Foreign Affairs:

The One Who Got Away?

C.L. SULZBERGER / New York Times 8oct1967

[More on Che Guevara]

BUENOS AIRES — One cannot help admiring the courage and persistency of Che Guevara. Argentina's most famous revolutionary since José de San Martin. Guevara has now disappeared among his guerrillas somewhere in the Bolivian bush.

He is a fanatical Communist of the Havana-Peking activist school and he went to Bolivia solely for the purpose of inciting armed revolt. Using various noms de guerre, including Ramon and Fernando; moving around in various disguises and various collections of forged documents, he is an arch conspirator.

Dreams of Revolution

Like San Martin, an Argentine who liberated the southern and western portions of this continent, Guevara dreams of revolution on an international scale that would embrace all South America in a Communist confederacy. He hates the United States with a passion even exceeding San Martin's hatred for Imperial Spain.

Also like San Martin, Guevara comes of a good family in upcountry Argentina. He was well educated and qualified as a physician before he became a professional revolutionist. In 1952, at 24, he first visited Bolivia, investigating a revolution that had convulsed that country. He courted a half-Indian girl in Reyes and spoke romantically of his vision — an international, South American Marxist state.

After revolutionary experiences in Guatemala, in 1956 he joined Castro's tiny invasion of Cuba and was one of the dozen survivors. For a while he served as Castro's economic czar, but didn't get on well, resigned and looked about for other battlefields. According to an Argentine Communist named Bustos who was captured in Bolivia, Che went to the Congo, hoping to overthrow the Kinshasa Government, but was profoundly disappointed with rebels he found there.

He then dispatched a Cuban with the cover name Ricardo to scout Latin America. Ricardo reported Bolivia was favorable for guerrilla uprising, so local Communist agents bought a farm in the jungled southeast, set up a preliminary base, and late last year Guevara arrived with a handful of Cubans.

A Premature Campaign

His campaign started prematurely last spring. After several initial ambushes chopped up the inexperienced Bolivian Army, Guevara's force was surrounded. Local peasants never gave Che the support he had learned from his own writings to expect. His bravos didn't attract enthusiasm among impoverished but suspicious Indians.

Bustos earned Che's dislike by arguing that Bolivians resented having their compatriots killed by Cubans. With luck plus some treachery, President Barrientos's troops were able to bottle up the guerrillas. Guevara was reportedly ill with asthma and rheumatism, and his cohorts shaved their beards, preparing for escape.

There have been continual rumors of Che's death or capture, yet all proved false. On Sept. 29 Barrientos told me: "I have him surrounded. Che will soon be in our hands." The President flew to the region of the guerrilla hunt, but no trophy was produced. Subsequent defectors continued to report Che alive.

Where or whether Guevara still exists is a mystery. Perhaps this time he actually expired from asthma deep in the Bolivian wilderness, or maybe once again he slipped away to prepare another revolution.

One reason Guevara's Bolivian campaign failed was his refusal to comprehend local conditions. Several of his companions simply quit and others sang like canaries when taken by Government troops. Nevertheless, there is something indomitable about this bitter idealist who believes with Castro in Latin-American upheaval. Castro told me three years ago: "There is virtual civil war in Bolivia. Divisions are gaining in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina.  . . . The miracle that might save these countries from revolution is not apparent."

Not at All Parallel

Guevara assumes this fervently as San Martin assumed it was inevitable South America would be freed from waning Spain. The difference is that San Martin was fighting to make Spanish colonial provinces independent nations, while Guevara pretends these independent nations don't exist and are simply U.S. appendages. The Madrid of San Martin, one Argentine revolutionist, has become the Washington of Guevara, another.

If Guevara actually escaped, he will undoubtedly surface again to press his dream of communizing South America after first weakening the U.S.A. by "two, three . . . many Vietnams." He is wholly ruthless, yet there is something gallant and even poetic about this man who against the greatest odds wishes to maintain an endless struggle. He is our enemy but, whether he lies in an anonymous grave or is again the one who got away, he merits respect and honor.

source: copied from microfilm at a public library