Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

by Jon Lee Anderson

At least 100,000 Cuban refugees had fled into exile, most of them to Miami, and the U.S. government had set up a resettlement program to house them and give them jobs.

Humberto Sorí-Marín, the former agriculture minister, was not so lucky. Captured by Cuban troops and accused of CIA-sponsored counterrevolutionary activities, Sorí-Marín was shot by a firing squad.

On January 17, Fidel had announced that a thousand Cuban youths would be sent to the Soviet Union to study “agrarian collectives.”

The women were fat and wore long peasant dresses and head scarves. The men wore ill-fitting suits of poor-quality cloth. They sweated heavily in Cuba’s heat but used no deodorant, and to the finicky Cubans, the Russians smelled bad.

Along with most American influences—such as Santa Claus, who had been banned—the learning of English was now discouraged. Russian was the second language to learn in the “new” Cuba. Che began taking twice-weekly Russian-language classes from Yuri Pevtsov, a philologist sent from Lermonstov University to be his interpreter and personal tutor. They had no Russian-Spanish manual to work from, so the two made do with a Russian-French primer.

If killing Cuba’s top leaders helped ensure the success of the invasion plan, then it was an option that had to be pursued. In the intervening months, he had allowed his covert operations director, Richard Bissell, to explore possibilities for assassinations.

Already some plots had been hatched, including a bizarre attempt to poison Fidel’s favorite brand of cigars. Many more scenarios for killing Fidel and his top comrades would be planned or attempted over the coming months and years, including some in collusion with the American Mafia.*

In fact, Kennedy had been briefed about the planned invasion soon after he won the election in November, and he had given CIA Director Dulles the go-ahead.

The exile force was well trained and itching to fight, Dulles’s people told Kennedy. D-day had to come soon.

The CIA didn’t have a clue about the extent to which their “covert” program had already been infiltrated by Castro’s intelligence service. At least one of the thirty-five Gray Team members in Cuba was a double agent for the Castro government, and there were undoubtedly others.

In Miami, the general outline of the CIA’s plans was widely known throughout the exile community, where Fidel had a flourishing spy network.

On April 14, Havana’s largest and most luxurious department store, El Encanto, was burned down by one of the underground groups backed by the CIA. Felix Rodríguez had been forewarned by his contacts that “something big” was about to happen and that he might want to leave town, because there would be “a lot of heat.”

The next morning, in the predawn darkness of April 15, Sofía, the Guevaras’ nanny, awoke to the frightening noise of diving airplanes and exploding bombs. She ran into the hall and called to Che. Still shirtless, he emerged from his bedroom. “The bastards have finally attacked us,” he said.

The next day, at the funeral for the victims of the bombing, which had destroyed the greater part of Cuba’s minuscule air force, Fidel gave a fiery speech blaming the attack on the United States. The Americans had attacked, he claimed, because they could not forgive Cuba for having brought about a socialist revolution under their noses.

For the first time since seizing power, Fidel had uttered the dreaded word. Later, a bronze plaque would be secured on the spot, consecrating the moment when Fidel “revealed the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution.”

The bullet had come within a hairbreadth of penetrating Che’s brain. His greatest moment of danger, though, had come not from the bullet, but from the antitetanus injection that medics had insisted on giving him. It had brought on a toxic shock reaction. As Che joked afterward to Alberto Granado, “My friends almost managed to do what my enemies couldn’t. I nearly died!”

By the afternoon of April 20, the exile force had bogged down, run out of supplies, and given up. Of the invaders, 114 were dead, and nearly 1,200 had been taken prisoner.

Che and Granado approached a group of prisoners. One of them was so terrified to see Che that he defecated and urinated in his trousers. Che tried to question the man, but he could not even speak properly. Finally, Che turned away and said to one of his bodyguards, “Get a bucket of water for that poor bastard.”

Fidel, of course, was jubilant. He himself had directed the battle at Playa Girón, and he had personally fired a tank cannon at one of the American “mother ships”; his men swore afterward that he had scored a direct hit. All folklore aside, the battle had been a stunning victory for Cuba’s revolution. The “people” had stood up to Washington, and they had won.

In August, at a conference held by the Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che sent a message of gratitude to President Kennedy through Richard Goodwin, a young White House aide. “Thank you for Playa Girón,” he said to Goodwin. “Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now, it is stronger than ever.”

Punta del Este is a resort city on the Atlantic coast. The staid atmosphere was electrified by the arrival of Che, who immediately stole the show from the other ministers. Photographers and journalists eager for pictures and quotes followed him around everywhere.

As Che finished his two-hour-and-fifteen-minute speech, the hall was interrupted by a loud cry of “Asesino!” and then, as security guards scuffled with the heckler and dragged him outside, two other strangers climbed onto the podium where Che stood and began insulting him.

Ignoring them, Che calmly left the conference room. Later, police informed the press that the hecklers were Cuban exiles who belonged to the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, the CIA-sponsored anti-Castro group.

Che’s bodyguard, Tamayito, said that he witnessed an argument between the brothers.

“Che criticized Roberto for serving as an instrument of repression,” he said, “and took the occasion to relate how he had evaded the military draft after graduating from medical school because he wasn’t willing to serve in the armed forces of a corrupt regime that was an ally of American imperialism.” Although Tamayito’s recollection of what was said may not be accurate, Che’s sermonizing would have rankled his brother. After all, Ernesto had been turned down by the draft because of his asthma, not because of any heightened political consciousness.

Julia Constenla de Giussani,

Julia thought that Che was immensely attractive, in spite of his apparent character flaws. “As a person he had an incalculable enchantment that came completely naturally,” she said. “When he entered a room, everything began revolving around him.”

Che couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a jab about how beneficial the invasion had been for Cuba, saying that it had “transformed them from an aggrieved little country to an equal.”

In November 1961, JFK allocated $50 million for a new covert action program against Cuba.

In Havana, Fidel made a speech that definitively sealed Cuba’s break with the West. “I am a Marxist-Leninist,” he declared, “and will be until I die.”

Our gesture is intended to avoid war. Any idiot can start one, and we’re not doing that, it’s just to frighten them a bit. They should be made to feel the same way we do. They have to swallow the pill like we swallowed the Turkish one.” (Khrushchev was referring to the United States’ deployment of nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles taking place in neighboring Turkey that same month—

“Practically the first thing he told us,” Bustos recalled, “was ‘Well, here you are: you’ve all agreed to join, and now we must prepare things, but from this moment on, consider yourselves dead. Death is the only certainty in this; some of you may survive, but all of you should consider what remains of your lives as borrowed time.’”

Che was throwing down the gauntlet for his future guerrillas, just as he had done during the Cuban struggle. It was important that each man prepare himself psychologically for what was to come, and Bustos understood the message. “We were going to go and get our balls shot off, without knowing if any of us were going to see it through, or how long it would take.”

Fidel learned that Khrushchev had made a deal with JFK behind his back—offering to pull out the missiles in exchange for a promise not to invade Cuba and a withdrawal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Fidel was incredulous and furious, and reportedly smashed a mirror with his fist when he was told.

Tamara Bunke’s

ever since her son Ernesto had become Che, Celia had undergone a significant political radicalization. She claimed now to believe in “socialism,” although she was not a Communist and, according to people who knew her well, she didn’t really like or trust Fidel.

She particularly didn’t like what she saw as his hold over her son, and Che’s subservience to him, but in spite of her private qualms about Cuba’s disorganization and incompetence, she vigorously defended the revolution.

Che was now, at the threshold of middle age, the father of four children and a government minister at the pinnacle of his career in revolutionary Cuba. He was less lighthearted, and he looked his age. He had shorn the long hair that he had grown in the mountains and worn during the first year of the revolution. He still wore the beret, but his face appeared puffy and swollen.

he had gained weight.

There was never very much time to be with Aleida and the children.

his workweek lasted from Monday through Saturday, including nights, and on Sunday mornings he went off to do volunteer labor. Sunday afternoons were all he spared for his family.

At times, Che’s disciplinarian streak showed itself at home. Once, when Aliusha had a tantrum, Che walked over and smacked her bottom. Her wails increased. When her nanny, Sofía, tried to pick her up and comfort her, Che said to leave the child alone so she would remember why she had been punished.

One of their fiancées recalled a time when Che made Harry Villegas, his favorite, strip off his clothes before he was locked in a closet as punishment for some misdemeanor. Che’s mother was visiting, and she yelled at him, telling him to be more lenient. He told her to keep out of it, that he knew what he was doing.

“Che had something of the missionary in him,” Manuel Piñeiro said.

He insisted that they better themselves through schoolwork as well and had assigned them a teacher. He often flew there to check up on their progress in the little Cessna airplane he had learned to fly with his private pilot, Eliseo de la Campa.

He once took the economist Regino Boti with him to the farm and tested some of the men on their reading comprehension. One man did very badly and Che said, “Well, if you keep studying, maybe you’ll get to be as smart as an ox in twenty years.” Then he turned on his heel. The poor guajiro was so humiliated that he began to cry.

Boti talked to Che, persuading him that he had been wrong to be so cruel, that he should go back and speak t...

He seemed to have little sense of the intimidating effects his words could have on others.

There were also some comic incidents that served to remind him of his public celebrity, however. He was a notoriously bad driver, and one day he rear-ended a car on the seafront Malecón in Havana. The driver of the car got out, cursing the mother and father of whoever it was who had hit him. When he saw it was Che, he became cravenly apologetic. “Che, Comandante,” the man sighed. “What an honor for me to have my car struck by you!” Then, caressing his new dent, he announced that he would never have it repaired, but would keep it as a proud reminder of his personal encounter with Che Guevara.

People speak of the time that Celia Sánchez, Fidel’s great dispenser of favors, sent Aleida a new pair of Italian shoes. When Che found out, he made Aleida return them.