Latin America Diaries Read online

  Latin America Diaries

  CHE GUEVARA PUBLISHING PROJECT

  THE DIARIES:

  The Motorcycle Diaries (1952)

  Latin America Diaries (1953)

  Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1956-59)

  Congo Diary (1965)

  The Bolivian Diary (1966-67)

  ALSO AVAILABLE:

  Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara

  Che Guevara Reader

  Global Justice

  Self-Portrait: A Photographic and Literary Memoir

  Marx & Engels: A Biographical Introduction

  Our America and Theirs

  The Great Debate on Political Economy and Revolution

  The Awakening of Latin America

  ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

  Latin America Diaries

  Otra Vez or a second look at Latin America

  Foreword by Alberto Granado

  Cover design ::maybe

  Cover image: Ernesto Che Guevara on Popocatépetl volcano, Mexico

  Copyright © 2011 Aleida March

  Copyright © 2011 Ocean Press

  Copyright © 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center

  Photos copyright © 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-9870779-7-4

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2011922103

  First edition published in 2011

  Published in Spanish as Otra Vez 978-1-920888-78-7

  PUBLISHED BY OCEAN PRESS

  Australia:

  PO Box 1015, North Melbourne, Vic 3051, Australia

  USA:

  511 Ave of the Americas, #96, New York,

  NY 10011-8436, USA

  E-mail: [email protected]

  OCEAN PRESS TRADE DISTRIBUTORS

  United States: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  Tel: 1-800-283-3572 www.cbsd.com

  Canada: Publishers Group Canada

  Tel: 1-800-663 5714 [email protected]

  Australia and New Zealand: Palgrave Macmillan

  Tel: 1-300-135 113 E-mail: [email protected]

  UK and Europe: Turnaround Publisher Services

  Tel: (44) 020-8829 3000 E-mail: [email protected]

  Mexico, Cuba and Latin America: Ocean Sur

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Contents

  Chronology of Ernesto Che Guevara

  Maps

  Editorial note

  A Note to the Reader

  Foreword by Alberto Granado

  Latin America Diaries

  Departure

  Bolivia

  Peru

  Ecuador

  Panama

  Costa Rica

  Nicaragua

  Guatemala

  El Salvador

  Guatemala

  Mexico

  Appendices

  Journalism:

  A View from the Banks of the Giant of Rivers

  Machu-Picchu: Stone Enigma of the Americas

  The Dilemma of Guatemala

  Poems:

  A los mineros de Bolivia (To the Bolivian Miners) (April 9)

  Invitación al camino (An Invitation to Travel) (December 1954)

  Newspaper reports of Ernesto Guevara during this trip

  Facsimiles of the diary

  Chronology of Ernesto Che Guevara

  June 14, 1928 Ernesto Guevara is born in Rosario, Argentina, of parents Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna; he will be the oldest of five children.

  January–July 1952 Ernesto Guevara travels around Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado on the motorbike, La Poderosa. The journal from this trip is posthumously published as The Motorcycle Diaries.

  March 10, 1952 General Fulgencio Batista carries out a coup d’état in Cuba.

  July 7, 1953 After graduating from medical school, Ernesto Guevara sets off again to travel through Latin America. He visits Bolivia, observing the aftermath of the 1952 revolution, and Peru where he revisits the Inca city of Machu-Picchu.

  July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful armed attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, launching the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Batista regime.

  December 1953 Ernesto Guevara meets a group of Cuban survivors of the Moncada attack in San José, Costa Rica.

  December 24, 1953 Ernesto Guevara arrives in Guatemala, then under the popularly elected government of Jacobo Árbenz.

  January–June 1954 While in Guatemala, he studies Marxism and becomes involved in the community of Latin American political exiles who are active there. This group includes exiled Cuban revolutionaries and Hilda Gadea, a revolutionary intellectual from Peru.

  June 27, 1954 President Árbenz resigns in response to a military coup by Carlos Castillo Armas that was part of the CIA’s “Operation Success.”

  August 1954 Mercenary troops backed by the CIA enter Guatemala and begin the brutal repression of Árbenz supporters. Ernesto Guevara seeks political asylum in the Argentine embassy in Guatemala City.

  September 18, 1954 Ernesto Guevara reaches Mexico after fleeing Guatemala. He finds part-time work in the Children’s and General hospitals and supplements his income with photography and some editorial work for Agencia Latina (an Argentine press agency).

  July 1955 Ernesto Guevara meets Fidel Castro in Mexico City and immediately agrees to join the planned guerrilla expedition. The Cubans nickname him “Che,” an Argentine term of greeting.

  August 18, 1955 Ernesto Guevara marries Hilda Gadea in Mexico. Their daughter, Hildita, is born the following February. The marriage soon falls apart.

  June 24, 1956 Ernesto Guevara is arrested along with a group of Cuban revolutionaries, rounded up by the Mexican government to thwart a supposed conspiracy to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Ernesto is one of the last to be released from prison and, defying an order to leave Mexico, goes underground.

  November 25, 1956 Eighty-two combatants, including Che Guevara as troop doctor, sail for Cuba aboard the Granma.

  December 2, 1956 The Granma reaches Cuba at Las Coloradas in Oriente Province. After an initial setback, the guerrilla struggle begins.

  December 28, 1958 Che Guevara’s guerrilla column initiates an audacious attack on Batista’s forces in Santa Clara.

  January 1, 1959 Batista flees Cuba. Santa Clara falls to the Rebel Army. Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos arrive in Havana the next day.

  January 8, 1959 Fidel Castro arrives in Havana.

  February 9, 1959 Che Guevara is declared a Cuban citizen. He is later appointed head of the Department of Industry of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) and president of the National Bank of Cuba and takes major responsibility for the industrialization and transformation of the Cuban economy.

  March 14, 1965 Che Guevara returns to Cuba after a tour of Africa and shortly afterwards drops from public view.

  April 1, 1965 Che Guevara delivers a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. He subsequently leaves Cuba on a Cuban-sponsored internationalist mission in the (former Belgian) Congo, Africa.

  November 21, 1965 Che Guevara leaves the Congo, and begins writing up his account of the mission, which he describes as “a failure.”

  December 1965 Fidel Castro arranges for Che Guevara to return to Cuba in secret. Che Guevara prepares for the expedition to Bolivia.

  November 4, 1966 Che Guevara arrives in Bolivia in disguise.

  March 23, 1967 The first guerrilla military
action takes place with combatants successfully ambushing a Bolivian army column.

  April 16, 1967 Che Guevara’s Message to the Tricontinental is published, calling for the creation of “two, three, many Vietnams.”

  May 1967 US Special Forces arrive in Bolivia to train counterinsurgency troops of the Bolivian army.

  October 8, 1967 The remaining 17 guerrillas are trapped by army troops and conduct a desperate battle in El Yuro ravine. Che Guevara is seriously wounded and captured.

  October 9, 1967 Che Guevara and two other captured guerrillas are murdered by Bolivian soldiers following instructions from the Bolivian government and Washington. The remains of Che Guevara and the other guerrillas are secretly buried in Bolivia.

  July 1, 1968 Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary is published in Cuba and is distributed free of charge to the Cuban people, while it is simultaneously published in many countries.

  July 1997 Che Guevara’s remains are returned to Cuba and buried in a memorial in Santa Clara, along with the remains of other guerrilla fighters who died in Bolivia.

  First part of Ernesto’s trip (Latin America)

  1. Buenos Aires

  2. La Quiaca

  3. Villazón

  4. La Paz

  5. Lake Titicaca

  6. Puno

  7. Cuzco

  8. Machu-Picchu

  9. Lima

  10. Tumbes

  11. Bolívar (Port)

  12. Guayaquil

  13. Esmeralda

  14. Balboa

  15. Panamá City

  Second part of Ernesto’s trip (Central America)

  1. Balboa (port)

  2. Panamá City

  3. Golfito

  4. Puntarenas

  5. San José

  6. Liberia

  7. Alajuela

  8. La Cruz

  9. Rivas

  10. Managua

  11. San Salvador

  12. Guatemala City

  13. Amatitlán

  14. Chimaltenango

  15. Tiquisate

  16. Guatemala City

  17. San Salvador

  18. Santa Ana

  19. El Progreso

  20. Jalapa

  21. Quiriguá Vieja

  22. Puerto Barrios

  23. Lake Atitlán

  24. Chimantenango

  25. León (Guanajuato)

  26. Puebla

  27. México City

  28. Popocatépetl (5,450m)

  29. Iztaccíhuatl (5,286m)

  30. Veracruz

  31. Lake Catemaco

  32. Coatzacoalcos River

  33. Campeche

  34. Mérida

  35. Uxmal

  36. Chichén-Itzá

  37. Veracruz

  38. Córdoba

  39. Orizaba

  40. México City

  41. Tuxpan

  42. Las Coloradas (Cuba)

  Editorial Note

  One of the main aims of the editorial project created by the Che Guevara Studies Center (Havana) together with Ocean Press and Ocean Sur publishing houses is to recover historical memory as an indispensable tool for new generations seeking to establish a more just and equal world, a world representing the interests of the great majority.

  The book we offer here to readers belongs chronologically to the writings of the young Che, its antecedent being the journals he wrote during his first trip around Latin America, between late 1951 and August 1952 [The Motorcycle Diaries].

  A year later, on July 7, 1953, this young man, newly graduated as a doctor, headed off again for those countries that had already captured his imagination and would determine the future course of his life. It is therefore not surprising that Ernesto gave the title Otra vez [once again] to this new diary.

  When one starts to read this book, it becomes clear immediately why he chose this title. On page after page he draws us into his ever-growing commitment to “Our America” (as José Martí called it) and challenges us to reflect on moments and circumstances we sometimes ignore because of our daily routine.

  Otra vez is a thought-provoking book, full of clues that allow us to gain an understanding of the meaning and impact of Che’s life, his thought and his actions. It shows what gradually leads him to the path of revolution, how he makes it his own, with his characteristic questioning, hesitation, tentative answers and grappling with theory and praxis in an attempt to understand the world and his role in that world. Despite the good and bad times he describes, his great love of humanity emerges through the impressions and experiences he relates.

  In these pages, he is no longer simply a spectator to events but an active participant for whom there can be no turning back. As the pages unfold, we discover a man who, from the beginning to the end of his life, demonstrated a moral stature of immense proportion. Undoubtedly, it helps us understand not only the coherence of his actions and thought from early on, but also why the icon he became has had such a broad appeal for so many people and movements in the struggle to make a better world.

  This edition has been revised, corrected and expanded with original documents held at the Che Guevara Studies Center in Havana in order to create a book with which young people can identify in these uncertain times.

  * * *

  In this new edition, due to their historical significance, we have reproduced letters Che sent to his family and his friend Tita Infante, articles written for newspapers and journals, poems and interviews that were published in the various countries he visited in order to augment the narrative of his diary of this second journey through Latin America.

  Also included are news reports from Mexican newspapers of the imprisonment of Che along with a group of key Cuban revolutionaries (among whom was Fidel Castro) who were making preparations for the liberation struggle in Cuba.

  The footnotes in this edition were added by the Che Guevara Studies Center, but some of the footnotes to the letters are taken from his father’s (Ernesto Guevara Lynch) book, published as Aquí va un soldado de América in 1987. Unfortunately, it is impossible to explain all those people and events referred to in this diary and the letters.

  Myrna Torres, who is now resident in Cuba, collaborated in the revision of the parts of this diary that cover the period in Guatemala and Mexico.

  Where the diary and letters have been excerpted this is indicated by elipses in square brackets.

  This diary was left incomplete because of Ernesto’s momentous decision to join the Cuban revolutionaries in their struggle for the liberation and total independence of their homeland. On November 25, 1956, Ernesto (now called “Che”) left Mexico with the Cubans who were about to initiate a guerrilla struggle against the Batista dictatorship.

  The voyage on the leaky cabin cruiser Granma and the first encounters with Batista’s troops are the opening chapters of his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (Ocean Press, 2006).

  Ocean Press

  A Note to the Reader

  This book, originally published in Spanish as Otra Vez [Once Again], is a text of an intimate or testimonial character, indispensable to penetrate the iron-willed personality that Ernesto Guevara de la Serna forged for himself with the written word as his constant accomplice. Laced with his irony and his wit is a deep perceptiveness of his surroundings in his quest to discover the Americas, offering us a multi-dimensional panorama of his own future imbued with thought and action.

  This diary was preceded by the other reconstructed chronicles of his first trip around the continent of Latin America with Alberto Granado, so full of youthful spirit, in which he describes “the joyful impulse that overcame us to be lost on the horizon of the Americas.”

  This second travel diary offers to readers the prelude to the development of the fully formed revolutionary Ernesto became. It might have been reworked as a more polished manuscript as was the case with The Motorcycle Diaries but that did not happen for various reasons. Nevertheless, the publication of this book provides an invaluable histo
rical legacy testifying to crucial events during Che’s travels through “Our Great America.”

  To assist the reader, we have added a number of letters and appendices so that the full profundity and tone of the young author’s reflections and viewpoint become evident as he charts the course of his future, a future that becomes forever linked to one of the most important events of the 20th century, the Cuban revolution.

  In his eagerness to immerse himself in his surroundings, Che’s passion for writing was always vitally complemented by his photography. This book, therefore, also includes previously unpublished photographs of his travels, as living testimony of the diversity of his experiences and his desire to record them as images that express his fine sensibility and passion to capture everything that excited him.

  Che Guevara Studies Center

  Havana

  Foreword

  Alberto Granado

  It is a difficult task to write the foreword to a book whose author’s work and life made him a paradigm of a human being. One faces the temptation to transform that person into some kind of myth that is unrelated to the reality of his life. This challenge is even greater when one had the great fortune of participating in those “extravagant dream trips” into concrete reality.1

  Those of us who enjoyed his friendship and were close enough to perceive the moral and intellectual qualities that set him above the ordinary run of humankind should, however, always remember that he was a man and only a man, not a mythical being.

  Bearing this in mind, I accept the responsibility as an old friend—from as long ago as October 1942—of presenting this diary of his second Latin America journey, which with some premonition he gave the title “Otra Vez” [Once Again].

  In this vivid account, the reader constantly encounters the flesh-and-blood Ernesto Guevara with all the temerity of his 25 years. Various aspects of the emerging personality are revealed, as he sets out to confront all the challenges of the journey along with his friend Carlos Ferrer (Calica)2: “two distinct wills extending out into the Americas, not knowing exactly what it is they seek, nor in which direction it lies.”