Che Guevara’s Last Stand?

PAUL L. MONTGOMERY / New York Times 8oct1967

[More on Che Guevara]

REVOLUTIONARY: Seven years ago, triumphant revolutionaries Che Guevara, center, and Fidel Castro, left, met in Havana with Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikovan. [Below], Guevara is shown in Bolivia, according to a photo released by the Organization of American States, where his attempt to duplicate the Cuban success is said to be foundering. photo: UPI

CAMIRI, Bolivia — Even for a man as traveled as Ernesto Che Guevara, the bleak cul de sac where the Andes fall off to the Amazon basin is a long way from anywhere.

The sun rises blazing each morning on the dusty valley, baking the raw earth and the brown brambles. The teeming insect life — monstrous flies and mosquitoes, spiders and stinging beetles — swarm in the dead stillness. The heat and the dust and the bites turn the skins of humans to a cloak of misery. The harsh vegetation, dry and covered with thorns, makes sustained movement all but impossible except along the well-watched river banks and trails.

According to military reports, the erstwhile Cuban major and 16 exhausted guerrilla companions have bottled up in the valley by a tightening armed forces encirclement for nearly two weeks. The Bolivian military believes Major Guevara will not get out alive.

In many ways, the situation of Major Guevara, the darling of Latin America guerrilla movements, and his companions in their infernal canyon 120 miles northwest of the military post of Camibi, might serve as a metaphor for armed revolution in the hemisphere. They are a long way from home in territory that even the incredibly intrepid Spanish conquistadors avoided.

In Poor Health

According to corroborating evidence that seems ironbound, Che Guevara has been with the disintegrating Bolivian guerrilla movement since last November with a cadre of skilled officers skimmed from the Cuban Government. He led the movement in its early successes. The successes of the movement now are nonexistent, and Bolivian deserters from the once-disciplined ranks say that Major Guevara, like the incurably sick kings of medieval myth, is constantly ill with asthma and rheumatism and must be carried about on a litter.

Major Guevara, an Argentine by birth and a revolutionary by profession, was one of the 11 survivors of Fidel Castro’s landing in Cuba in 1956. He was the leader if one of Premier Castro’s furiously successful columns in the Sierra Maestras, and held trusted positions in the revolutionary Government before he disappeared from Cuba in March, 1965.

At the time of his disappearance, there were reports that Major Guevara, who generally took the activist Chinese line in Communism's doctrinal disputes, had been eliminated on Russian orders. The Soviet Union, it was noted, provides about $1-million a day in aid to Premier Castro's regime. There were also reports that he had been in the Dominican Republic during the April, 1965, revolution. These reports cannot be confirmed by any current intelligence.

It seems likely, however , that Major Guevara did spend some time in China, and possibly in Vietnam as well. Surprisingly enough, the guerrilla leader almost certainly was in the Congo last year. The Bolivian deserters say that in fireside conversations he often spoke of the "political chaos" that hampered his Congo activities, and how happy he was to leave it.

The Bolivian "adventure," as one of Major Guevara's Cuban companions calls it, was apparently intended to be the proving ground for Che's guerrilla theories. He and seven Cuban associates from the Sierra Maestra days, including several high Cuban Government officials, entered the country toward the end of last year for the carefully planned operation.

Cuban Discipline

There appears to have been little trouble i recruiting. Bolivia, a desperately poor country, has a tradition of armed violence against existing governments. It is likely that all but 10 or 15 of the original guerrillas, estimated to number 100 in their early peak strength, were Bolivians.

[about two words in beginning of this sentence obscured on microfilm] . . . movement actually became a Bolivian movement is another question. Ac- [about two words obscured on microfilm] . . . deserters' reports [about two words obscured on microfilm] . . . cadre had to assert itself early on the Bolivian recruits, who were liberally supplied with disaffection for the Government of President René Barfentos Ortuño, but short on sustained dedication to the guerrilla cause. One of the Cubans apparently had to behead a recruit with a machete before discipline was established.

In the early encounters with the Bolivian Army patrols, who must rank among the worst-trained troops in the world, the guerrillas were murderously efficient, they expertly cut off escape routes, used their automatic weapons well, and showed a total command of tactics.

On July 7, the guerrillas cut the roads to a small town named Samaipata, between the key cities of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, for a few hours. They "liberated" Samaipata — the boldest stroke in their campaign. Townspeople noticed that the director of the operation appeared to be a bearded man in fatigues who kept to the high ground around the village. He was always surrounded by troops. It then appeared possible that Che Guevara, as had been long rumored, was in Bolivia.

In August, the tables turned. The guerrillas' supplies became short. The Bolivian Army began concentrating on containment rather than armed contact. The countryside's apathy worked its way into the guerrilla movement, and the desertions began. From March to August, the so-called kill ratio had been 30 troops to one guerrilla. Since August, it has been three soldiers to 23 guerrillas. And now the dashing Che Guevara is a rheumatic old soldier trapped in a canyon, mosquito-bitten and scorched by the sun.

source: copied from microfilm at public library