Andy Johnson
Thursday, October 11th 2007
FOR two days this week, people in countries all across Latin America, a
great majority of them in Cuba, and other radicals and revolutionaries
the world over were mourning and marking the 40th anniversary on October
8, of the capture and assassination of the man the world came to know as
Che.
Nowhere would that commemoration have been more solemn than in Cuba,
whose leader, the ailing Fidel Castro has done perhaps more than any
single individual in the world to perpetuate the myth of who this man was.
But there is an account, however, of how Che's death may well have been
part of Castro's continuing grand scheme for amassing power, and of how
he used and misused anyone and everyone as part of that scheme.
It is titled Guerrilla Prince-The Untold Story of Fidel Castro. It sets
out to establish who Fidel Castro really is. It is written by Georgie
Anne Geyer, an American and former journalist. It is a searing,
penetrating account of the insatiable power lust of one of the 20th
century's most remarkable individuals, a Caribbean man of as yet
unfathomable personality.
The book, Geyer says, attempts to unmask a man she describes as "a
meticulously secretive and secreted person, a tactical and strategic
genius wholly without human principle.'' He is one who "guilefully knows
how to weave useful myths and spin historic tales," much of the time
believing them himself.
He remains a mystery to people in the power centres in the US, his
lifelong nemesis. But to his own people, she says, "he remains as
unknown today as he was in the Cuba of 1959, which he proceeded to
transform with a wave of his princely Machiavellian hand in a manner
never before seen in Latin America, or for that matter most of the world.''
This is the Castro, Geyer says, who decided early on after he led the
overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 that he would connive, deceive
and double-cross all those around him who he felt could threaten his
place, those who could vie with him for power and for the soul of the
Cuban people.
Che Guevara was one of them. After years of being in "exile'' on one
pointless mission after another for Castro in different capitals in
Europe and Africa, Che found himself in Bolivia in 1967. He was trying
to lead a revolution there with Castro's support. But for months he had
been cut off from Havana.
From documents she gathered and interviews she conducted with people in
more than 50 locations in different parts of the world, the author
described how Castro had sent Regis Debray, a French journalist and
another "ally'', to join Che in Bolivia and how they had been themselves
had been captured. In jail, the two disclosed to the authorities what
Che was up to. There was also a woman named "Tania'' whose role in the
capture and death of Che remains a mystery, especially as it relates to
whether or not Castro was involved.
Guevara had by March that year lost all contact with Castro, and his
repeated requests for supplies and support went unanswered.
When he was captured on October 7, 1967, he told the Bolivian army
captain that his mission had failed. Asked why he had gone there, he
talked about the "international revolution'' and about people being
prepared to fight.
The army officer said he told Che he had missed something, that he had
misunderstood the Bolivian people. He replied that the decision to come
had not been completely his, that it had been Castro's.
"It was an apparently distraught Castro who late in October announced to
the world the death of his comrade in arms,'' Geyer writes, reminding
his people in the process of Che's "weaknesses,'' of how he "was always
characterised by an impetuousness, by the absolute scorn for danger.''
She would describe later how Castro then launched the "cult of Che,''
creating posters that would adorn the dormitories of college students in
many countries.
People wondered why was Castro as generous as he appeared with Che's
memory. What did he have to fear from a dead man who could only
compliment him in the fullness of his own life.
Now that Che was dead, Geyer would conclude, Castro would make him
"live" exactly as he wanted him to. The poster which saturated the
revolutionary world was a myth, a friend of Che's was to say many years
later in Venezuela. It was not the man as he was, but that is how Castro
wanted it.
Gary Prado Salmon, the Bolivian army captain who captured Che wrote in
his own account of the event, based on his discussion with Guevara. "If
the thing was a success, the owner of it would be Castro. If it failed,
he got rid of Che. Castro was not going to lose anything.'' According to
Geyer, having read the book himself, Castro told a European journalist
years later that Prado had the right interpretation.
He may not actually have killed Che Guevara, Geyer says of Castro,
anymore than the biblical David "killed" Uriah when he ordered him into
the thick of battle, hoping he would die so that David could have
Bathsheba, Uriah's wife.
One more clue she provided about this episode in the chronicle of
deceit, betrayal, connivance, death and suicides that remains largely
unknown in the Castro myth. On January 3, 1966, Che had returned from a
pointless mission in the Congo. Castro opened a conference of Solidarity
of the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Che was not at the
conference; his name was not even mentioned.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161215009
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