Latin America Diaries (23 page)

75.
A water bird found in the Río de la Plata area.

76.
Roberto Castañeda is currently a professor of ballet.

77.
Getulio Vargas, Brazilian president 1930-45 and 1950-54, established the populist “New State” that oscillated between reform and repression. Just before committing suicide on August 24, 1954, he denounced what he described as the “plunder of Brazil” by foreign companies.

78.
Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez was a teacher who was disappeared in March 1966 as one of the Group of 28.

79.
Roberto Murailles was assassinated in 1981.

80.
Father of Humberto and Luis Arturo Pineda.

81.
He arrived in Mexico on September 18, 1954.

82.
Known as “El Patojo” (“Shorty”) because of his short stature. He lived in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, then joined the liberation struggle in Guatemala and was killed in action. Che gives an affectionate portrait of him in
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War
(Ocean Press, 2006).

83.
Ulises Petit de Murat, a scriptwriter and old friend of Ernesto's father (Ernesto Guevara Lynch).

84.
The Latin News Agency was funded directly by the Argentine government.

85.
This was Alfonso Pérez Vizcaino.

86.
This was to cover the Pan-American Games, which took place in Mexico between March 12 and 16, 1955. Ernesto was an accredited Agencia Latina reporter from January 31 to December 31, 1955.

87.
The motion of proteins (electrically charged molecules) in the presence of an electrical field.

88.
A reference to a relative of the Guevaras.

89.
Frondizi was the key leader of the Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente who assumed the presidency on May 1, 1958. He was overthrown by a military coup on March 29, 1962. Ironically, it was Che Guevara's visit to Argentina in August 1961, after attending the famous meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay, that was used as the pretext for the coup.

90.
The official paper of the Argentine Communist Party.

91.
The Pan-American games were held March 12-16, 1955.

92.
Two Cubans exiled in Mexico.

93.
A paper presented at the Ninth National Congress of Allergists, held at the León School of Medicine, University of Guanajuato, April 25-30, 1955. The paper was later published in the
Revista lberoamericana de Alergología,
Mexico City, May 1955, p. 157.

94.
This is Ernesto's first mention of Fidel Castro. The meeting took place towards the end of July 1955 in Mexico City.

95.
They married at Tepoztlán on August 18, 1955.

96.
See the letter (above) to his mother dated September 24, 1955.

97.
After the 1959 Cuban revolution, Orfila maintained close relations with Che and always expressed his solidarity with Cuba.

98.
Ernesto notes that in his book on Mayan civilizations, Morley calls him “Hun Uitzil Chac Tutul Xiú.”

99.
The photos included in this book taken by Ernesto of these Mayan ruins reveal a high level of technical and artistic ability.

100.
Mariana Grajales was the mother of General Antonio Maceo, who led the struggle for independence against Spain in the 19th century.

101.
This letter probably dates from August or September 1956, after Ernesto's release from prison.

102.
The reference is to the film “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” in
which Paul Muni played the leading role.

103.
Argentine slang meaning a lazy bourgeois who does nothing but eat.

104.
Corps et âmes
[Bodies and Souls] was a book written by the French writer Maxence Van der Meersch.

105.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

106.
The reference is to Pablo Neruda's poem
A Song of Despair.

A View from the Banks of the Giant of Rivers
¹

The Amazon, with its cortege of tributaries, forms an enormous brown continent in the middle of the Americas. During the long rainy months, all of the water courses increase in volume in such a way that the river invades the jungle, turning it into the home of creatures of the water and the air. Beasts of the earth seek refuge on the spots of land that emerge from the water on the brown savannah. Alligators and piranhas (or
caneros
) are the new, dangerous guests of the Tronda, replacing the ocelots, jaguars and peccaries in the task of preventing human beings from setting up camp in the jungle.

Ever since that time long ago when the fearful and famished hosts of Orellana looked upon this muddy sea and in their makeshift boats followed it to the sea, millions of conjectures have been made about the exact birthplace of the giant. For a long time, the Marañón was considered the true source of the river, but modern research has erred toward the other powerful tributary, the Ucayali. By patiently tracing its banks and dividing it up into ever smaller affluents, the researchers came to a tiny lake high in the Andes that feeds the Apurimac, at first a tinkling stream and then a powerful voice of the mountain, thus justifying its
Quechua name
apurimac,
which means the “great roarer.” This is the birthplace of the Amazon.

But who remembers the pure mountain streams here, where the river has become so colossal and its vast silence increases the mystery of the jungle night? We are in San Pablo, a colony of patients suffering from Hansen's disease [leprosy] that the Peruvian government maintains at the margins of its territory and which we are using as a base of operations to enter the heart of the forest.

In all the images of the jungle, whether Hudson's polychrome paradises or José E. Rivera's somber tones, the smallest and most terrible of enemies, the mosquito, doesn't feature. In the evening, a shifting cloud floats over the water of the rivers and launches itself at whatever living thing happens to be passing. It's far more dangerous to enter the jungle without a mosquito net than without a weapon. The fierce carnivores won't readily attack a human being; not all of the swamps one must wade through are inhabited by alligators or piranhas; nor do the snakes fling themselves on travelers to inject them with their venom or strangle them in a mortal embrace. But the mosquitoes will most certainly attack. They will bite you inexorably all over your body and, in exchange for your blood, they leave troublesome welts and maybe yellow fever or, more frequently, the malaria parasite.

You have to look down at a micro level to see the enemy. Another powerful and invisible one is the anchylostorna, a parasite whose larvae bore their way through the skin of your bare feet and then travel throughout your body to settle in your digestive tract, sucking your blood and causing the very serious anemia from which nearly all the inhabitants of this region suffer to a greater or lesser extent.

We walk through the jungle, following the meandering of an Indian path, heading for the huts of the Yaguas, the indigenous people of the region. The forest is huge and terrifying; its sounds
and silences, its furrows of dark water and the clear drops that drip from the leaves—all its so well-orchestrated contradictions— eventually reduce anyone walking to an infinitesimal speck with no thought of their own. To escape from its powerful influence, you have to fix your gaze on the broad, sweaty neck of your guide or on the footprints on the floor of the forest that indicate the presence of humans and recall the strength of the community. When all our clothes were stuck to our bodies and several streams had poured from our foreheads, we reached the settlement. A small number of huts built on posts in a clearing in the jungle and a thicket of yucca, are its wealth—an ephemeral wealth that must be abandoned when the rain swells the veins of the jungle and the water pushes people toward higher ground. The harvest of yucca and palm nuts, the basis of the Indian diet, will enable them to survive.

During the day, the Yaguas live in open-sided houses with palm-frond roofs and a platform that raises them from the humidity of the soil, but, at nightfall, the plague of mosquitoes is stronger than their stoical hides and the evil-smelling oil they smear on their bodies, and they have to seek refuge in huts made of palm fronds, which they close hermetically with a door made of the same material. As long as it is dark, all the members of the tribe remain in their refuge. The promiscuity in which the night is spent doesn't bother them, because the moral codes that govern us don't mean anything in their tribal world. I approached the door of a hut, and a stench of strange oils and sweaty bodies immediately repelled me.

The life of these people is reduced to meekly following the orders that nature imparts by means of the rain.

In the winter, they eat yucca and the potatoes they have harvested in the summer, and they go out in their dugout canoes to fish among the thickets of the jungle. It is fascinating to see them: They have a vigilant immobility that nothing disturbs, small
harpoons poised in their right hands. The dark water obscures everything, until suddenly there's a quick movement, and the harpoon is plunged into the deep; the water is agitated for a moment, and then you can see only the tiny buoy at the end of the harpoon, tied to the rod by one or two meters of line. Powerful strokes of the paddle keep the canoe close to the float until the fish becomes too exhausted to struggle.

They also hunt, when the period is favorable. Sometimes they use an old shotgun obtained through who knows what strange transaction to bring down a large animal, but in general, they prefer to use silent blow-pipes. When bands of monkeys pass through the foliage, a small arrow whose point is smeared with curare wounds one of the monkeys. Without even a cry, the monkey extracts the arrow and continues on its way for a few meters, until the poison takes effect and it falls from the trees— alive, but unable to emit a sound. As long as the noisy troop of monkeys is passing, the blow-pipes are used constantly, and the hunters note the points in the foliage where the wounded animals have fallen. When the last monkey has departed the scene of the tragedy, the hunters retrieve all the wounded animals and take their contribution of food back to the community.

Celebrating the arrival of their white visitors, they presented us with one of the monkeys they had killed. We prepared the animal on an improvised spit in the way it is done on our Argentine pampas and tried its meat, which was tough and bitter but had an agreeable, wild taste. The Indians were enthusiastic about our method of preparing the dish.

To reciprocate, we gave them two bottles of a soft drink we had brought with us. The Indians drank the contents excitedly and saved the caps with religious fervor in the pouches of woven fibers that they wear around their necks, which is where they keep their most prized possessions: an amulet, some shotgun cartridges, a seed necklace, a Peruvian sol, etc.

On our return, somewhat anxious about the approaching night, one of them led us along shortcuts that enabled us to reach the safe refuge of the metal roofs of the colony before night fell. We said good-bye with a handshake, in the European style, and the guide gave me a present of one of the fibers from his skirt, the only clothing worn by the Yaguas.

The dangers and tragedies of the wild have often been exaggerated, but we had an experience that shows how valid the warnings are. People always say that it's dangerous to wander away from the path when you're in the jungle, and that is certainly true. One day, while relatively close to our base, we suddenly looked at each other in consternation because the path we had hoped to return by seemed to have vanished. We carefully retraced our steps, but it was all in vain.

While one of us stood in a fixed spot, another walked straight ahead and then returned, guided by shouts. We did this in every direction without success. Fortunately, we had been told what to do in case we found ourselves in such a situation. We looked for a special kind of tree, whose roots form partitions a few centimeters thick, which sometimes rise to heights of several meters from the earth and seem to give extra support to the tree.

With an ordinary stick, we began to strike those partitions as hard as we could. This produced a deep sound which, although not very loud, could be heard at a great distance and is much more effective than shooting off a firearm, for the foliage deadens the sound of shots. After a while, an Indian with a mocking smile appeared with his shotgun and, with signals, led us to the path and showed us the direction we should take. Somehow, we had strayed off course about 500 meters from the path.