Without economic autonomy, there can be no political or ideological autonomy. A revolution needs to be independent in all aspects: ties of dependency block the machinery of government and prevent progress. Economic independence is the key. In the twenty-first century, this idea seems redundant because the economy is everything. But in the 1960s, notions of national identity, Western civilization, self-determination, cultural, ethical and even aesthetic patrimony were still considered important. To maintain independence, to have the freedom to negotiate, to accept or reject policies at the international level, was of paramount importance. Especially, to be able to negotiate. In this sense, it was clear that Argentina had better prospects than other Latin American countries.
A revolution will never succeed in a poor backward country. Revolutionaries can take power, but nothing else. They will never be allowed to remain in power without surrendering their ideals and corrupting their principles. They will not be allowed to succeed. A victorious revolution is like a cancer spreading through the continent, erupting here and there. Then, if the empire is caught off guard, it will devote all its surgical skills to cutting the cancer out, above all other political considerations. The strength of the Cuban Revolution was to take power by its own means, by the will of its people, in defiance of doctrinal wisdom. Its subsequent unfolding drama was that of a lonely shipwrecked sailor besieged by dangerous sharks.
For Che, the commander of the guerrilla forces in Santa Clara in 1958 that had defeated the Batista regime and brought Castro to power, the danger was only just beginning. The Revolution was prey to all kinds of aggression – political, military, diplomatic and economic – that aimed to force it to abandon its independence and capitulate, or simply be invaded and obliterated. The only way to avoid this fate was to get support from outside Cuba, from a similar kind of independent revolution in an economically important country in Latin America, a revolution capable of consolidating the task of constructing a just society for all its peoples and resisting the pressures and conditions imposed by the existing world order.
This ambitious and adventurous idea became possible only through the single golden thread that sought to marry the power of subjective action with the harsh reality of objective facts: the introduction of myth into politics and war. That is, a physical presence that would lead the struggle, a hero with no national allegiance but who had not forgotten his ties to his homeland – the presence of Che, the Argentine, who believed it was legitimate to fight for a better society, no matter the country, but all the better if it was his own.
This idea embraces everything that Che had learned both from his guerrilla experience and the exercise of power. Two things were fundamental and complementary: the theory of the foco and the theory of the ‘new man’. According to the foco theory, a small nucleus of fighters can successfully confront a regular army in a country where there are huge inequalities, because the people will support and strengthen a determined struggle for power. Armed action, directed against the forces of repression and backed up by the guerrillas’ impeccable behaviour towards its local campesino base and captured soldiers, would also constitute a lesson in how to become a new kind of human being. Personal vices and egoism would be abandoned and replaced by a process of transformation. Through sacrifice, self-control, dedication and suffering, this would eventually lead to an understanding of the importance of solidarity and justice. Were the process to be sustained and developed, an organizational or party leadership would emerge that would draw on cadres influenced by an unwavering revolutionary ethic. When the resulting revolutionary forces came to power, they would create a society without injustice or discrimination. The basis for building this new society would be the ‘new man’, someone without defects or aberrant inclinations.
Looked at so schematically, the idea is to politics what a simple sum is to mathematics. It lacks any analysis of the situation in Argentina, of the international context, or of history, let alone of the law of probabilities – not to mention common sense and folly. From the point of view of the scientific analysis of human problems, rational intellectuals of the past 150 years had studied, measured, compared and scrutinized every political and social event on the five continents. Yet the most serious and prestigious left-wing intellectuals, cocooned in the most rarefied strands of thinking, were blind to the obvious signs appearing in the edifice of world revolution like cracks in a dam. They deceived themselves and others about the ‘new socialist society’ that was itself being built, as a matter of fact, on injustice, bloodshed and suffering. Some got a whiff of the smell of death, from tales of famine and repression, but they disguised it – like the bourgeoisie of centuries past – with the perfume of their own intellect and their own theories, and encouraged others to engage in collective deception. Others, like George Orwell, through his professionalism, honesty and humanity, ended up in the ‘dustbin of history’.
As for the foolishness of our particular adventure, it is impossible to negate the absolute purity of its intentions. It might be considered irresponsible or just plain risky, but the price was paid by the individual participants. It would be idiotic and criminal to drive down a motorway the wrong way, because the eventual victims would be innocent. Yet accepting danger in order to fight for a better world is an act of sacrifice, involving a renunciation of material wealth and the sublimation of personality. It is not to be confused with terrorist martyrdom, which carries out someone else’s designs in return for a place in paradise. No, it is to assume a lifetime of risk, of fighting out of love for the right to a shared future.
Che’s project had this transcendental simplicity: forget any idea of glory, confront earthly perils without fear, stand up in this particular tropical region and say ‘here we are, here we want to build a new society, in which the fruits of our labours will not be taken away, where our rights will not be violated, where joy is not privatized, where culture is within everybody’s reach, where the smell of bread fills our homes, and dreams come with the sunrise to dislodge the terrors of the night. If you want to stop us, you will have to come and find us, and understand that we will fight.’
Security was always our major weakness, both in Cuba (the threat of infiltration of any kind), and also during the time needed for Che to transfer to the guerrilla base that would be set up in Argentina. Responsibility for this first phase of the operation fell to Masetti’s small and inexperienced group. Any disaster, at either end of the project, would effectively put an end to it. Che could not come if we failed; the plan could not succeed without Che.
Captain Olo Pantoja drove from the Malécon to the elegant suburb of Marianao around the Country Club, through streets of luxury mansions abandoned by the bourgeoisie when they fled to Miami. You could tell how exclusive it was by the air. It seemed purer and more transparent than what we were used to in Havana. The mansions, which you could hardly see for leafy trees, were enormous and surrounded by long grass. There was an overall sense of neglect in the contrast between the splendour and silence of the empty streets and the gardens abandoned to weeds and the sigh of the sea breeze. Each house occupied a block or more of luxurious vegetation.
The jeep stopped on a stony verge in front of large gates. At the discreet hoot of the horn, a young militiawoman appeared and opened them wide. The vehicle crunched down the gravel drive, coming to a halt in front of a neoclassical limestone building, slimy with damp and moss, its walls half covered by creepers reaching to the roof, its windows barred and shuttered. The front doors, standing proudly between columns of white marble, were solid wood with extraordinary pointed stained glass insets. They opened to reveal the black and white mosaic floor of an anteroom to a glass-domed indoor garden (like an Andalucian patio) with a fountain in the middle, encircled by wide galleries leading to a succession of doors. There was something modern about the style, a Byzantine-Roman-Californian mishmash that looked as if it was from a Hollywood set.
The Captain, who had jumped out of the jeep and rushed inside the house
