And second because we had become good friends: we had the same sense of humour, we had lived in Buenos Aires at the same time, had mutual friends, shared tastes, a passion for politics, a desire to be involved, but most of all because we liked talking. Masetti did not live in the house but came every day for strategy classes and sometimes shooting practice. The rest of the time he was mired in the quicksands of bureaucracy, setting up the part of the operation Che did not have time for.
As soon as he arrived at the house, he would come and chat with me. I always played devil’s advocate. My role apparently was to say ‘yes, but …’, although all I wanted to do, in fact, was to dispel my doubts. The resulting discussions increased our knowledge and confidence in the project. Masetti and I communicated on the same wavelength. We liked fooling about but, as Masetti himself said, we were also down to earth.
For different reasons, but mostly because we saw each other every day and both liked talking, I also became friends with Fabián, the doctor. (Basilio, who had many more technical skills than I, was anti-social, and Miguel did not talk at all). Fabián was, on the other hand, a Che fanatic and a bit of a fundamentalist. He was obsessed with something that was on TV a lot at the time: discovering hidey-holes in abandoned mansions – ‘a cache or stash’ – where people who had ‘temporarily’ emigrated to Miami had hidden fortunes in jewellery, art, antiques, etc. We inspected every wall, every nook and cranny, of the house. We even sussed the different widths of certain walls. Using Fabián’s stethoscope and our knuckles to knock on particular spots, we eventually discovered two hidey-holes, although the so-called treasure wasn’t worth having. One contained a big-game hunting rifle and a double-barrelled shot-gun, quite special. Another had papers and ornaments, sentimental stuff that was difficult to carry. It was all handed over to security.
One afternoon before he left, Masetti announced that Che would be coming that night. Or rather, it would be almost daybreak given Che’s duties at the Ministry. We would no longer be a bunch of loose ends who didn’t know if they fitted together until an important milestone would give them coherence. With our chief before us, we would be a cohesive unit welding hopes, passions, fears and joys into the metal needed to sustain the heart and soul of such an endeavour. We downed endless cups of coffee in silence. Then Hermes saw an escort jeep, followed by a car. Che and Masetti got out and came straight to our table under the dome. For some, it was their first meeting. But for all of us, including Masetti and Hermes, it was very special.
The scene is still vivid in my mind. I remember the exact position of the table on the patio, at the end of the gallery, on the left, under the glass dome open to a clammy night sky. I remember how we were seated around it, and I associate it with old Argentine engravings of cabildos, council meetings and patriotic gatherings. Except that in the old lithographs, the founding fathers, in velvet jackets with big lapels, are all sitting on one side of a table, facing a throng of citizens. Here, we were all on one side of the table facing a solitary hero sprawled in a chair, letting bureaucracy seep from his exhausted body, as he asked for a glass of water and a coffee.
From his long exposition (the political framework and military plans later merged in my mind with other conversations and analysis), I have retained his sense of solidarity, philosophy, utopia. He said he understood that our presence there, around the table, meant we shared an ethical view of the world, and implied total commitment to our joint project. It had to be made absolutely clear that there would be no benefits in the future, only sacrifices in the here and now. Although the revolutionary objective might be to take power, we would not get the reward, even if the aim were achieved. Most probably none of us would live to see it. ‘Remember, as from now, you are dead men. From now on, you’re living on borrowed time.’
He said the situation we were witnessing in Latin America was atypical: a new reality, distorted, anti-historical, unacceptable to an empire accustomed to the servile docility of the oligarchies. The Cuban Revolution was a sickness the US system could not tolerate in its dominions. Plans were being hatched daily to destroy it and, in his opinion, they would end up harming it. But Cuba was more than a successful experiment looking for its own way forward, it was the last card for the peoples of America, and they had to play it. The US could destroy Cuba if they chose to wipe out the island, though the price would be very high. But they could not destroy its example, and if it spread throughout the continent, it would be imperialism that would be destroyed. In any case, the task we were setting ourselves was not the utopian dream of defeating the most powerful army in the Americas, but of making our presence felt, so that our people knew the armed struggle was an alternative, and not be afraid of it. Traditional politicians kept vain hopes alive. We would show that the people’s dignity and future had to be fought for.
Che added that he could not go much further in the Cuban process. He had given his life to the Revolution but a revolutionary life was not to be wasted behind a desk. He sincerely believed, without false modesty, that he still had a role to play, and by playing it in Argentina he would serve the Revolution in South America as a whole. For this initial stage, he needed our help. We had to learn as much as we could in these classes, and remember how much they were costing the Revolution in increasingly difficult times. It was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing the resources being put at his disposal when every single man, every single dollar, taken from the Cuban budget was a sacrifice. We could not prolong the training more than strictly necessary. We needed to take responsibility for the project – under his leadership – as soon as possible, but Cuba would cover a minimum of the essential organizational support. Our task, as a group, was to keep ourselves safe, establish the camp in Argentina, familiarize ourselves with the region, increase our numbers, and avoid combat until he arrived.
He would visit us as often as he could while we were in Cuba, hopefully once a week, but he could not be sure. The climate of aggression against Cuba was a sign that new attacks were on the way, and we had to be ready by then. But we shouldn’t feel we had to sit there in silence: that is, if we had any doubts or things we did not agree with, we should say so, not keep it to ourselves, because soon it would be impossible to withdraw.
He gave us the floor, but as often happens at conferences with a non-professional audience, no one had anything to say. Masetti, on the extreme right of the table, looked at us as if he had asked a question. Fabián played with a pencil, as if he was taking the minutes. Me, in the centre, looked at the others, while Basilio and Miguel, to my left, looked at the floor. Overcome by embarrassment and a sense of the ridiculous, but mostly because I thought saying nothing showed a lack of respect, I spoke. It is impossible to reconstruct my ‘discourse’, more or less a series of wobbly questions. The overpowering impact of Che’s presence drowned out every sound that did not come from him.
I think I asked if we would be supported by any kind of organization once we got there. The reply: none at all, creating them is part of the task. I think I showed a certain incredulity at the disproportionate odds – half a dozen men versus millions. I remember his reply: in Cuba they were only a handful and they won. I think I insisted that, in Cuba, they had been a handful – many more when they had disembarked – but that the 26th of July Movement had been waiting in the wings. It was not the same, he retorted, to go in on a war footing after an event like the Moncada, as it was to go in clandestinely with an exploratory project: the 26th of July Movement came out of a previous isolated experience. I think I evoked the somewhat indigestible image of an ant on the edge of a three million square kilometre cake, and behind the ant image I suggested that our cause would have to prosper from the periphery towards the interior, not the other way round. I also brought up Argentina’s unresolved internal political conflict, Peronism. His reply was that Argentina’s problem is the dependence and poverty of its people while its wealth is in foreign hands. Peronism is only a symptom; for the struggle, the sickness is what counts.
I think that was how I explained my most immediate doubts, and they were not dismissed. On the contrary, they were adopted as subjects for further discussion. The meeting ended at dawn. Hermes mobilized the bodyguards and Che said goodbye with a mixture of exhaustion and satisfaction.
Classes resumed with renewed gusto. The team of instructors was joined by experts in radio-communications, telegraphy, self-defence, use of telescopic sights for light artillery, bazookas, mortars and recoil-less rifles – all weapons which can be easily captured from the enemy but are no use at