he became one of Che’s official bodyguards. He had now temporarily left this post so that he could be in situ when his comandante returned to his native land. Hermes, a farm boy in a uniform too big for him, was like a typical Argentine cabecita negra. He would look a lot less conspicuous than us ‘posh city boys’ lost in the jungle. His immediate task was to inculcate military discipline into the group, establishing a logic that said, for example, whoever was on guard duty from two to four should make breakfast at five, or the person who was best at something should do that the most. As Segundo’s expert in guerrilla matters, he would teach us about exploring, choosing camp sites, and organizing camp life. He was allowed to keep his name given that in Argentina it would mean nothing.
The next step was to turn one of the bedrooms into a dormitory. Making us all sleep together would force us to accept that, come what may, we were a group, sharing things, even our personal irritations, dislikes or phobias. The life we had chosen required us to learn to respect each other, our need for sleep, our moods, sense of humour, silences and even our defects and obsessions, as long as they did not disturb the rhythm of the work or were not a deliberate provocation. The desired effect was a kind of symbiosis that would be our insurance policy in time of need. Our common weaknesses and strengths, shared needs and dangers, and joy at successes for the common cause had to become second nature. We had to learn to act as one, never doubting each other, instantaneously, like a gestalt, guided by all-encompassing force.
With this pretty feeble group of men, plus one more who would be appearing any time, the army of Che’s dreams came into being: an army of five crazy guys, like Sandino’s ‘crazy little army’ in Nicaragua, although Sandino had five hundred men, not five. In this initial phase, the operation of getting into the country meant it would be risky to be more numerous. It was on this point that we had different opinions, material for discussion and timid analysis. The subject came up repeatedly, but there was nothing for it but to accept the general plan. Being an armed group from the start meant we would have no recourse to the legal system. The idea (an ethical one) was not to operate clandestinely then resort to habeas corpus, but to dispense altogether with the law that only protects the rich and powerful against whom we were fighting. Added to which, we had to bring in weapons, and you can’t put those in your luggage. We had to start by breaking civil laws pertaining to immigration and contraband, illicit association and forming an armed group, and military laws of insurrection and conspiracy to bring down the government. These laws were used exclusively against poor people, never against big-time smugglers, corrupt governments and military coup-makers. If we failed, we would be accused of trying to show that justice is not divine, but man-made and the product of a pre-mercantile human condition. Did we think we could do it? We thought we could.
For me, all great social transformations – historical and political contexts notwithstanding – have been led by the genius, will and charisma of a great man: leader and soul, brain and emotion, catharsis of the hidden, even ignored, desires and needs of a people at a given time. No mass movement can get off the ground without the emergence of such a figure, either out of the whirlwind of action, or from serenity and reflection, no matter how much praise populists heap on the masses. They can generate spontaneous social movements, but without the figurehead they are nothing but a boil erupting on the skin. From Spartacus to Mandela, Alexander the Great to Mao, Jesus Christ to Gandhi, the existence of the leader justifies the moment.
However, there are intellectuals who not only reject the notion of the great leader but actually demonize him and strip him of importance; intellectuals who watch the century go by from their armchairs, building castles in the air – like the socialist camp – without lifting a stone, until the castle collapses and they move seamlessly on to something else. But to lift the stone, you have to roll up your sleeves and run risks, and face the possibility, inherent in history, that your goals be misappropriated, and your dreams turned to dust.
For me, Che embodied honesty and ethical behaviour in the smallest details of every one of his actions. The masses, who will follow a man because of his ideas, even after he is dead, hate intellectual arrogance which, they sense, is expressed in books they will never read, and symbolizes a superior class that despises them.
The crazy side of our project, the feeling that we were insanely on our own, did not intimidate me. It excited me. My only doubt was existential. Do I do it, or do I watch others do it?
Training and the Missile Crisis: October 1962
It was daybreak. ‘Get up … !’ barked Hermes. Nobody seemed to have heard him, so he repeated in Cuban: ‘Get up, coño!’ We looked at him as if he were mad. His work schedule had begun with breakfast at six, followed by a series of exercises that from now on would be our introduction to the day. By nine o’clock, we had run, jumped, crawled, and flexed our muscles. Surely there must be some mistake? Then Olo Pantojo appeared with our first ‘instructor’, an armaments specialist the Castroist rebels had inherited from Batista’s army. Another new arrival was Ariel, from the Cuban intelligence services, who would be supervising the team of instructors on behalf of the Interior Ministry. His real name was Juan Carretero. He gave a speech to the effect that his team would do their job to the best of their ability, and try to do justice to the request for assistance from someone whom it was an honour to serve: Comandante Che Guevara. He was sure we would respond with the same effort and dedication. The course would be intensive but he expected that in three months we would have reached a level of preparation on a par with that of a specialist army officer. ‘Good luck. Patria o muerte!’
The instructor began his class by demonstrating how to use an old German Mauser, model 1894, from the Spanish-American war, and then went on, symbolically, to a US Springfield of the same period, both with a hand-ridden bolt. It was a very powerful gun with a hefty recoil if the poor idiot firing it did not hug it to his body. We had to take it apart and put it together time and time again, piece by piece, until we did it perfectly, and in record time. We had to clean the guns, oil them, polish them, caress them, as if they were erotic objects, until we got used to their roundness, their weight, their smell and their rigid and implacable presence.
We spent a week digging through the entrails of rifles, machine guns, pistols and carbines of all nationalities, ranging from the Winchester used in the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the US, to the modern Belgian FAL rifle used in the more recent dark history of the Congo. The latter was an automatic rifle we would presumably have to face one day, since it was used in Argentina by both the regular army and the Gendarmerie, the special anti-smuggling border police. After weapons dismantling, came shooting practice. We were taken to the Ministry of the Interior shooting ranges in the countryside. By mid-morning, Hermes had destroyed any concept of normality by making us crawl through the undergrowth with our noses to the ground, swing like monkeys through trees, flay our bodies by trying to run through bushes as prickly as barbed wire, and lie immobile on piles of enormous red ants that appeared out of the sand in their thousands. They infiltrated our uniforms and the damp and delicate parts of our skin, covering us from neck to groin with little bags of formic acid that burned like hell.
The cavalry of Olo Pantoja, Manolito, Iván and Ariel, appeared in the nick of time to rescue us from the clutches of that obsessive guajiro, who was convinced that to train was to demolish. After a brief snack, we went exhausted, scratched, bruised and swollen, to get beaten with rifle butts and have our ear drums burst by various thunderous explosions until we learned to distinguish between them. They fired over our backs when we tried to wriggle free of the barbed wire we were crawling under, until we thought our arses and souls were indelibly tattooed by gunshot. We also practised with live hand grenades after minimal instruction: ‘Wrap your hand tightly around the grenade, undo the safety catch, make sure your angle of flight allows you to throw with an outstretched arm, throw it forcefully and accurately towards the target, drop face down on the ground and count to
