In a few words, he had demolished the doubt over whether he was an adventurer in search of glory and profit, or a mercenary in the service of foreign causes. The suspicion of imperial penetration of some description or other vanished. Masetti brought this up. ‘What about Fidel’s communism?’ he asked. ‘Fidel isn’t a communist. Politically you could call him a revolutionary nationalist’, answered Che.
The programme continued with Fidel Castro, who was the main dish. But I only had ears for Che, that resonant voice I was hearing for the first time, the voice of truth. Fidel was more grandiloquent, added to which his Cuban accent had something unreal, distant, about it. He was the leader and therefore somehow out of reach. Fidel was dignity standing tall, talking to a dormant America. But the other voice spoke to me personally, from conscience to conscience.
The Cuban Revolution became the focal point of my politics. I began copying articles and sought out Masetti’s recently published book. The interviews inspired me to go to Cuba the following year and find the truth for myself. But meanwhile, there were new developments. Encircled by Che’s troops, the city of Santa Clara fell on the last day of December, 1958. The dictator Batista boarded a plane at dead of night and flew off into the arms of Uncle Sam. The Cuban Revolution exploded with a force that eradicated any ambiguous or reactionary doubts about the need to bring about social change and replace the power structures underpinned by imperialism. It exploded like a depth charge and, at the same time, a forbidden fruit. Both those defending multinational interests and the man on the street pricked up their ears at this unique event, so different from the pacific, fraudulent, controlled elections by pact, which history had accustomed us to. The lines of dominance and dependence had always been passed from hand to anxious hand between the political agents of local aristocracies. These usual gentlemen’s agreements, between demons and bandits, seemed about to be torn up. The Latin American Communist Parties initially criticized the ‘militarist’, ‘putschist’ experiment in Cuba as petty bourgeois deviation. But when faced with the spontaneous support of the people and the growing prestige of the Revolution’s young leaders, they finally realized it was a gift from heaven come to rejuvenate their tired discourses, and decided to appropriate it. The cultural establishment, as we have seen, burst out in praises, odes, hymns, and even adulatory red masses, beginning with the canonization of the Communist Party, and the control and administration of revolutionary fervour by the Central Committee.
Meanwhile, democratic channels were closing again in Argentina. The union bureaucracy lurched between manipulating the masses and flirting with the army, capitalism and the brutal Peronist right-wing. Factory occupations, strikes in packing plants, sackings and bankruptcies all made the political air unbreathable, accompanied by deafening background music courtesy of the pipe-bombs. The government took control of the CGT (the principal trade union movement), handing it over to select members of the Peronist bureaucracy and pro-imperialist unions, with the State Internal Disorder Plan (CONINTES) already in place. The most combative unions were now in open confrontation with three groups: the government, the army and the union bureaucracy. The army patrolled the streets of Mendoza, pointing machine guns at passers-by, while I put the finishing touches to my plans to go to Cuba.
My Journey to the Island: April 1961
Feverish, almost conspiratorial, activity possessed us. Claudia and I had to get money together and find a way of travelling that fitted our limited means. An English passenger shipping line sailed from the port of Valparaiso in Chile to Southampton, England, and after navigating the Panama Canal, stopped at Havana. The Pacific Line’s Queen of the Sea was making its last voyage before being withdrawn from service. A travel agency in Mendoza made the arrangements to buy the tickets.
Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US had been broken off, and the latter was putting pressure on the rest of Latin America to follow suit. The ‘concerto’ of nations opposed to Cuba had begun under the US baton. La Coubre, a French ship carrying the first shipment of arms bought in Belgium by Cuba, exploded at Havana docks killing a hundred and leaving several hundred wounded. In this uncertain climate, we packed our belongings and confirmed our reservations. We wanted to get there as soon as possible. If we had to fight to defend the Cuban Revolution, we were ready. Cuba was so fashionable that news of it was more up to date than Stock Exchange information. We knew that visas for Cuba were controlled by the good will of the Latin American Communist Parties who, in a rush of inter-party ardour for the Cuban Communist Party (PSP), had taken the task upon themselves. In other words, the more recommended by the Communist International you were, the better. The idea, which went against the spirit of the Revolution, was justified by the fact that the communists were the only organized political force able to guarantee the level of revolutionary purity or sympathy, or at least that was the idea. So I resorted to an old school friend, Petiso García, who happened to be the son of the secretary of the local Communist Party, no less. I went to see him but came away empty-handed. In what appeared to be social-bureaucratic practice, he greeted me at the door but did not invite me in. I asked him to explain to his father that I needed a certificate of good moral standing to present if need be. Petiso duly went in only to come out with a recommendation from his father not to go to Cuba: ‘it is a uniquely Cuban experience that has nothing to do with us. We have our own reality; we need to put our own house in order first.’ That was a no, then. This negative from the party supremo stymied any other possibility. We left with no recommendation whatsoever.
The departure date was 15 April 1961, the same day as the air attack on Havana, a taste of the invasion to come two days later. The ship’s radio had a worrying tendency to interrupt the anodine musak with hysterical communiqués in English on the situation in Cuba. But at one stage during the afternoon, there was a news flash in Spanish which reported the bombing, though with no details as to the consequences. That is why my memory of the first days on board was zero, a black hole, no images. Docking at Callao, passengers were told they had half a day to see the city of Lima, to which we would be taken by a shipping company bus. In Lima I searched for a newspaper to dispel my anxieties, only to find one that talked of an invasion of Cuba by the Yankee navy from Nicaragua. Back on board, there was an atmosphere of euphoria among the passengers and crew. The latter thought the stopover in Cuba would be apocalyptic – all fiery mulattas and rum. The passengers were sorry they would miss the chance to see the barbudos in the flesh, but thanked heaven the communist threat would be over. There was nothing for me to do but watch the coast rising and falling over the bows. The next morning, news flashes came thick and fast then became increasingly sparse as the day went on. The dining room looked like the Titanic as we crossed the Equator. Who knows if the popping champagne corks and bubbling laughter at dinner were celebrating the crossing or a victory for debauchery. Judging by the bulletins, the war in Cuba was still going on. But the paucity and ambiguity of the news, plus the faces of the ship’s officers, revived my hopes. A few days later, we reached Balboa, port of entry to the Panama Canal.
Again they announced that passengers interested in seeing Panama City would be taken by bus to the city’s main street in the morning, and returned in time for dinner. Crossing the city by bus, I noticed a modern building with a sign saying ‘Anthropological and Archeological Museum’ and right beside it a kiosk selling cigarettes and newspapers. We made a bee-line for it. The kiosk, I mean. There was no dark tobacco on board, and the Negros we had brought with us had gone up in smoke amid the bombing and disembarking. I couldn’t smoke American cigarettes, so our first task was to replenish our stock. The kiosk attendant was a garrulous fellow with a Caribbean accent. While showing me his range of dark tobacco, he asked the fatal question. ‘Where are you from, chico?’ ‘Argentina’, I replied with quiet pride. ‘Coño, you’re Argentine!’ he shrieked and proceeded to slag off Argentines and their mothers. He ended up throwing a handful of what looked like dollars