprisals against those who had supported and carried out the Batista regime\u2019s atrocities. Public demand aside, there was another important reason: Castro needed to ensure that no dissent remained that could undermine his victory in those early, vulnerable days. Che remembered the events that had toppled Jacobo \u00c1rbenz in Guatemala in 1954, which he had witnessed first-hand during his second journey through Latin America. In Che\u2019s view, \u00c1rbenz had failed to purge his army of dissenters, and they ultimately removed him from power. That mistake could not be allowed to happen in Cuba.<\/p>\n In 1959 the new Cuban government faced a hostile diplomatic environment. The United States was growing increasingly wary of the revolution\u2019s radical direction, and much of Latin America was under heavy US influence. In June 1959 Castro sent Che abroad as an ambassador on a three-month goodwill tour. Like his later tour of 1964\u201365, it focused on non-aligned countries, which on this occasion included Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia and Yugoslavia. The priority was to win trade and ease Cuba\u2019s economic vulnerability.<\/p>\n To achieve this, Cuba urgently needed to sell its one major commodity: sugar. Cuba produced around six million tons a year, of which roughly three million tons were sold to the United States under a quota system, a quota the US would cut in July 1960 as relations collapsed. The tour achieved little. It laid some groundwork for trade with Egypt and produced a rice-for-sugar arrangement with Burma, but no major new customers. Some of the fault lay with Che himself. His lack of knowledge of economics and trade put him on the back foot in negotiations, and the outcome was hardly surprising. In short, he was unsuited to the task, though in fairness many others in Castro\u2019s government were probably equally lacking. Cuba would soon turn to the Soviet bloc instead, signing its first major trade agreement with the USSR in February 1960.<\/p>\n On a personal front, Che divorced his wife, Hilda Gadea, and shortly afterwards, in June 1959, married Aleida March de la Torre, whom he had met during the fighting. His marriage to Hilda had been under strain since before the revolutionary campaign in Cuba, and the situation was no doubt exacerbated by Che\u2019s restless ambition. That ambition was undimmed; indeed, he was now heavily focused on a new task: taking revolution to the wider world.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Exporting Revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n Cuba\u2019s policy of exporting revolution was both a defensive and an offensive strategy. Havana feared that the United States was planning retaliation for Castro\u2019s overthrow of Batista. The US was seeking compensation for American property nationalized by Cuba, valued at around $1.8 billion at the time, and it now had a communist state on its southern flank, an anathema to American ideology. In Castro\u2019s mind, an invasion was only a matter of time, a fear borne out by the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.<\/p>\n In theory at least, exporting revolution was an alternative to the impossible task of taking direct action against the United States. The plan was to create distractions in other countries that would tie up the time and military resources of Cuba\u2019s potential enemies\u2014or, in Che\u2019s later words, to create \u201ctwo, three, many Vietnams.\u201d If this produced regime changes friendly to Cuba, so much the better. Cuba became a training ground for several clandestine guerrilla organizations preparing to take up arms across the developing world, and it was here that Che believed he had found his new calling.<\/p>\n Between 1960 and 1964 Cuba was actively planning several clandestine operations in Latin America, and those in Argentina and Guatemala reached an advanced stage. From 1962, large numbers of would-be guerrillas from across Latin America arrived in Cuba to train, mentored by Che, seasoned Cuban guerrilla veterans and Eastern Bloc advisers, for example from Czechoslovakia. Che also used the resources available to him at the National Bank of Cuba to fund guerrilla movements in Central America, advancing $20,000 to the Nicaraguans Tom\u00e1s Borge and Rodolfo Romero, two guerrilla leaders heavily involved in the region.<\/p>\n Argentina was particularly close to Che\u2019s heart as his homeland and the home of his family. Again without Che being present, a Cuban-backed guerrilla force led by the Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti was gradually established in Bolivia in preparation for an incursion into northern Argentina. After President Arturo Frondizi was removed by the military in 1962, Che saw an opportunity for such an operation.<\/p>\n By the time the operation began in earnest, however, the political climate in Argentina had changed. The military-dominated interim government had given way to elections in 1963, which brought the centrist Arturo Illia to the presidency, lowering the political temperature and the appetite for revolution. Che\u2019s own opportunity for personal involvement in a campaign was coming, but not close to home. It would be in post-colonial Africa.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Congo and the Disappearance of Che Guevara<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1965 Cuba backed the Congo\u2019s various rebel movements against the central government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose army was commanded by Joseph Mobutu. Civil conflict had erupted almost immediately after the country gained independence from Belgium<\/span><\/a> in June 1960, beginning with an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga. The newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was unable to contain the unrest. When Belgium sent in troops, Lumumba saw this as a stealthy attempt to preserve its imperial grip on its former colony. He appealed to the United Nations, which sent a peacekeeping force, but when the UN refused to help him end the Katangan secession he turned to the USSR, asking Nikita Khrushchev for assistance, and Soviet aid and advisers were dispatched to the Congo. The Cold War had arrived in Africa, and given the country\u2019s vast mineral wealth\u2014cobalt, copper and much else\u2014this was unacceptable to the West. Lumumba was deposed in September 1960 in a coup led by Mobutu with Belgian and CIA support. After his capture he was handed over to his political rival Mo\u00efse Tshombe\u2019s Katangan authorities and brutally murdered in January 1961.<\/p>\n Watching from the sidelines, Cuba believed that the Congo offered an opening for successful regime change. Successes outside the Cuban revolution itself had so far been non-existent, so this time the operation would receive the personal attention of Che Guevara himself. In April 1965 Che was secretly inserted into the country to begin his work. There is little value in recounting the many chaotic engagements of the seven unsuccessful months that followed. Che opened his account of the campaign with the blunt admission, \u201cThis is the history of a failure,\u201d and his presence had little or no impact. The diary and other witnesses describe multiple disadvantages: absent leaders, uncommitted fighters, poor logistics, language barriers and insurmountable odds, including Mobutu\u2019s considerable army, supported by the CIA and by elite mercenary units led by the infamous Mike Hoare. Che\u2019s first personal attempt to export revolution had been an abject failure. It was not an auspicious start.<\/p>\n Before his arrival, Che had been given plenty of advice and warnings by African leaders that his venture was highly likely to fail. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser advised him against becoming \u201ca Tarzan, a white man among blacks, leading and protecting them,\u201d as Africa had had enough of white rule and interference. Nasser warned, prophetically, that it would end \u201cbadly.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor did his plans convince the African revolutionaries to whom he presented them in detail in Dar es Salaam. The consensus was that they were too ambitious and naive. In Che\u2019s words, the meeting ended \u201ccoldly and dismissively,\u201d with his guests \u201ccourteously saying goodbye.\u201d His costly idea of using the Congo as an anti-imperialist springboard for guerrilla struggles in neighboring countries was not the kind of revolution that the Congolese, or Africans more widely, desired. He proceeded regardless, and it would not be the last time Che failed to heed advice and warnings.<\/p>\n Che arrived in the Congo in April 1965 and by November had withdrawn to neighboring Tanzania, where he wrote his account of the campaign in Dar es Salaam. If nothing else, it served as a \u201clessons learned\u201d log for future operations. He was undeterred by the failure and still vehemently supported the idea of exporting guerrilla warfare, but he needed another opportunity. He would get one in Bolivia a year later, but he failed to heed his own lessons, failures and experiences before embarking on that venture.<\/p>\n Mobutu, meanwhile, seized power in a coup in November 1965, just as Che was leaving, and ruled the country (renamed Zaire in 1971) until 1997.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Diplomatic Blunders and a Rumored Rift with Castro<\/strong><\/p>\n In February 1965, before leaving for the Congo<\/span><\/a>, Che made a public address in Algiers to delegates from across Asia and Africa. The speech was so inflammatory that it riled Cuba\u2019s principal ally, the USSR. In it Che made a series of catastrophic blunders, once again proving that diplomacy was not among his skills.<\/p>\n In the speech Che delivered a clear criticism, if not a rebuke, of the Soviet bloc. He argued that its \u201cmutually beneficial\u201d trade with developing countries was no better than the West\u2019s, and that socialist countries trading at world-market prices were, to a degree, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. By implication he sided with China over the USSR, suggesting that the Chinese displayed a truer socialist morality than the Soviets. Moscow noted his closeness to China and came to see him as \u201cChina\u2019s man,\u201d which was unacceptable to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n This rebuke enraged the Soviets, and the ramifications reached Fidel Castro<\/span><\/a>. What was he to do with Che? As it turned out, Che\u2019s own actions provided the solution. Many still wonder whether it was a stroke of good fortune or some stealthy maneuvering behind the scenes that removed Che from Cuban affairs. Che would later regret his actions.<\/p>\n Before Che\u2019s disappearance into the Congo there were rumors of a rift between him and Castro over his open criticism of Moscow. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the events that followed are suspicious. The rift, if there was one, was driven by a mixture of Che\u2019s loose, tactless tongue and his ardent Marxist beliefs, which put him firmly on China\u2019s side of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Castro shared some of Che\u2019s frustration with Moscow but kept a quiet restraint.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Letter\u201d to Castro and the People of Cuba<\/strong><\/p>\n On April 1, 1965, while preparing for his insertion into the Congo, Che wrote a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. That letter, in Che\u2019s typically flowery prose, would soon work to his detriment. When Castro read it out in public in October 1965 to explain Che\u2019s absence, it effectively detached Che from his comrades: he had renounced all his government titles and his Cuban citizenship, erasing everything he had worked for. In one short letter he had lost his own stage at a time when he arguably needed its support most.<\/p>\n Extracts from the letter read as follows:<\/p>\n \u201cI feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I now take my leave of you, the compa\u00f1eros, your people who are now mine.\u201d<\/p>\n If that was not clear enough, he elaborated in true \u201cChe prose\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cI formally resign my responsibilities in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank as commander and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legally ties me to Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n The letter perhaps alludes to tensions with Castro when Che writes: \u201cMy only serious failing was not having more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and revolutionary.\u201d (The Sierra Maestra mountains were the refuge of Castro and his depleted band in the early stages of the insurgency.) There were suggestions that Fidel had begun to view Che\u2019s activities and position as a diplomatic liability, especially after the Algiers speech angered Moscow. That speech put Castro in a difficult position: although he privately shared some of Che\u2019s reservations about the USSR, it was nonetheless a vital, if not the only, ally on which Cuba depended during its continued international isolation.<\/p>\n Che added, \u201cwith a mixture of joy and sorrow,\u201d that \u201cother nations of the world call for my modest efforts\u201d and that he would \u201ccarry to new battlefronts\u201d the faith Castro had taught him, to \u201cfight against imperialism wherever it may be.\u201d These hints of grandiosity and egotism show how far Che\u2019s transformation, and perhaps a growing self-delusion, had developed.<\/p>\n The letter was a baffling act, and it leaves readers wondering whether it was driven by an inflated ego, by the fact that Che, given his catalog of failures, was running out of \u201cproverbial rope\u201d as an ambassador and official of the Cuban government, or by both.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
![here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nCuba 1960-1964<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Che Guevara of 1959 was a completely different man. He was no longer the \u201cyoung Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.\u201d He was now a high-ranking official in the new Cuban administration<\/span><\/a> with close access to its leader, Fidel Castro. Over the next few years he would hold several posts: commander of the La Caba\u00f1a fortress, where he oversaw the revolutionary tribunals that purged the army of Batista sympathizers; president of the National Bank of Cuba; and Minister of Industries. He had few successes in these roles, and it was at La Caba\u00f1a that he acquired his fearsome and ruthless reputation. In the first months after the revolution, Che presided over dozens, and by some accounts hundreds, of executions.<\/p>\nIt is a matter of debate whether Che was any more ruthless than other members of the new Cuban government. Neither Che\u2019s own comments nor those of his comrades at the time paint a merciful picture. Asked about Che\u2019s part in the legal process, fellow prosecutor Miguel \u00c1ngel Duque de Estrada said simply that \u201che [Che] was in charge\u2026 his word was final.\u201d In the first hundred days of Che\u2019s tenure, no fewer than fifty-five executions were carried out.<\/p>\nHis role at La Caba\u00f1a, and the vigor with which he applied himself to it, revealed a major change in Che\u2019s personality and moral code. Only six years before the revolution, in 1953, Che had qualified as a doctor, a profession dedicated to the betterment and prolonging of life. By the time he took charge of the tribunals he had clearly abandoned that commitment, privately admitting to his father: \u201cAs for my medical career, I can tell you that I deserted it a long time ago.\u201d Perhaps we have our answer. Che could have refused the role, but ambition persuaded him otherwise.<\/p>\nHowever, the Cuban people were also in a vengeful, unforgiving mood toward the former government, and sought reprisals against those who had supported and carried out the Batista regime\u2019s atrocities. Public demand aside, there was another important reason: Castro needed to ensure that no dissent remained that could undermine his victory in those early, vulnerable days. Che remembered the events that had toppled Jacobo \u00c1rbenz in Guatemala in 1954, which he had witnessed first-hand during his second journey through Latin America. In Che\u2019s view, \u00c1rbenz had failed to purge his army of dissenters, and they ultimately removed him from power. That mistake could not be allowed to happen in Cuba.<\/p>\nIn 1959 the new Cuban government faced a hostile diplomatic environment. The United States was growing increasingly wary of the revolution\u2019s radical direction, and much of Latin America was under heavy US influence. In June 1959 Castro sent Che abroad as an ambassador on a three-month goodwill tour. Like his later tour of 1964\u201365, it focused on non-aligned countries, which on this occasion included Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia and Yugoslavia. The priority was to win trade and ease Cuba\u2019s economic vulnerability.<\/p>\nTo achieve this, Cuba urgently needed to sell its one major commodity: sugar. Cuba produced around six million tons a year, of which roughly three million tons were sold to the United States under a quota system, a quota the US would cut in July 1960 as relations collapsed. The tour achieved little. It laid some groundwork for trade with Egypt and produced a rice-for-sugar arrangement with Burma, but no major new customers. Some of the fault lay with Che himself. His lack of knowledge of economics and trade put him on the back foot in negotiations, and the outcome was hardly surprising. In short, he was unsuited to the task, though in fairness many others in Castro\u2019s government were probably equally lacking. Cuba would soon turn to the Soviet bloc instead, signing its first major trade agreement with the USSR in February 1960.<\/p>\nOn a personal front, Che divorced his wife, Hilda Gadea, and shortly afterwards, in June 1959, married Aleida March de la Torre, whom he had met during the fighting. His marriage to Hilda had been under strain since before the revolutionary campaign in Cuba, and the situation was no doubt exacerbated by Che\u2019s restless ambition. That ambition was undimmed; indeed, he was now heavily focused on a new task: taking revolution to the wider world.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nExporting Revolution<\/strong><\/p>\nCuba\u2019s policy of exporting revolution was both a defensive and an offensive strategy. Havana feared that the United States was planning retaliation for Castro\u2019s overthrow of Batista. The US was seeking compensation for American property nationalized by Cuba, valued at around $1.8 billion at the time, and it now had a communist state on its southern flank, an anathema to American ideology. In Castro\u2019s mind, an invasion was only a matter of time, a fear borne out by the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.<\/p>\nIn theory at least, exporting revolution was an alternative to the impossible task of taking direct action against the United States. The plan was to create distractions in other countries that would tie up the time and military resources of Cuba\u2019s potential enemies\u2014or, in Che\u2019s later words, to create \u201ctwo, three, many Vietnams.\u201d If this produced regime changes friendly to Cuba, so much the better. Cuba became a training ground for several clandestine guerrilla organizations preparing to take up arms across the developing world, and it was here that Che believed he had found his new calling.<\/p>\nBetween 1960 and 1964 Cuba was actively planning several clandestine operations in Latin America, and those in Argentina and Guatemala reached an advanced stage. From 1962, large numbers of would-be guerrillas from across Latin America arrived in Cuba to train, mentored by Che, seasoned Cuban guerrilla veterans and Eastern Bloc advisers, for example from Czechoslovakia. Che also used the resources available to him at the National Bank of Cuba to fund guerrilla movements in Central America, advancing $20,000 to the Nicaraguans Tom\u00e1s Borge and Rodolfo Romero, two guerrilla leaders heavily involved in the region.<\/p>\nArgentina was particularly close to Che\u2019s heart as his homeland and the home of his family. Again without Che being present, a Cuban-backed guerrilla force led by the Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti was gradually established in Bolivia in preparation for an incursion into northern Argentina. After President Arturo Frondizi was removed by the military in 1962, Che saw an opportunity for such an operation.<\/p>\nBy the time the operation began in earnest, however, the political climate in Argentina had changed. The military-dominated interim government had given way to elections in 1963, which brought the centrist Arturo Illia to the presidency, lowering the political temperature and the appetite for revolution. Che\u2019s own opportunity for personal involvement in a campaign was coming, but not close to home. It would be in post-colonial Africa.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Congo and the Disappearance of Che Guevara<\/strong><\/p>\nIn 1965 Cuba backed the Congo\u2019s various rebel movements against the central government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose army was commanded by Joseph Mobutu. Civil conflict had erupted almost immediately after the country gained independence from Belgium<\/span><\/a> in June 1960, beginning with an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga. The newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was unable to contain the unrest. When Belgium sent in troops, Lumumba saw this as a stealthy attempt to preserve its imperial grip on its former colony. He appealed to the United Nations, which sent a peacekeeping force, but when the UN refused to help him end the Katangan secession he turned to the USSR, asking Nikita Khrushchev for assistance, and Soviet aid and advisers were dispatched to the Congo. The Cold War had arrived in Africa, and given the country\u2019s vast mineral wealth\u2014cobalt, copper and much else\u2014this was unacceptable to the West. Lumumba was deposed in September 1960 in a coup led by Mobutu with Belgian and CIA support. After his capture he was handed over to his political rival Mo\u00efse Tshombe\u2019s Katangan authorities and brutally murdered in January 1961.<\/p>\nWatching from the sidelines, Cuba believed that the Congo offered an opening for successful regime change. Successes outside the Cuban revolution itself had so far been non-existent, so this time the operation would receive the personal attention of Che Guevara himself. In April 1965 Che was secretly inserted into the country to begin his work. There is little value in recounting the many chaotic engagements of the seven unsuccessful months that followed. Che opened his account of the campaign with the blunt admission, \u201cThis is the history of a failure,\u201d and his presence had little or no impact. The diary and other witnesses describe multiple disadvantages: absent leaders, uncommitted fighters, poor logistics, language barriers and insurmountable odds, including Mobutu\u2019s considerable army, supported by the CIA and by elite mercenary units led by the infamous Mike Hoare. Che\u2019s first personal attempt to export revolution had been an abject failure. It was not an auspicious start.<\/p>\nBefore his arrival, Che had been given plenty of advice and warnings by African leaders that his venture was highly likely to fail. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser advised him against becoming \u201ca Tarzan, a white man among blacks, leading and protecting them,\u201d as Africa had had enough of white rule and interference. Nasser warned, prophetically, that it would end \u201cbadly.\u201d<\/p>\nNor did his plans convince the African revolutionaries to whom he presented them in detail in Dar es Salaam. The consensus was that they were too ambitious and naive. In Che\u2019s words, the meeting ended \u201ccoldly and dismissively,\u201d with his guests \u201ccourteously saying goodbye.\u201d His costly idea of using the Congo as an anti-imperialist springboard for guerrilla struggles in neighboring countries was not the kind of revolution that the Congolese, or Africans more widely, desired. He proceeded regardless, and it would not be the last time Che failed to heed advice and warnings.<\/p>\nChe arrived in the Congo in April 1965 and by November had withdrawn to neighboring Tanzania, where he wrote his account of the campaign in Dar es Salaam. If nothing else, it served as a \u201clessons learned\u201d log for future operations. He was undeterred by the failure and still vehemently supported the idea of exporting guerrilla warfare, but he needed another opportunity. He would get one in Bolivia a year later, but he failed to heed his own lessons, failures and experiences before embarking on that venture.<\/p>\nMobutu, meanwhile, seized power in a coup in November 1965, just as Che was leaving, and ruled the country (renamed Zaire in 1971) until 1997.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nDiplomatic Blunders and a Rumored Rift with Castro<\/strong><\/p>\nIn February 1965, before leaving for the Congo<\/span><\/a>, Che made a public address in Algiers to delegates from across Asia and Africa. The speech was so inflammatory that it riled Cuba\u2019s principal ally, the USSR. In it Che made a series of catastrophic blunders, once again proving that diplomacy was not among his skills.<\/p>\nIn the speech Che delivered a clear criticism, if not a rebuke, of the Soviet bloc. He argued that its \u201cmutually beneficial\u201d trade with developing countries was no better than the West\u2019s, and that socialist countries trading at world-market prices were, to a degree, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. By implication he sided with China over the USSR, suggesting that the Chinese displayed a truer socialist morality than the Soviets. Moscow noted his closeness to China and came to see him as \u201cChina\u2019s man,\u201d which was unacceptable to the Kremlin.<\/p>\nThis rebuke enraged the Soviets, and the ramifications reached Fidel Castro<\/span><\/a>. What was he to do with Che? As it turned out, Che\u2019s own actions provided the solution. Many still wonder whether it was a stroke of good fortune or some stealthy maneuvering behind the scenes that removed Che from Cuban affairs. Che would later regret his actions.<\/p>\nBefore Che\u2019s disappearance into the Congo there were rumors of a rift between him and Castro over his open criticism of Moscow. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the events that followed are suspicious. The rift, if there was one, was driven by a mixture of Che\u2019s loose, tactless tongue and his ardent Marxist beliefs, which put him firmly on China\u2019s side of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Castro shared some of Che\u2019s frustration with Moscow but kept a quiet restraint.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cThe Letter\u201d to Castro and the People of Cuba<\/strong><\/p>\nOn April 1, 1965, while preparing for his insertion into the Congo, Che wrote a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. That letter, in Che\u2019s typically flowery prose, would soon work to his detriment. When Castro read it out in public in October 1965 to explain Che\u2019s absence, it effectively detached Che from his comrades: he had renounced all his government titles and his Cuban citizenship, erasing everything he had worked for. In one short letter he had lost his own stage at a time when he arguably needed its support most.<\/p>\nExtracts from the letter read as follows:<\/p>\n\u201cI feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I now take my leave of you, the compa\u00f1eros, your people who are now mine.\u201d<\/p>\nIf that was not clear enough, he elaborated in true \u201cChe prose\u201d:<\/p>\n\u201cI formally resign my responsibilities in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank as commander and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legally ties me to Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\nThe letter perhaps alludes to tensions with Castro when Che writes: \u201cMy only serious failing was not having more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and revolutionary.\u201d (The Sierra Maestra mountains were the refuge of Castro and his depleted band in the early stages of the insurgency.) There were suggestions that Fidel had begun to view Che\u2019s activities and position as a diplomatic liability, especially after the Algiers speech angered Moscow. That speech put Castro in a difficult position: although he privately shared some of Che\u2019s reservations about the USSR, it was nonetheless a vital, if not the only, ally on which Cuba depended during its continued international isolation.<\/p>\nChe added, \u201cwith a mixture of joy and sorrow,\u201d that \u201cother nations of the world call for my modest efforts\u201d and that he would \u201ccarry to new battlefronts\u201d the faith Castro had taught him, to \u201cfight against imperialism wherever it may be.\u201d These hints of grandiosity and egotism show how far Che\u2019s transformation, and perhaps a growing self-delusion, had developed.<\/p>\nThe letter was a baffling act, and it leaves readers wondering whether it was driven by an inflated ego, by the fact that Che, given his catalog of failures, was running out of \u201cproverbial rope\u201d as an ambassador and official of the Cuban government, or by both.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nBolivia and the fate of Che Guevara<\/strong><\/p>\nCuba was planning a guerrilla operation in Bolivia<\/span><\/a> while Che was busy managing the disaster in the Congo. Cuba had originally planned an operation in Argentina, beginning with small incursions into the north of the country from across the Bolivian border, but the idea had been abandoned after Masetti\u2019s failed attempt of 1963\u201364 and the change of government in Argentina. By the time Che returned secretly to Cuba in mid-1966, after months in Tanzania and Prague, he had decided to join the new venture. Still smarting from his failure in the Congo, he needed to repair his damaged reputation, both in his own eyes and in those of his peers. He was still traveling incognito and was effectively stateless. The Cuban public was unaware of his return, and his \u201cdisappearance\u201d from Cuban life continued.<\/p>\nAn advance team of Cuban and Bolivian communists had already established a secret base in Bolivia, on a farm near the \u00d1ancahuaz\u00fa River. All Che had to do was get into the country, which was no easy task, as his activities and whereabouts were now of great interest to the CIA. Traveling on false papers under an assumed name, Adolfo Mena Gonz\u00e1lez, he arrived in Bolivia in November 1966. Little did he know that he was beginning another fruitless and impossible campaign that would end in his capture and death. Masetti himself had disappeared in 1964 and is presumed to have died in the jungle of Argentina\u2019s Salta province, and the authorities were by now aware of Cuban activity in the border regions.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Bolivian failure<\/strong><\/p>\nBefore Che\u2019s arrival, approaches had already been made to various Marxist groups within Bolivia with a view to creating a united front, but the Bolivian Communist Party did not share the Cuban belief in armed revolution. Che also reportedly received warnings against the whole idea from Argentina\u2019s exiled former president Juan Per\u00f3n in Madrid. Per\u00f3n was candid, urging Che to \u201csuspend that plan\u201d and adding: \u201cYou will not survive. Search for alternatives.\u201d Once again, however, Che failed to learn from the Congo and proceeded regardless.<\/p>\nChe arrived secretly in Bolivia in November 1966. The Cubans needed the success that had so far eluded them, though it was unclear what form that success would take: outright victory over \u201cUS-backed imperialism\u201d or distractions sufficient to tie down US military resources. In the event, the campaign did nothing to slow US efforts against Cuba and Che; if anything, it was an irritation. The USSR, meanwhile, was distancing itself, preferring peaceful coexistence with the West. Cuba\u2019s targets were not ready for revolution, and support for, and belief in, its ambitions were dwindling.<\/p>\nBy mid-1967 the situation in Bolivia already looked hopeless. Che and his band were being pursued relentlessly by superior forces\u2014the Bolivian Army, US-trained Bolivian Rangers and their US advisers. His force had dwindled from around fifty men to just over twenty. The local population gave them no support, nor did other communist-aligned groups. Che had no hope of success, and he admitted in his diary that support from the population was non-existent. Of the Bolivian peasants for whom he claimed to be fighting, he wrote: \u201cTalking to these peasants is like talking to statues. They do not give us any help. Worse still, many of them are turning into informants.\u201d Bolivia had already had its own revolution in 1952, which brought land reform and the nationalization of the tin mines, and it wanted any further change to come by peaceful, electoral means, an approach supported even by its own Marxist and communist groups.<\/p>\nThe campaign was reminiscent of the Congo in many ways. Che and his small band spent days on the move with little to show for it, and the whole campaign produced no more than a handful of minor victories against small Bolivian patrols, none of which posed any threat to the government. For those interested in every detail, his Bolivian Diary provides it, but it adds little to this article. The Bolivian military redoubled its efforts to eliminate this troublesome individual and his exhausted guerrillas, and to set an example to any would-be imitators.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Death of Che<\/strong><\/p>\nOn October 8, 1967, after a relentless pursuit, Che was captured by Bolivian forces in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine. A local peasant had revealed the guerrillas\u2019 whereabouts to the army. Che and a handful of his men were taken alive to the nearby village of La Higuera, where he was held under heavy guard, tightly bound, on the mud floor of the village schoolhouse. His captors debated what to do with him as they awaited orders from their superiors. His end would come swiftly.<\/p>\nThere are contradictory accounts of Che\u2019s last moments. One is that he died bravely, looking his executioner in the eye in the La Higuera schoolhouse and daring him with the words, \u201cShoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.\u201d<\/p>\nAnother account concerns his capture the previous day: that he surrendered, calling out to his captors that he was \u201cworth more to you alive than dead.\u201d We will never know the full truth of his final hours. Certainly, photographs taken after his capture show a man visibly shaken and exhausted by his physical ordeal, a far cry from the self-assured diplomat who had graced the world stage.<\/p>\nThe last images of him alive unsurprisingly show him dirty, bloodied and barefoot. According to witnesses, including F\u00e9lix Rodr\u00edguez, a Cuban-born CIA officer working alongside the Bolivian Army, Che was disillusioned but unrepentant. He blamed the \u201cprovincial mindset of the Bolivian Communist Party\u201d for his failure and hinted that the Bolivian venture had been a mistake. His spirit was not entirely broken: he resisted interrogation and, to the very end, refused to denounce Castro or renounce his beliefs.<\/p>\nChe\u2019s end could have been different. According to Rodr\u00edguez, there is credible evidence that the CIA wanted Che taken alive and flown out of Bolivia to Panama for interrogation. This makes sense: Che\u2019s death risked creating a martyr for the communist cause and giving a boost to growing left-wing movements at home and abroad, whereas his capture and imprisonment would have been a significant setback to the revolutionary cause.<\/p>\nThe US did not make the final, fateful decision. According to Rodr\u00edguez, it was the Bolivian president, Ren\u00e9 Barrientos, who ordered Che\u2019s execution, which was promptly carried out. Barrientos was determined to deliver a stark warning to other revolutionary groups. Che was executed on October 9, 1967. His bullet-riddled body was flown to Vallegrande and photographed before being buried in a secret location, where it lay undiscovered until 1997. His hands had been cut off for identification purposes. In a sense, this was not the end of Che Guevara. A man of that name had been killed on October 9, 1967, but in his place an iconic image had been born, one that would prove impossible to erase from history.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nAssessing Che: Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\nIt goes without saying that Che\u2019s death immortalized him, and myth and fact soon became blurred. He remains a polarizing historical figure, a dubious honor that comes with a wide mix of supporters, worshippers and critics.<\/p>\nChe Guevara was undoubtedly a remarkable man, but also a restless one. He never appeared to have a life plan beyond seeking greatness and personal triumph. He achieved this, in the enduring image of the anti-imperialist Marxist, on the back of Fidel Castro\u2019s success, almost as if he had simply stumbled upon the opportunities presented to him.<\/p>\nHe rarely stayed in any profession or vocation for long. He abandoned his hard-earned medical qualification for the revolutionary adventure with Fidel Castro in Cuba, a country that was not his birthplace. After the fighting, the revolution led him into government and diplomacy, for which he was ill-suited, and his record of achievement there is unimpressive. His two personal attempts at \u201cexporting revolution,\u201d in the Congo and in Bolivia, failed disastrously, the second leading to his death.<\/p>\nWe must also never overlook one vital fact: Che was committed to the Marxist cause and closer to the Chinese model of communism, seeing the Soviet version as a diluted form of the doctrine. Whatever its rhetoric, Che\u2019s and Cuba\u2019s anti-imperialism did not deliver freedom: it meant supporting regimes, Cuba\u2019s own included, that were themselves oppressive. The image some retain of Che as a Third World freedom fighter deserves some reflection.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nNow, read our highly-rated, fast-paced book on the Cold War <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nSources<\/strong><\/p>\nI Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervour \u2013 Ernesto Che Guevara \u2013 Collected letters 1947-1967 \u2013 Penguin Modern Classics<\/p>\nChe Guevara \u2013 A Revolutionary Life \u2013 Jon Lee Anderson \u2013 Penguin \u2013 1997<\/p>\nBack on the Road \u2013 A Journey into Central America – Che Guevara \u2013 2000 \u2013 Vintage Uk<\/p>\nRevolution in the Air \u2013 Max Elbaum \u2013 2018 \u2013 Verso<\/p>\nThe African Dream \u2013 Che Guevara \u2013 1999 \u2013 Harvill Press<\/p>\nBolivian Diary \u2013 Che Guevara \u2013 2004 \u2013 Pimlico<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Source: Public domain, Museo Che Guevara, available here. Cuba 1960-1964 The Che Guevara of 1959 was a completely different man. He was no longer the \u201cyoung Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.\u201d He was now a high-ranking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7071081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[71086,3824,19247,1003],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7071079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-che","tag-final","tag-guevara","tag-years"],"yoast_head":"\nChe Guevara: The Final Years \u2013 1960 - 1967 - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071079\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Che Guevara: The Final Years \u2013 1960 - 1967 - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. 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