BY RON POULSEN
SYDNEY, Australia - Ernesto Che Guevara "chose Bolivia because it is in the middle of Latin America, and Che had the intention of extending the struggle throughout South America or as he said in his 1966 Message to the Tricontinental, to `create two, three... many Vietnams!'" The speaker, Leonardo Tamayo, spoke to a capacity audience of 150 people at the Waverley Library here June 29. He answered a question from a participant at the meeting of why he and Guevara went as guerrilla fighters to Bolivia in 1966-7 to help lead the fight to bring down the military dictatorship and imperialist domination in that country.

Tamayo, whose combat name in Bolivia was "Urbano," was on a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand, at the invitation of Ron Lander, chief librarian at Waverley.

"As long as U.S. imperialism exists," he said, "the peoples of Latin America will be more and more exploited." The cause of the poverty and hunger and the "concentration of wealth in fewer hands," he said, was the "plundering" of Latin America by Wall Street.

Guevara also chose Bolivia, Tamayo said, because of the agreement of the secretary general of the Bolivian Communist Party, Mario Monje, to "give full support to the armed struggle" - support that "in the end, was not given." Asked why this didn't happen, Tamayo replied that "certain Latin American leaders had wanted to make guerrilla warfare from their armchairs."

However, in reply to a question about his Bolivian co- fighters, Tamayo pointed out that "among them was Inti Peredo, a member of the Central Committee of the Bolivian Communist Party." Inti Peredo was one of five survivors of the Bolivia guerrilla campaign along with Urbano. "People like Inti, like Coco [Peredo], like Ñato [Méndez]," Tamayo said, referring to other Bolivian combatant's in Guevara's force, "gave their lives fighting for a cause with honor."

Tamayo emphasized that "the revolution in Bolivia was not going to be made by the 15 Cubans including Che. It was going to be made by the Bolivians. What we were going to contribute was experience." He added later that in "our internationalism ...we do not impose unilateral judgments, and in particular, Che did not do this." He pointed out that they went to Bolivia on the initial understanding that "the Bolivian Communist Party was in agreement."

Tamayo described the last hours with Guevara at the Yuro Ravine on Oct. 7, 1967. This was a heroic, unequal battle in which 5,000 Bolivian soldiers, informed by two deserters and directed by the CIA, surrounded the diminished guerrilla force of a couple dozen. "If Che had not been killed" in this premature confrontation, Tamayo confidently stated, he would "have gone on to liberate other countries."

Asked if the Cuban government had provided the necessary assistance to the guerrilla fighters, Tamayo replied that "Cuba has always helped revolutionary movements throughout Latin America...What's more, along with Che went some of us who were officers of the Armed Forces, of the Ministry of the Interior, and of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party."

Urbano finished this point by saying that "the relationship between Fidel and Che was like that between twin brothers - because they thought alike."

In a nationally televised interview on the Special Broadcasting Service program Dateline on July 27, Tamayo pointed out that the "rumors of an angry parting between Che and Fidel" were "fabrications spread by the enemy of the revolution, the United States," by the very same forces which "maintain the criminal blockade against Cuba" today.

Replying to a question, Tamayo expressed his optimism that "youth are the hope of humanity. Young people have to look to Che's example, not wait for it to arrive...Che is the teacher of the young people of Latin America. Che's thought should have good students...Che thought for all times, for all epochs."

Tamayo described how Guevara was both "very human" and "very demanding with himself in all his tasks. Che always knew how to make himself understood, both with words and with deeds, because he was always consistent in what he said and what he did."  
 
 
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