Che Guevara (89 page)

A few days later, still convinced that the overture would be rebuffed, Alexiev returned to Cuba with an “agricultural delegation” that included Rashidov and Marshal Biryusov, who was disguised as a simple engineer named Petrov. As soon as they arrived, Alexiev went to see Raúl Castro and said his group was on a mission for Khrushchev and needed to meet with
Fidel immediately. “Engineer Petrov is not engineer Petrov,” he told Raúl. “He is a marshal in charge of the Soviet missile program.”

Raúl understood and went into Fidel’s office. He didn’t come out for two or three hours. Then they met with Fidel in Osvaldo Dorticós’s office. “I saw that Raúl,” Alexiev recalled, “for the first time ever, was writing things down in a notebook.” When the Soviets had finished explaining Khrushchev’s proposal, Fidel was noncommittal but made favorable noises. He told the Soviets to give him until the next day. The way Alexiev understood it, Fidel wanted to consult with Che.

The next day Alexiev was summoned by Fidel. Once again they met in Dorticós’s office, but this time, several others were present, including Che, Dorticós, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, and Blas Roca. They had considered the proposal and, agreeing that the missiles could stop the Americans from invading Cuba, were willing to go ahead with the program. The conversation then turned to the likelihood of a U.S. invasion, and Alexiev recalled that Che was the “most active” in the discussion that followed, making his opinion on the missile issue clear. “Anything that can stop the Americans,” Che said, “is worthwhile.”

The Soviets and their Cuban counterparts proceeded immediately with the job of selecting missile sites. Fidel told Alexiev that he wanted a military pact to formalize things, and that he would send Raúl to Moscow to sign it. According to Vitali Korionov, a Central Committee adviser, Fidel outlined for inclusion in the pact a list of objectives he wanted the Soviets to negotiate with the Americans once the presence of the missiles was made public. In addition to securing a commitment from Washington not to invade, he wanted the U.S. naval base at Guantámano Bay dismantled. The Soviets agreed to the pact, and over the next week Alexiev and Raúl worked closely to produce a Spanish-language version. Then, Alexiev said, Raúl and Marshal Malinovski signed each page of the document.

By July 2, 1962, Raúl was in Moscow carrying the treaty draft. Over the next week, according to Alexiev, he met with Khrushchev twice. But Vitali Korionov recalled things differently. He said that when Raúl and his wife, Vílma Espín, arrived, he and Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin met them at the airport. They were taken to a protocol house. Korionov, Kosygin, and Raúl went into the dining room, where there was a grand piano. It was just the three of them. “Raúl put the document on the piano, with Fidel’s points, now translated into Russian, and there, without sitting down, Kosygin and Raúl signed the document. Afterward, Kosygin said he was leaving, and he told Korionov to stay and calm down Raúl, who was extremely nervous. “He was in a state of tense expectancy,” Korionov said. “As if thinking ‘What is going to happen now?’ Because the Cuban comrades understood how this
could end.” Korionov sat up all night with Raúl, talking and drinking Armenian cognac.

Fidel had told Raúl he wanted Khrushchev to answer one question: what would happen if the Americans discovered the operation while it was still in progress? Alexiev said that Khrushchev’s reply was short and breezy: “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. If the Americans start getting nervous, we’ll send out the Baltic Fleet as a show of support.” Raúl accepted Khrushchev’s answer as a firm commitment of support. Alexiev recalls Raúl saying: “This is great, just great! Fidel will accept everything; he may correct a few things but that’s all. In principle he’ll accept.”

It was a fearsome and hefty military package indeed: twenty-four medium-range and sixteen intermediate-range ballistic missile launchers, each equipped with two missiles and a nuclear warhead; twenty-four advanced SAM-2 surface-to-air missile batteries; forty-two MiG interceptors; forty-two IL-28 bombers; twelve
Komar
-class missile boats, and coastal defense cruise missiles. The arsenal would be accompanied by four elite Soviet combat regiments totaling 42,000 troops. The agreement was renewable every five years. It stipulated that the missiles would be completely under the command of the Soviet military.

Around July 15, even before Raúl had left Moscow or Fidel had seen the agreement, the first missiles were surreptitiously shipped from the Soviet Union’s Black Sea ports. They were concealed on cargo ships. Troops also began to leave for Cuba secretly. On July 17, Raúl flew back to Havana; he was followed in three weeks by Alexiev, now the new Soviet ambassador. He brought the agreement that had been ratified by Raúl with him. Khrushchev had told Alexiev that there were “already” Soviet missiles in Cuba, and stressed again the necessity to maintain total secrecy about the operation until November or later. Not one cable should be sent from Havana; if he had something important to discuss, Alexiev should come to Moscow himself or send an emissary.

Khrushchev had not signed the agreement, pending Fidel’s final approval. His plan was to travel to Cuba himself for the anniversary of the Cuban revolution in January. There, after he and Fidel had both signed the pact, they would divulge it to the world. By then, everything would be in place, and the fait accompli would give Khrushchev tremendous strategic bargaining power with Washington.

But things did not go as planned. First, Fidel did not like the draft agreement; he though it was “too technical,” Alexiev recalled, with not enough of a “political framework.” Alexiev said that Fidel took particular issue with the preamble, which read originally, “In the interests of ensuring her sovereignty and to maintain her freedom, Cuba requests that the Soviet
Union considers and accepts the possibility of installing missiles [on her territory].” As Alexiev explained it, Fidel’s changes shifted the onus of the decision to install the missiles. In his version, it was a responsibility shared equally between the two nations. He wanted to formalize what Khrushchev had already promised rhetorically—that an attack against Cuba would be considered an attack on the Soviet Union. In Fidel’s version, the preamble read, “It is necessary and has been decided to take the necessary steps for the joint defense of the legitimate rights of the people of Cuba and the Soviet Union, taking into account the urgent need to adopt measures to guarantee mutual security, in view of the possibility of an imminent attack against the Republic of Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

When the revised draft was ready in late August, Fidel did not send Raúl back to the Soviet Union. He sent Che, and with him Emilio Aragonés, an old July 26 associate and now one of his close advisers. On August 30, they met Khrushchev at his summer dacha in the Crimea. Khrushchev agreed to the amended language of the accord, which was titled “Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Cuba and the Government of the U.S.S.R. on Military Cooperation for the Defense of the National Territory of Cuba in the Event of Aggression.” But Khrushchev stalled with regard to signing it, saying he would do so when he came to Cuba in a few months.

Probably concerned that the Soviets were carrying out a double cross, Che argued for the agreement to be made public. Khrushchev refused, insisting that it should remain secret for now. Che and Aragonés then repeated Fidel’s nagging worry—one shared by several senior Soviet officials, including Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko—about a premature discovery of the operation by the Americans. As Aragonés later told it, Khrushchev was as dismissive as he had been with Raúl: “He said to Che and me, with Malinovski in the room, ‘You don’t have to worry; there will be no problem from the U.S. And if there is a problem, we will send the Baltic Fleet.’” Aragonés recalled that when they heard this, “Che and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows.” Neither man was convinced, although there was little choice at this point but to take Khrushchev at his word.

U.S. intelligence was scrutinizing Che’s activities in Russia with a wary eye. On August 31, a CIA cable went out noting that the “composition” of Che Guevara’s delegation to the Soviet Union “indicates the delegation may have a broader mission than is [
sic
] announced agenda, which pertains to industrial matters. Guevara is accompanied by Emilio Aragonés, apparently not trained or experienced in economics or industrial matters. The Guevara mission was met at the airport by Soviet economic officials and by First Deputy Premier Kosygin, a member of the Soviet Party Presidum.”

By September 6, when Che arrived back in Havana, the Soviet military buildup in Cuba had already been detected. American U-2 reconnaissance planes had discovered the new SAM-2 missile sites and coastal-defense cruise missile installations. Kennedy had been assured by his experts that the weapons were not a threat to U.S. national security, but their presence was a danger sign that could not be disregarded. On September 4, the president had sent his younger brother Robert, the attorney general, to discuss the buildup with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoli Dobrynin. Dobrynin had relayed Khrushchev’s reassurances that no offensive weaponry had been deployed in Cuba. The new weapons were intended purely for Cuba’s defense.

The White House remained suspicious. New reconnaissance photos indicated that a Soviet submarine base might be under construction. Kennedy issued a public statement announcing that the United States had detected not only the SAMs but an increased number of Soviet military personnel in Cuba. He admitted that the United States had no evidence of the presence of either Soviet-bloc combat troops or offensive ground-to-ground missiles, but he warned that if they existed there, the “gravest issues” would arise.

The next day, Kennedy asked Congress for approval to call up 150,000 military reservists. The United States announced plans to hold a military exercise in the Caribbean in mid-October, and Cuba denounced this as proof of Washington’s intention to invade. Once again, Dobrynin insisted that Moscow was supplying only defensive weapons to Cuba.

Each day brought tension levels higher, as new details of the buildup filtered in. Accusations and denials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba flew back and forth. Then, on September 9, U.S. intelligence monitors recorded some unsettling remarks made by Che at a reception at the Brazilian embassy in Havana. Speaking to a reporter, Che had called the latest Soviet military aid deal to Cuba a “historic event” that heralded a reversal in East-West power relations; in his opinion, it had shifted the scales in favor of the Soviet Union. As one classified cable paraphrased him, Guevara had said, “The United States cannot do anything but yield.”

Che marching with Raúl and Fidel in the 1963 May Day parade in Havana.

The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save the blood of more people in the future
.

C
HE
G
UEVARA
“Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution,” 1962

One day I reached the summit of a mountain with a rifle in my hand and I felt something I had never felt before—I felt so strong! I had a beautiful feeling of freedom and I said to myself: “We can do it!”

H
ÉCTOR
J
OUVE
One of Che’s guerrillas in Argentina, 1963–1964

In December 1961, Julio Roberto Cáceres (Patojo), Che’s young Guatemalan friend and protégé, had left Cuba secretely for his homeland, determined to help launch a Marxist guerrilla struggle there. Che had been especially brotherly with the introverted Patojo and had nurtured his revolutionary aspirations. Patojo was with Che at La Cabaña, INRA, and the Ministry of Industries, and for most of the last three years had been part of the Guevara household. Che helped him get out of Cuba quietly.

Patojo went back to Guatemala at a propitious moment for revolution. Congressional elections had just taken place amid widespread allegations of fraud. Then, in late January 1962, the chief of President Ydigoras Fuentes’s secret police was assassinated, and two weeks later the first hit-and-run attacks against military posts were launched near Puerto Barrios by the guerrillas led by Yon Sosa and Turcios Lima. They had named their group the Alejandro de León November 13 Guerrilla Movement, in commemoration of the date of their earlier failed uprising and in honor of a late comrade. In February, the rebels made their aims public in a communiqué that called for rebellion to restore the country to democratic rule. Patojo’s group, which was backed by Guatemala’s Communist Party, launched its movement independently at around the same time.

In March 1962, only four months after Patojo left Cuba, Che received word that he had been killed in action. A few months later, Myrna Torres
*
visited Havana and brought Che a notebook Patojo had left with her in Mexico en route to the battlefield. It included a poem to his girlfriend back in Cuba. Che wrote a eulogy to Patojo that was published in
Verde Olivo
in August, a bittersweet parable of redemption aimed at Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. He gave a brief account of Patojo’s life and their relationship—how they had lived and worked together as itinerant photographers in Mexico; how Patojo had also wanted to join the
Granma
expedition but had been left behind; how he had then come to help in Cuba’s triumphant revolution: