Che Wants to See You. Ciro Bustos

to the Socialist Republic of Algeria. There was upheaval while he got the embassy up and running. At first he came to the house every day, but his presentation to the diplomatic corps put an end to his free time and his visits. Papito had brought several belated messages, and reading them, and others he had received afterwards, sent Masetti into a fury all over again. Still no departure plans! Still calls for patience, even messages from Che saying just that. Masetti’s mistrust went into overdrive, and he sent Furry to Havana with orders to speak to Che, and only to Che.

      The messages clearly contradicted each other. In one that I helped decipher – the phrase is engraved on my memory – Che says: ‘Nuestra atalaya se hunde lenta pero inexorablemente’ (Our vantage point is slowly but inexorably sinking), and he added that by now we should be in our zone of operation in northern Argentina. The ‘vantage point’ referred to was the island of Cuba, the highest point, from where one could see most clearly. By ‘sinking’, he did not only mean ‘defeated’ or ‘invaded’ but also that something unique was ‘disappearing’, or ‘being submerged’. Compared to a message like this, the others – which spoke of waiting, being patient, practising, studying, eating well – did not make much sense. Furry played the diplomatic courier, taking the messages. He and Che examined the collected messages together, one by one. In a meeting I attended when Furry came back a week later, he said that Che had gone through the decoded originals saying: ‘This is mine’, ‘This isn’t’, ‘Nor is this’, ‘This one is mine’, etc. That is, as Masetti explained, ‘Colorado is conning us’. Colorado was Barbaroja Piñeiro.

      Furry brought precise instructions. Che would take care of finalizing the basic support infrastructure, i.e. buying the finca (farm) near the Argentine/Bolivian border, equipment, weapons. He authorized Masetti to draw up his own plans, with the help of our Algerian friends, to travel to the destination as soon as he said ‘Now!’ Coordination with the Cuban bureaucracy, still indispensable, should function impeccably from now on. Our group had to travel illegally, with Cuban officials making contacts that were problematic in unfriendly countries. A minimum of infrastructure was needed. So that ‘Ambassador’ Papito did not have to act as messenger, it was decided I would be the link to him, since I was the one with most freedom of movement. Bajtik lent me his car and I went often to the Cuban Embassy, where I was received in all seriousness as the Ambassador’s ‘Soviet’ friend, a good thing to be in those days. The ‘Soviet’ cover, for the benefit of Papito’s staff, was doubtless because of my yellow hair.

      Meanwhile, the group still had internal problems. Miguel showed signs of wanting to get out of his commitment. Since he probably could not find a legitimate way of doing so, he invented a kind of personal incompatibility with Masetti. The atmosphere between them soured and a general irritability infected us all. Stupid problems arose, like competitiveness in sport, which was where Miguel was the stronger. This latent machismo gradually led to open confrontation and an invitation to fight, which Masetti was happy to accept in an improvised boxing ring. Fortunately, a series of gastronomic commitments with the Algerian staff officers relaxed the tension for a couple of weeks.