CHE GUEVARA PUBLISHING PROJECT
THE DIARIES:
The Motorcycle Diaries (1952)
Latin America Diaries (1953-55)
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1956-58)
Diary of a Combatant (1956-58)
Congo Diary (1965)
The Bolivian Diary (1966-67)
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Che Guevara Reader
Global Justice: Liberation and Socialism
Self-Portrait: A Photographic and Literary Memoir
Marx & Engels: A Biographical Introduction
The Great Debate on Political Economy and Revolution
The Awakening of Latin America
Our America and Theirs
Copyright © 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center and Aleida March
Copyright photographs © 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center and Aleida March
Copyright © 2011 Ocean Press
Copyright © 2011 Aleida Guevara
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-9872283-5-2 (e-book)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2011922100
First edition published in 2012
Published in Spanish as Pasajes de la Guerra revolucionaria: Congo ISBN 978-1-920888-79-4
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[email protected] CONTENTS
Maps
Editors’ Note
Che Guevara in the Congo
by Gabriel García Marquez
Foreword
by Aleida Guevara March
CONGO DIARY
Preface: An Initial Warning
First Act
Second Act
First Impressions
The First Month
A Hope Dies
A Defeat
The Shooting Star
Winds from the West, Breezes from the East
Breaking Loose
Scattering Seeds
Attempting “Pursuit”
The Patient Grows Worse
Taking the Pulse
The Beginning of the End
A Battle against Time
Various Escapes
Disaster
The Whirlwind
A Stab in the Back
The Eastern Front Sinks into a Coma
The Collapse
Epilogue
Appendices:
Glossary: Clarification of Swahili Names and Terms
List of the Cuban Combatants in the Congo
Africa
Congo
EDITORS’ NOTE
In a letter to his mother, written from Mexico in October of 1956, the young Ernesto Guevara declared that he had decided “to deal with the main things first, to pit myself against the order of things, shield on my arm, the whole fantasy, and then, if the windmills don’t break open my head, I’ll write.” These lines announce the definitive consummation of a change in the young Argentine and point to the future course of his life in which action and reflection, understanding the world and transforming it, would be united in perfect harmony.
Che’s famous Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War was a compilation of articles based on his experiences during the two years of guerrilla warfare in Cuba, articles originally published in the magazine Verde Olivo.1 One significant difference between those reminiscences of the Cuban guerrilla war and these written about his experience in the Congo is the position from which he writes: the Cuban revolutionary war ended in victory whereas the struggle in the Congo did not. But that difference reveals a common element, an irrevocable commitment to the strictest adherence to the truth, which Che presents in the prologue to his stories of the Cuban war, as the first and fundamental necessity of someone writing history. And he adds another requirement for the revolutionary: the need to examine not just the victories, but every action.
The analysis in these pages is much sharper than in his writings on the Cuban war and reveals the intellectual maturity of the writer. Moreover, the narration of events here is not just more critical—it is much more self-critical, something that was always characteristic of Che—but without giving in for a single moment to pessimism about the final outcome of the struggle for liberty and justice.
What is now presented is the final product of an extensive revision, in which the support of two of the participants in the struggle proved to be invaluable. They are medical doctor and commander Oscar Fernández Mell and compañero Marcos A. Herrera Garrido. We want to place on the record, therefore, our gratitude for the time they devoted to this project.
In addition, as part of this same effort to make the text more understandable, some explanatory notes in relation to certain events, circumstances, personalities and ideas have been added. To differentiate these editorial notes added by the editors from those written by Che himself, Che’s notes are indicated in the footnotes.
This book now includes a map of the region, essential for achieving a better sense of location on the part of the reader, and the glossary of Swahili names, places and terms that Che prepared as part of this manuscript is included as the first appendix.
Che considered that his participation in the Congolese guerrilla war resulted in the reinitiation of a revolutionary cycle and was the expression of an internationalism consistent with his theses on the liberation of the Third World. As he explains, they were “part of an idea of struggle that was completely organized in my mind.” It is a reaffirmation, now in maturity, of that confluence of thought and action that came together ever more tightly throughout his life, culminating in Bolivia, creating and giving special force and meaning to his example.
In these pages the description of the events he lived through are intertwined with analysis from a world perspective. These reflections on imperialist domination and liberation are part of a continuity that flows through his speeches in Geneva, the United Nations and Algeria to his “Message to the Tricontinental.” Che’s banner is one that calls for action at the service of “the sacred cause of the redemption of humanity.”
Che Guevara Studies Center (Havana)
The editors would also like to acknowledge the effort and dedication of Commander Fidel Castro for his detailed revision of this manuscript.
1. Che’s original diary, on which that book was based, has now been published for the first time as Diary of a Combatant (Ocean Press, 2012).
CHE GUEVARA IN THE CONGO
Gabriel García Márquez
Nothing illustrates the duration and intensity of the Cuban presence in Africa better than the fact that Che Guevara himself, at the prime of his life and the height of his fame, went off to fight in the guerrilla war in the Congo. He left Cuba on April 25, 1965—the very same day on which he submitted his farewell letter to Fidel Castro, giving up his rank of
commander and everything else that legally tied him to the government. He traveled out alone on commercial airlines, under cover of an assumed name and an appearance only slightly altered by two expert touches. His executive case contained works of literature and numerous inhalers to relieve his insatiable asthma; he would while away the dull hours in hotel rooms playing endless games of chess with himself. Some time later, he met up in the Congo with 200 Cuban troops who had traveled from Havana in a ship loaded with arms. The precise object of Che’s mission was to train guerrillas for the National Council of the Revolution, which was fighting against Tshombe—that puppet of the former Belgian colonialists and the international mining companies. Patrice Lumumba had been murdered, and although the titular head of the National Council of the Revolution was Gaston Soumialot, the person really in command of operations was Laurent Kabila, based at his Kigoma hideout on the opposite shore of Lake Tanganyika. This situation undoubtedly helped Che Guevara to keep his real identity secret, and for even greater security he did not appear as the principal leader of the mission. That is why he was known by the alias “Tatu,” which is the Swahili word for the number three.
Che Guevara remained in the Congo from April to December 1965, not only training guerrillas but leading them into battle and fighting by their side. His personal links with Fidel Castro, which have been the subject of so much speculation, did not weaken at any moment: the two maintained permanent and friendly contact by means of an excellent communications system.
After Tshombe was overthrown, the Congolese asked the Cubans to withdraw in order to facilitate the conclusion of an armistice. Che left as he had come: without a sound. He took a regular flight to Dar es-Salaam in Tanzania, keeping his head buried in a book of chess problems which he read and re-read throughout the six-hour journey. In the next seat, his Cuban adjutant tried to fend off the political commissar of the Zanzibar army—an old admirer of Che who spoke of him incessantly all the way to Dar es-Salaam, trying to obtain news of him and reiterating his desire to meet him again.
In that fleeting, anonymous passage through Africa, Che Guevara was to sow a seed that no one will destroy. Some of his men went on to Brazzaville, to train guerrilla units for the PAIGC [African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde] (then led by Amilcar Cabral) and especially for the MPLA. One of these columns later entered Angola in secret and, under the name “Camilo Cienfuegos Column,” joined the struggle against the Portuguese. Another infiltrated into Cabinda and later crossed the river Congo to implant itself in the Dembo region—the birthplace of Agostinho Neto, where the fight against the Portuguese had been going on for five centuries. Thus the recent Cuban aid to Angola [1975–91] resulted not from a passing impulse, but from the consistent policy of the Cuban revolution towards Africa. This time, however, there was a new and dramatic element involved in the delicate Cuban decision. It was no longer a question simply of sending help, but of embarking upon a large-scale regular war, over 10,000 kilometers away, at an incalculable economic and human cost and with many unpredictable political consequences.
FOREWORD
Aleida Guevara March1
I was always told that I would have to start one day, but they did not warn me that it could be so difficult. This book was written by a man whom I have respected and greatly admired ever since I became conscious. Unfortunately he is dead, and therefore unable to express his opinion about what I write, and worst of all for us, nor can he explain what he meant to say and whether today, decades after the events described, he would add an explanatory note. This is why I say that my task is extremely difficult. Che’s diary from the Congo, which remained unpublished [in English] up to now, was preserved in his personal archive, and is now published with stylistic corrections, the incorporation of various observations and the elimination of a number of notes. This represents a great commitment to this history, because various other versions of this manuscript, based on Che’s first transcriptions, have already appeared [in Spanish]. Although he authorized future editors to make whatever changes they thought necessary, we have maintained the complete text that he actually wrote [in 1966] at the end of his mission in the Congo, when he subjected his notes written during the struggle to a deep and critical analysis to make it possible for “experiences to be extracted that might be useful to other revolutionary movements.”
In his preface, titled “An Initial Warning,” Che begins by saying: “This is the story of a failure.” While I don’t agree with this assessment, I can understand his state of mind and how it might be considered a failure. But personally I think it was truly heroic. Anyone who has spent any time in the continent of Africa will certainly understand what I am saying. The degradation it has undergone over the centuries at the hands of so-called European colonizers still leaves its mark on the peoples of Africa: the imposition of a different culture, of other religions, the blocking of the normal development of a civilization, and the exploitation of its natural wealth including the use of its people as slaves, torn from their habitat to be abused and humiliated—all this has deeply marked these human beings. If we consider that it was caused by others who still feel entitled to do such things today, and that in one way or another we allow this to continue, then we can begin to appreciate how people might respond to certain events.
Nevertheless, many people might wonder why Che Guevara participated in this revolutionary process, what motivated him to try and help this movement. It is Che who can best answer this question: “When it comes to Yankee imperialism, it is not enough to be resolute in defense. It has to be attacked in its bases of support in the colonies and neocolonies that are the foundation of its system of world domination.”
Che had always expressed his desire to continue the struggle in other lands. As a doctor by profession and a guerrilla fighter by action, he knew the limitations that life imposes on a human being and the sacrifices demanded by something as hard as guerrilla warfare, so we can understand his desire to transform his dream into reality while he was in the best possible physical condition. We know his deeply rooted sense of responsibility, his political maturity and the commitment he had made to many compañeros who relied on him to continue the struggle.
He had made an earlier trip to Africa where he had the opportunity to meet some of the leaders of the revolutionary movements active at that time, and to familiarize himself with their problems and concerns. He always stayed in touch with Fidel Castro, who, in an unpublished letter dated December 1964, described the measures that were being taken in Cuba at the time.
Che:
I have just met with Sergio [del Valle] who reported in detail on how everything is going. There doesn’t seem to be any difficulty in carrying out the project. Diocles [Torralba] will give you a detailed verbal report.
We will make the final decision on the plan when you return. To be able to choose from the possible alternatives, it is necessary to know the opinion of our friend [Ahmed Ben Bella]. Try to keep us informed by secure means.
It should never be forgotten that the group of Cubans who participated in this mission along with Che shared his conviction: “Our country, the sole socialist bastion on the doorstep of Yankee imperialism, sends its soldiers to fight and die in a foreign land, on a distant continent, and publicly assumes full responsibility for its actions. In this challenge, in this clear position on the great modern-day issue of waging a relentless struggle against Yankee imperialism, lies the heroic significance of our participation in the struggle of the Congo.”
Che and the group he led aimed to strengthen the liberation movement in the Congo, to achieve a united front, to select the best leaders and those prepared to continue the struggle for the final liberation of Africa. He took with him the experience gained in Cuba and placed it at the service of the new revolution.
The harsh realities of the Congo affected Che: its backwardness, the lack of political-ideological development among the people, against which it was necessary to struggle with firmness and determin
ation. There were moments of discouragement and incomprehension, but rising above these adversities, with a prophetic vision, was the enormous confidence and love that he felt for those who decided to create conditions for development and greater dignity for their people.
In Africa, history has been transforming that vision into reality for more than 30 years, as developing education in military matters has become part of revolutionary consciousness. This resulted in such major victories as Cuito Cuanavale [in Angola against the Apartheid forces of South Africa], Ethiopia, Namibia and elsewhere, which have all contributed to the sovereignty and independence of the continent.
The Cuban revolution maintained absolute discretion for as long as possible about Che’s internationalist activity in the Congo, for many months stoically enduring a deluge of slanders. But when the first Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party was announced [in October 1965], by which time Che was already fully engaged in combat in the Congo, it was decided to make public his farewell letter as it was no longer possible to avoid explaining to the people of Cuba and the world the absence of a man who had been one of the most solid and legendary heroes of the revolution.
In his diary, Che concludes that knowledge of this letter created a rift between himself and the Cuban combatants: “There were some things that we no longer had in common, certain sentiments that I had tacitly or explicitly renounced but which each individual holds most sacred: his family, his surroundings and his homeland.” If this is how he felt, one can imagine how difficult it was for Fidel Castro to get him to return to Cuba. He wrote several times in an attempt to convince Che, and eventually succeeded by means of solid arguments. In June 1966, in an unpublished letter, he wrote to Che:
Dear Ramón:
Events have overtaken my plans for a letter. I read in full the draft of the book on your experiences in the C. [Congo], and I also reread the manual on guerrilla warfare in order to make the best possible analysis of these questions, especially considering the practical importance with regard to plans in the land of Carlitos [Carlos Gardel, ie Argentina]. Although there is no point right now in discussing this with you, I will just say that I found the work on the C. extremely interesting and I think it was really worth the effort you made to leave a written record of everything. […]