November 29, 1995
Editor
New York Times
The article "Mysteries of Bolivia: The Revised Che Guevara" by Thomas H. Lipscomb ("Week in Review," November 26) makes several additions to the litany of lies about Guevara that have been spread over the past three decades. These fabrications, as always, attempt to demonstrate a deep division that supposedly existed between Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Lipscomb writes that "Guevara went so far as to point out that of all the battles in the Sierra Maestra [during the revolutionary struggle to bring down the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship], `Fidel Castro participated in only one and it was a complete failure.'" The Times evidently didn't bother to ask Lipscomb for the source of this direct quotation.
In Guevara's February 1961 introduction to his series in the Cuban armed forces magazine Verde Olivo, later compiled under the title Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, he explained that he was beginning the series with an account of "the first battle, the only one Fidel participated in that went against our forces: the surprise attack at Alegría de Pío" on December 5, 1956 [emphasis added]. That battle took place just three days after the group of guerrillas led by Castro had landed in eastern Cuba to launch the revolutionary struggle in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
The truth is, as Guevara detailed in his Episodes, that Fidel Castro directly participated as field commander in many battles in the Sierra Maestra in 1957-58, most of them ending in defeats of Batista's armed forces. These battles culminated in the January 1959 island-wide uprising and general strike that secured the triumph of the revolution.
A new English edition of Guevara's Episodes, of which I am the editor, allows Times readers to check the facts for themselves. They will discover that Lipscomb's "quotation" is made up out of whole cloth.
What about Lipscomb's claim that "The Bolivian Army officer who captured Guevara, Captain Gary Prado Salmon, has stated that Guevara said Castro failed him at a crucial time?" Once again, Lipscomb cites no source. Prado, however, did write down an eight-page account of his supposed conversations with Guevara in his 1987 book, How I Captured Che. This is hardly a reliable account, of course, since the other party in the alleged exchange was murdered by Prado's cohorts the next day. But nowhere does Prado say anything even vaguely similar to what Lipscomb claims. In fact, in his preface to the book, Prado says: "There are no sensational revelations here, rather a series of small details."
Lipscomb also recycles some other fabrications with a longer lineage. "[T]here is no record," he writes, "of any attempt by Castro to break through to Guevara's force, although it was destroyed less than 50 miles from its first base of operations."
In an extensive June 1987 television interview with Italian journalist Gianni Mina, later published in full in book form, Fidel Castro provided the appropriate reply to this absurd charge, which Mina says circulated widely, especially in Europe, following Guevara's death, including among demoralized intellectuals who had once expressed support for the Cuban revolution. "What could we have done?" Castro said. "Sent a battalion, a company, a regular army? The laws of guerrilla warfare are different; everything depends on what the guerrilla unit itself does. They really carried out an epic struggle. Some day the things they accomplished will be recounted more objectively."
"We believed in what [Che] was doing," Castro added in that 1987 interview, "and we believed he could carry out what he proposed."
That same opinion was expressed by Cuban brigadier general Harry Villegas in an interview I conducted with him last summer, scheduled for publication in the December 18 issue of the Militant newsweekly. Villegas, using the nom de guerre "Pombo," led the six Bolivian and Cuban combatants who survived the Bolivian army's encirclement in 1967. Villegas had also served under Guevara's command in the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra and in the Congo.
"The Cuban revolution supported this course entirely," Villegas said, speaking of Guevara's plans to link the struggle in Bolivia to the developing prerevolutionary situation in the Southern Cone and elsewhere in Latin America. "We had Cuban comrades in Venezuela at the time; others were in Guatemala, or on their way to Colombia. The Cuban revolution gave support to all these movements."
Pombo's diary of the Bolivian campaign, including parts not captured and previously released by the Bolivian regime, will be published by the Havana publishing house Editora Política for the first time early next year, along with other previously unpublished letters and documents from that campaign. An English edition will be published by Pathfinder later in 1996.
Times readers interested in unwinding the distortions and falsifications of Lipscomb's account fortunately now have the possibility to do so by referring to the recently published expanded edition of The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara. It contains not only the entire journal kept by Guevara during the campaign, but also an extensive account by the central Bolivian leader, Inti Peredo, available for the first time in English.
Finally, Lipscomb's gratuitous reference to Guevara's "disastrous posting as Minister of Industries" in the revolutionary Cuban government in the early 1960s is no more accurate than his fabrications about Che's accomplishments as a revolutionary military leader. In fact, both Guevara's day-by-day activity - not only as minister of industry, but earlier as head of the national bank - and his writings and speeches on the practical connection between economics and politics in the construction of socialism are among his most enduring contributions to the Cuban revolution and to the millions of workers and farmers in Cuba who stand ready to defend it to this day. The extensive documentary record of Guevara's efforts in this regard can be found in Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism, both published by Pathfinder.
Mary-Alice Waters
editor, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara
(Pathfinder, 1994)