In his postmortem of the Congo fiasco, Che acknowledged that one of his greatest mistakes was to have attempted a chantaje de cuerpo presente, blackmail by physical presence. He had foisted himself unannounced on the Congolese rebels, causing animosity and suspicion among the leadership. It was one of the mistakes he had vowed to learn from. Yet when he went to Bolivia in early November 1966, he neatly replicated his Congo chantaje, once again appearing on alien turf without an invitation, convinced that the Bolivian Communist Party leaders wouldn’t back out of the impending guerrilla war once
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