bivouac, very young soldiers were drinking coffee or reading. I was to wait here. The opportunity to talk freely at Alberto’s barbecue had passed. Che was buried in his usual workload.
Then, a side door opened and Che appeared. He looked very tired – it was by now about four in the morning – and was wearing the same rumpled fatigues I had seen him play chess in. He ordered coffee to be brought to his office and turning to me, said simply ‘You’re here?’ and held out his hand. He said he was in a meeting with a delegation from I don’t know where, that unfortunately this time it was he who couldn’t talk, that he hadn’t time for the conversation he wanted to have with me, but someone would do it for him. I was to wait at the hotel until they came for me. He turned and went back through the door he had come out of. I don’t remember uttering a single word.
A couple of days later, some men in civilian clothes (from the intelligence services) came for me. The car drove along the Malécon to Miramar, a smart suburb of villas with gardens, and stopped in front of one. We went into a living room with comfy armchairs, an elegant dining table, and many books. I was left alone, to wait. It was not long before an army officer came in. He did not look like the typical Cuban. He had a short military-style crew cut, large frank eyes, wide cheek bones and jaw, and a playful smile. As soon as he opened his mouth, I knew he was Argentine and that it was Jorge Masetti.
After all, it was logical. He, his interview in the Sierra Maestra, his book, had brought me here. I knew nothing of his life in Cuba. Only that he no longer ran the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, but that Fidel had brought him back to front it temporarily during the Bay of Pigs invasion. I had glimpsed him twice on TV during the public interrogations of the prisoners. We sat down to talk just like two Argentines in a café. It wasn’t an exam, just a long exchange of opinions, ideas in common, work experience, mutual friends in Buenos Aires, illusions, disappointments, etc. I could see he knew exactly what I had been doing in Cuba and about my discussions with Granado, because he asked direct questions, like: ‘How long were you in Salta?’ ‘Are there mountains near the Tabacal sugar mill?’ Details I had given Granado.
We agreed there had to be revolution in Argentina. And, according to the theory of objective and subjective conditions, the time was ripe. The people were under attack, cheated, trapped, proscribed. The economy was growing, with a large productive capacity in food and consumer goods, but it was being usurped by foreign interests. The industrial infrastructure was developing, with large autonomous sectors, but the multinationals were taking over key areas that would be difficult to recuperate. A strong working class was ready to fight. There was a cultured and well-informed middle class. And an unequalled geographic position: all types of climate from the Andes to the Atlantic, and from the Tropic of Capricorn to the Antarctic. Argentina was the ideal country for a process of revolutionary change that would regain for its people the use of its immense natural resources, its own creativity and will to work, without being strangled by imperialist siege and blackmail.
Masetti said that the armed struggle was a real option. He had already done advanced military training at the new military academy which the Soviets had helped set up for the Cuban Rebel Army. After eight months of intense theoretical and practical training – having to put up with being a foreigner and being called Che’s ‘poodle’ – he had graduated top of his class. This type of training was essential. Unlike Batista’s, the Argentine army was extremely professional. Students from all over the continent came to study at our military academies. The project would not be like Cuba, first because of the size of the territory, and second because the population was mainly urban. Also, we had to take into account the level of politicization of the masses affiliated to traditional or populist parties, and with hegemonic influences that were difficult to combat. According to Masetti, the Cuban Revolution had shown that the foco theory would dismantle apparent hegemonies and focus popular support on an unexpected action, i.e. concrete activity instead of mere promises. The conversation took us into a realm of infinite possibilities, but Masetti was keen to establish the points we could agree on. He was not acting for himself, but on behalf of Che, his boss. In other words, if I thought the armed struggle could succeed in Argentina, Che had an offer to make me.
The project was to give serious military training to a small group who would set up a guerrilla base in Argentina, to be commanded by Masetti until after this vanguard group had consolidated its position and Che himself arrived. There were too many question marks for my liking, but the bottom line was, if it was Che’s plan and he was involved, I wanted to be in on it. So we got down to details: how the group would be formed, when and where the training would begin, the time it would take, and what we would study. Che would be sole overall leader, totally independent of the Cuban Revolution, although the Cubans would provide necessary help with infrastructure and equipment. Masetti was happy to discuss any queries I had about how the plan slotted into the Argentine political context, but this would obviously need a lengthy collective analysis and that, he said, would be one of our tasks during training. Naturally, a commitment to secrecy and the strictest cell structure was not only a matter of honour, but also of life and death. By accepting the offer, I took on board this commitment. In my second meeting with Che, he would define it more as a commitment to death than to life.
It was getting dark. We had been talking for six hours and my throat was dry. A very pretty Cuban girl came in to remind Masetti the children were waiting for him. Masetti apologized for various shortcomings while he introduced me. Conchita, his new wife, was pregnant. He fetched the children, who were too shy to come in, two of them between eight and ten, by his first Argentine wife. He was supposed to take them to their mother’s house, but we still had a few loose ends to tie up; so we continued, aided by some lemonade. I had to get back to Holguín and confront the problem of abandoning the workshop at such a critical stage of production. I had no idea how I was going to do it, without getting myself a bad name and into a political mess. Masetti would talk to Che about it. Then there was my wife Claudia. Although we had already planned to separate, and she would not mind my leaving, she would have to be sworn to the secrecy. She could not be left completely in the dark and be expected to be supportive. Masetti would bring that up with Che, too.
We left it that I would wait at the hotel for another couple of days at least, while he told Che the result of our conversation and my willingness to take part in the project. He made a call, and the security car came back for me. It left me at the hotel in a state of exaltation. I lay on my bed and thought over the events of the past few days, the people I had met, and ‘the project’, which was no more and no less than what I had come to Cuba for, although I never really thought it possible. And it had happened through a series of coincidences, connected by a mysterious force of destiny. It was after midnight when hunger (I hadn’t eaten all day) forced me out of bed, and I went out in search of some food and a large glass of rum.
Masetti came to get me the next day. We met on the corner of 23rd Street and the Malécon, and drove west out of Havana until we found somewhere for a drink and chat. Che would take care of the workshop, and also of Claudia’s residency in Cuba until we were in Argentina, or indefinitely if she wanted to stay. I had to get back as soon as possible, because classes would be starting in mid-August. I would find a ticket for tomorrow’s flight at the hotel reception.
I arrived in Holguín feeling really strange. Something was tearing at my insides. It was if my body was being emptied of ordinary organs and banal feelings, and replaced by more ascetic, rigorous ones. I was acting from my own free will, nobody was forcing me to do anything, although the idea of a small group, divorced from any political context, seemed like an irrational adventure. And yet, being a small group was what made the plan so rational: more than epic, it was logical. Everything would eventually revolve round Che being there, but he was not able to move the project forward as yet, nor come without a minimum of preparation. It was all about smuggling out the seed, planting it in land where it could germinate, and cultivating it.
A memorandum from the Ministry of Industry signed by Che, and addressed to the INIT, was copied to our workshop. It said I was to be included in a group of scholarship students on a course in specialized ceramic techniques in Czechoslovakia. I had to be in Havana by 15 August. The news hit the workshop like a bombshell. They didn’t see getting a scholarship as a success, rather as abandoning a scheme that represented a steady job. We had worked in consensus, like a family, without