we could agree on. He was not acting for himself, but on behalf of Che, his boss. In other words, if I thought the armed struggle could succeed in Argentina, Che had an offer to make me.
The project was to give serious military training to a small group who would set up a guerrilla base in Argentina, to be commanded by Masetti until after this vanguard group had consolidated its position and Che himself arrived. There were too many question marks for my liking, but the bottom line was, if it was Che’s plan and he was involved, I wanted to be in on it. So we got down to details: how the group would be formed, when and where the training would begin, the time it would take, and what we would study. Che would be sole overall leader, totally independent of the Cuban Revolution, although the Cubans would provide necessary help with infrastructure and equipment. Masetti was happy to discuss any queries I had about how the plan slotted into the Argentine political context, but this would obviously need a lengthy collective analysis and that, he said, would be one of our tasks during training. Naturally, a commitment to secrecy and the strictest cell structure was not only a matter of honour, but also of life and death. By accepting the offer, I took on board this commitment. In my second meeting with Che, he would define it more as a commitment to death than to life.
It was getting dark. We had been talking for six hours and my throat was dry. A very pretty Cuban girl came in to remind Masetti the children were waiting for him. Masetti apologized for various shortcomings while he introduced me. Conchita, his new wife, was pregnant. He fetched the children, who were too shy to come in, two of them between eight and ten, by his first Argentine wife. He was supposed to take them to their mother’s house, but we still had a few loose ends to tie up; so we continued, aided by some lemonade. I had to get back to Holguín and confront the problem of abandoning the workshop at such a critical stage of production. I had no idea how I was going to do it, without getting myself a bad name and into a political mess. Masetti would talk to Che about it. Then there was my wife Claudia. Although we had already planned to separate, and she would not mind my leaving, she would have to be sworn to the secrecy. She could not be left completely in the dark and be expected to be supportive. Masetti would bring that up with Che, too.
We left it that I would wait at the hotel for another couple of days at least, while he told Che the result of our conversation and my willingness to take part in the project. He made a call, and the security car came back for me. It left me at the hotel in a state of exaltation. I lay on my bed and thought over the events of the past few days, the people I had met, and ‘the project’, which was no more and no less than what I had come to Cuba for, although I never really thought it possible. And it had happened through a series of coincidences, connected by a mysterious force of destiny. It was after midnight when hunger (I hadn’t eaten all day) forced me out of bed, and I went out in search of some food and a large glass of rum.
Masetti came to get me the next day. We met on the corner of 23rd Street and the Malécon, and drove west out of Havana until we found somewhere for a drink and chat. Che would take care of the workshop, and also of Claudia’s residency in Cuba until we were in Argentina, or indefinitely if she wanted to stay. I had to get back as soon as possible, because classes would be starting in mid-August. I would find a ticket for tomorrow’s flight at the hotel reception.
I arrived in Holguín feeling really strange. Something was tearing at my insides. It was if my body was being emptied of ordinary organs and banal feelings, and replaced by more ascetic, rigorous ones. I was acting from my own free will, nobody was forcing me to do anything, although the idea of a small group, divorced from any political context, seemed like an irrational adventure. And yet, being a small group was what made the plan so rational: more than epic, it was logical. Everything would eventually revolve round Che being there, but he was not able to move the project forward as yet, nor come without a minimum of preparation. It was all about smuggling out the seed, planting it in land where it could germinate, and cultivating it.
A memorandum from the Ministry of Industry signed by Che, and addressed to the INIT, was copied to our workshop. It said I was to be included in a group of scholarship students on a course in specialized ceramic techniques in Czechoslovakia. I had to be in Havana by 15 August. The news hit the workshop like a bombshell. They didn’t see getting a scholarship as a success, rather as abandoning a scheme that represented a steady job. We had worked in consensus, like a family, without hierarchy or exclusion, each one bringing his skill and enthusiasm. I tried to convince them that I had contributed all I could, and that they now knew more about the equipment, kilns and clay than I did. Rita saw it as almost a personal triumph, at least of her support for the workshop project. I insisted on giving the carpenter, Argeo Pérez, the oak table he had made for me. He had asked for permission to work on it after hours and I had seen the love with which he polished the wood, made the chairs and put the finishing touches to the varnish. I saw Melchor and Alberto Granado for the last time in Santiago when I took the plane for Havana. Melchor was moved. Granado’s eyes were shining with personal triumph, like Rita’s, except that he understood what it all meant.
For the second time in less than fifteen days, I landed in Havana. The intelligence services were there to meet Claudia and I. While we waited for the key to her house, we repeated our vow of friendship and wished each other good luck. Suddenly, the army appeared in the shape of Olo Pantoja, a captain in Che’s column that had won the great victory in Santa Clara. A bit chubby with curly brown hair, he told Claudia her house was ready and introduced her to the people who would be looking after her. I was to go with him. Claudia and I said our last goodbyes, not knowing if we would ever see each other again. Pantoja took the bag with my few clothes and books and we got into an army jeep. There was barely enough room because the floor was littered with guns. ‘They’re for you, to practise with’, he said. The time had come. I had to learn to kill. That is, I had to learn to die.
The Cuban saga in the Sierra Maestra had diverse and contradictory consequences. For the Cubans themselves, there was an impact on national politics and economic strategies, and it also affected ordinary people, both socially and psychologically. Abroad, there was an irreversible impact on international relations, with regard to the north–south confrontation. The economic dependence of the south was structurally linked to its military subjugation, and the empire’s repression of any sign of national or regional independence was justified by the pretext of fighting communism.
The individual Cubans who had taken part in the epic saga were affected in many different ways. The majority went on to occupy positions in Cuba to which they would never have had access before, since the new society was based not on class but on their own sense of responsibility. Some discovered late in the day that the struggle had not been fought for personal gain, that the bearded fighters had opened the door to social change. Others, like Che, realised that they had to go on through that door and turn military victory into Revolution – that if Revolution does not change society, it is nothing.
Needless to say, Revolution led to confrontation with the continent’s dominant power. Moreover, the Revolution’s ability to confront the imperial power successfully depended on its capacity to resist the inevitable reactionary attacks. The basic argument was that no small country would have the capacity to resist by itself, and especially not Cuba, an island in the ‘mare nostrum’ of the empire, a few kilometres off its coast. It would be naïve and foolish to ignore this obvious fact. It was clearly unavoidable and imperative to create this capacity to resist, not just inside Cuba but outside as well.
Yet this was not just a question
