Pombo: A Man of Che's Guerrilla by Harry Villegas Tamayo. 365 pp. New York, 1997. $21.95.

From Claridad:

Three decades after his death at the hands of the Bolivian military and U.S. advisors, interest in Che Guevara is growing and his perspectives and actions continue to be the focus of debate worldwide. One important contribution to this discussion is Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla: With Che Guevara in Bolivia, 1966-68 by Harry Villegas.

Published by Pathfinder Press, of New York, the book is a never-before-published diary and account of the 1966-68 revolutionary campaign that Ernesto Che Guevara led in Bolivia. In its pages Villegas, a young veteran of the Cuban revolution who was just twenty-some years old and a member of Guevara's general staff, tells the story of the effort to forge a new leadership on a continental level capable not only of toppling the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Bolivia, but also accelerating the fight for national liberation in Latin America. The rise in struggles of workers, peasants, and youth culminated a few years later in a massive revolutionary wave that was felt throughout the Southern Cone of the American continent.

It is almost 30 years since the death of Che Guevara at the hands of the Bolivian army in an isolated forest settlement. No document speak of his courage and audacity - and that of his Cuban and Bolivian comrades - with such clarity and authenticity as this book.

Pombo - real name Harry Villegas - is a black Cuban and veteran of the revolutionary war and a series of internationalist campaigns in the Congo (1965), Bolivia (1966- 68) and Angola (1981-90). He was also commander of the Guantánamo border brigade in the seventies and one of his country's most decorated military heroes.

Pombo's story is an epochal narrative. It marks an exemplary internationalist spirit which Cuba gave - and despite huge present obstructions and limitations - continues to give to the struggling peoples of the world.

When Che Guevara decided to turn from the task of institutionalising the revolution in Cuba to building another on the mainland of South America, it was to Vietnam that he turned for his inspiration: "To create two, three.. many Vietnams - that is the watchword."

Yet, despite the genius and charisma of his commander, Pombo's narrative is about a tireless collective effort by a group of men and women whose creative tenacity and stamina was breathtaking in its assurance.

Guevara's prediction was that it would take seven to 10 years to build a revolution in Bolivia, and from there to move on to Peru and, incrementally, to the rest of the continent to found a "great socialist America."

Thus, this Caribbean island, this "small point on the map of the world", as Pombo wrote of his own country, would issue a challenge to the system of imperialism everywhere - and particularly to its source, the "thieving eagle" of the north.

The journal itself is naked, fast-moving - like the campaign it describes, with little emphasis on reflection, extraneous emotion or descriptive detail.

Only occasionally does Pombo stop to behold the beauty of the terrain in which his struggle is being waged, under a sun "that could split rocks". He suddenly pauses to think of his son, his wife on their anniversary or his mother on Mother's Day. He tells of the tribulations of obtaining food and fresh water, of eating snail soup or a captured cat. He describes Guevara ordering them, one by one, to urinate into the dried-up radiator of their only vehicle.

He does not glorify Guevara. Staying close to the principle of "revolutionary truth" that marked the guerrilla's reports and communiques, it is enough for Pombo simply to tell the actions of his selfless commander.

There is Guevara's insistence on freeing all prisoners after explaining to them the purposes and objectives of the struggle, condemning any inclination to humiliate those captured; his willingness to embrace the sanction imposed for any disciplinary slippage - such as allowing his weapon to be submerged in the water as they cross a river; his anger at his comrades allowing him to sleep long when he was sick; the infernal asthma that racked his body during his last days; his "iron will" enabling him to cross a ravine in the hours before his death.

Guevara, Pombo and their comrades are human exemplars, not icons but real people - strong, weak and eternally willful - and, through this narrative released by history for a new generation.

CHRIS SEARLE

Pombo: A Man of Che's Guerrilla is a never-before- published story of the 1966-68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia led by Ernesto Che Guevara. It is the diary and account of Pombo (the alias of Harry Villegas) who was a member of Guevara's general staff, a young Cuban freedom fighter still in his 20s and already a veteran of a decade of struggle around the globe. Harry Villegas is today a brigadier general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. His day-by-day account of an epic chapter in the history of the Americas illuminates the times he lived through and which would foreshadow the titanic class battles that are beginning to manifest themselves in contemporary American society as we enter the 21st Century. Pombo is highly recommended reading for political and military history reading lists and will engage anyone with an interest in the memoirs of a most remarkable man.  
 
 
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