In the morning of 20 April 1967 as three disheveled men hesitantly entered the small farming community of Muyupampa, they were immediately apprehended by the army.1 Their paperwork identified them as journalists; however, their stories, and documents, raised suspicions. George Andrew Roth was a legitimate freelance journalist. Argentine Ciro Roberto Bustos had a forged passport and fake Bolivian press credentials (obtained by Tania).2 Frenchman Régis Debray claimed to be a journalist and professor. Under cursory interrogation, Roth’s legitimacy emphasized that the documents and behavior of the other two were phony. The quick arrests of Debray and Bustos were a severe blow to the strategic goals of the foco.3 In his diary Che wrote: “Danton [Debray] and Carlos [Bustos] fell victim to their own haste, their near desperation to leave, and my lack of energy to stop them, so that communication with Cuba (Danton) has been cut, and the plan of action in Argentina (Carlos) is lost.”4
“Joaquín” (Cuban Comandante Juan Vitalio Acuña Nuñez), from his forged Panamanian passport photo.
The fate of the divided guerrilla foco then became irrevocably linked to what happens to the three separate parties. The arrest of Régis Debray and Ciro Roberto Bustos caused a media frenzy as trial preparations began. The Frenchman got more attention in the international press because of his family connections.5 Joaquín’s (Cuban Comandante Juan Vitalio Acuña Nuñez) “rearguard” first waited as ordered for three days, then resumed movement, searching vainly for Che’s element. Che’s “vanguard,” with the majority of the foco, wandered around the area, searching for Joaquín and inevitably bumped into Bolivian units. Unbeknownst to Che and Joaquín, the fate of the Bolivian foco had been sealed by Debray and Bustos.
Bustos’ sketches prove invaluable to the Bolivian Army for identifying the guerrillas. The drawing of Che was compared to his captured Uruguayan passport and older photos by Bolivian intelligence.
The two “revolutionaries” and journalist provided a wealth of information. Debray confirmed that Che Guevara was leading the insurgency to add more excitement. He was also carrying a coded message for Fidel Castro.6 Most devastating for the foco was a series of sketches Bustos drew of the guerrillas, including Guevara.7 Inti Peredo, one of the few escapees [survivors] later admitted that: “We were … not very surprised that he [Bustos] became a useful collaborator of the army, identifying the bodies of our dead comrades, and making drawings of our faces, in addition to supplying a series of factual descriptions about us.”8 After two years of speculation as to his whereabouts, there was no doubt that the revolutionary “boogeyman,” Che Guevara, was in Bolivia.
The public announcements did little to affect Che’s determination to continue. None of the captured guerrilla diaries define a specific objective for the coming months. One can only surmise that he had a long-range plan and he was sticking to it. The foco mission remained the same; the timetable had merely been accelerated. Instead of creating more base camps and training a larger guerrilla force, fighting would begin with what they had in place. The foco would continue moving and ambush Bolivian army units. They were operating on the premise that as news of the guerrilla victories spread, the peasant population would mobilize to support them, and volunteers would rally to the cause. Guerrilla successes would be the catalyst that solidified support for the growth of the movement. In April, Che wrote: “We had four additional actions, all with positive results in general and one very good: the ambush in which Rubio [unfortunately] died.”9 The foco fight, albeit done separately, continued with Che in charge.
While escorting Debray, Bustos, and Roth to Muyupampa, Che had divided his small force into a vanguard and a rearguard. On 17 April, he detached the rearguard under the command of “Joaquín” (Juan Vitalio Acuña Nuñez). The fifteen-guerrilla rearguard included a doctor, three sick guerrillas (Tania, Moises Guevara, and Alejandro), and the four recently “discharged” Bolivian dregs.11 The rearguard was to rest and wait for the vanguard at the village of Bella Vista for two or three days. That was Che’s plan until he discovered a large army force at Muyupampa and shifted his route northwest towards Ticucha.12 The circuitous route prevented him from rejoining Joaquín’s unit in three days.
Without a radio Joaquín was unable to communicate with Che’s vanguard. With only extremely vague orders, Joaquín left Bella Vista three or four days later, as directed. The two units wandered about the operational area for the next four months looking for one another. Despite losing a third of his foco and most of the supplies (especially critical food and medicines), Che was still upbeat. His end of the month summary for April read: “A month in which everything resolved itself in a normal manner, considering the hazards of guerrilla warfare. The morale is good among all the combatants who have passed their preliminary test as guerrillas.”13
The two guerrilla bands meandered throughout the area looking for each other. Ironically when Joaquín’s rearguard is ambushed and destroyed on 31 August, they were within one or two days of bumping into Che’s vanguard element.
The two units remained on separate courses. During May and June, Che’s vanguard moved north towards the Ñancahuazú base camps over very rugged terrain and defeated small police and Army units at El Pincal, Caraguataenda, Muchiri, and Abapo.14 Most of the movement was done on foot, with a few mules and horses carrying supplies (that eventually became food). At one point they seized a Bolivian oil company truck to speed their movement, but got it stuck after only four or five kilometers. Worse though was losing “a package of dollars [$2,000], which fell from Pombo’s bag,” when they abandoned the truck.15 Despite the victories, life in the field was taking its toll on the guerrillas.
The majority of Che’s vanguard were “Long March” veterans who had not rested sufficiently to regain their strength. Hacking their way through dense underbrush with machetes exhausted them even further. As the force moved, looking for food became a preoccupation. Che cited the various birds and animals shot by his force. The small stock of canned food was sparingly doled out to the fighters. At Ñancahuazú Camp #2 (“Bear” camp) on 7 May, the foco found one undiscovered cache. They had hoped to restock their meager supplies, but “the only food left was the lard. I [Che] felt faint and had to sleep for two hours before I could continue, at a slow and vacillating pace. In general, this was the tenor of the whole march. We ate “lard soup” at the first waterhole. The men are weak, and some of them are suffering from edema [swelling of feet and hands from lack of protein],” wrote Che on 9 May.16 As they continued, the group fell into a pattern.
A Bolivian Army unit searches the Ñancahuazú guerrilla camp #1. The Army kept the area under surveillance in case the foco attempted to return. The Army discovered hidden supply caches as late as August 1967.Che Guevara examines a map in Citanos in an attempt to gain intelligence about the Bolivian Army in the area. At this stage of the foco’s campaign the peasants probably reported the guerrillas presence as soon as they left the village.
Using the Cuban Revolution as his template, Che established a routine. In the small towns along their route of march, the guerrillas would either buy food or seize it as retribution for alleged or perceived cooperation with the government. Che might conduct a small medical clinic using their limited supplies, and conclude the event with a political recruiting speech to the villagers. Most did not understand the high Cuban-Spanish dialect. The ragged band then left.
On the international level, the news of the guerrilla movement was followed. But on the local level, the guerrillas gained no support. Someone usually reported their unit to the police or Army. Wounded Bolivian soldiers were treated and then given a political talk with the other prisoners. The guerrillas took their weapons and clothes and then sent them on their way.17
The lack of food and the unrelenting pace over tough terrain began wearing out the entire group. Che ran out of medicine and suffered violent asthmatic attacks, which incapacitated him. He fought a daily battle with his health. Despite his personal adversity he remained upbeat. In his end of May analysis, Che wrote: ”The guerrilla movement is acquiring a powerful morale, which, if well administered, is a guarantee of success.”18 The June analysis, bolstered by several small military successes was: “The legend of the guerrilla movement continues to grow. Now we are super-men guerrillas.”19 Although there were no recruits, Guevara believed the propaganda effect of his foco would convince the peasants that the revolution was gaining momentum.20
The Bolivian national press covered the guerrilla campaign from beginning to end. The coverage intensified as foreign guerrillas were identified, but there was a media frenzy when Régis Debray and Ciro Bustos were captured.
While Che was deluding himself, the international media frenzy generated by Régis Debray and Ciro Bustos sealed his fate. Debray and Bustos were moved from Camiri to isolation in La Esperanza. Both proved to be intelligence bonanzas, providing detailed information on the foco. Debray’s mother and father came to plead his case in person. American journalists and intellectuals called for Debray’s release on the grounds that he was a correspondent for Mexico’s Sucesos para todos and the French publisher Maspero.21 The widows and children of slain Bolivian soldiers petitioned the president to reinstate the death penalty (abolished in January 1967).22 The President of France, Charles de Gaulle, demanded that President René Barrientos convene a “special tribunal” for Debray because of his “intellectual” status.23 Barrientos testily replied: “It is possible that there in France, and in your generous opinion, he may be considered a young and brilliant university student. Unfortunately here, in Bolivia, we know him only as a meddling subversive gravely implicated in the assassination of twenty-seven soldiers, civilians, and officers of our armed forces, and as a theoretician of violence aimed at destroying institutional order.”24 The guerrilla groups gathered around transistor radios to listen to the news. Several times Che commented that “Debray is talking too much.”25
By September 1967 battery-powered commercial transistor radios were the guerrillas’ only link with the outside world.
Despite the food shortages and personnel losses in June, Che decided to raid Samaipata, almost 80 miles north of Ñancahuazú. The guerrillas blocked the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway on the night of 6 July. After stopping several vehicles and detaining the passengers, a six-man element piled into a truck and headed into Samaipata for supplies. At 11:45 PM they pulled into a truck stop and surprised the police chief, Lieutenant Vacaflor, two policemen, and an Army sergeant at the snack stand. The captured police, the sergeant, and the patrons were stunned when the guerrillas bought them cold drinks. Four guerrillas then marched Lieutenant Vacaflor and the sergeant at gunpoint to the schoolhouse where the Army squad was temporarily billeted. A short firefight ended with one killed, and nine more prisoners. While two guerrillas guarded the squad, the remaining two guerrillas bought food and searched the local pharmacy for medical supplies. Then they loaded the supplies and prisoners into the truck and sped out of town. A few miles from town the prisoners were unloaded and forced to strip off their clothes, before being released. The six guerrillas continued on in the truck, to meet the rest of the force. The reunited foco quickly fled southward on foot.26
The raid was a publicity coup for the guerrillas, which made national and international headlines. “The action took place before the whole village and many travelers in such a way that the news spread like fire,” wrote Che.27 To cover their ineptitude both the mayor and Lieutenant Vacaflor claimed that the famous Che Guevara had led a huge raiding force into town. Although the “eyewitness” reports were wildly exaggerated, the display of operational arrogance by the guerrillas demeaned President Barrientos and the Army. The media proclaimed that the guerrillas were overrunning the southeast and had cut the country’s major east-west highway between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.28
Since President Barrientos could not convince Major Shelton to prematurely commit the Rangers, the Army had to get troops into the region. The Samaipata raid demonstrated that the Army’s tactics were not working. The small isolated garrisons had no radios and communicated with their headquarters using either telephones or the telegraph, both of which were unreliable under the best circumstances. Once these lines were cut by the guerrillas, they could not call for help from a motorized reserve. More and larger composite units were quickly formed and moved into the towns near the “Red Zone,” to cut off access to food. To counter the guerrillas, the Army launched two offensives. The 4th Division in Camiri immediately launched “Operation Cynthia” to aggressively patrol south of the Rio Grande River. As they fled northward during July and August to the Río Grande, Joaquín’s group periodically clashed with these 4th Division patrols. The 8th Division in Santa Cruz did not launch its offensive, “Operation Parabano,” until early August, patrolling north of the river.29
Except for getting a few supplies, no particular military objective was accomplished.30 Ironically, the raiders did not accomplish their main task; they did not find Che’s asthma medication.31 Since Joaquín had medical supplies, the vanguard had to find the rearguard. But following the Samaipata raid, Che’s group moved southwest while Joaquín’s unit traveled northwest. The two forces would never meet.
Nearing the end: 7 July – September 1967
While Che’s force raided Samaipata, Joaquín was trying to move his detachment back into the Ñancahuazú area, as elements of the 4th Division doggedly pursued them. Morale problems plagued the rear guard. Many of the Bolivians were disenchanted with the hardships and dangers of life as a revolutionary. On 9 July, the Army surprised Joaquín’s guerrillas while they rested in Iquira Canyon. Forced to flee, they left behind a number of documents: a unit roster, photographs, and a codebook. The next day the soldiers found the guerrillas and attacked again, killing a Bolivian.32 As Joaquín’s rearguard fled northward with the army in close pursuit, two of the “discharged dregs,” Chingolo and Eusebio, deserted and surrendered. They subsequently led the soldiers to some of the hidden Ñancahuazú supply caches.33
As Joaquín fled south, Che was moving southeast towards Florida and Moroco. On 27 and 30 July, Che’s vanguard clashed with Army patrols. Both sides suffered casualties, but the guerrillas were being attrited – two dead and one wounded. More significantly, during the confusion of the second fight, Che’s group lost eleven rucksacks with critical food, medicine, and ammunition. Most critical was the loss of their tape recorder to collect coded messages from Cuba.34 Their isolation was now almost complete. The short wave radio had been broken during movement and could only receive. Che had to admit in his July analysis that ”the negative aspects of last month prevail.” The vanguard, now reduced from the original 31 to 22, made a final attempt to find Joaquín.35
The remnants of the foco crossing the Río Grande River in mid-September 1967. Che Guevara is third from the right, without a rucksack. Every river crossing meant added risk for the fatigued guerrillas.
Meanwhile, Joaquín’s group now turned north to the Rio Grande, continuing to look for Che. At the home of Honorato Rojas, Joaquín bought food and asked where the best fording site across the Río Grande was. The peasant explained that it was possible to wade across the river at El Vado del Yeso.36 Joaquín asked Rojas to mark the fording site with a white flag if it was safe to cross, or with a red flag if it was not. Rojas agreed and crossed the ford. Once on the other side, he set up the white flag. Safe across the river Rojas ran to an Army patrol base to tell the commander, Captain Mario Vargas Salinas, about the guerrillas’ plan.37 Captain Vargas quickly moved his 41-man force to El Vado del Yeso.
Just before dusk on 31 August 1967, Joaquín’s group appeared at the ford. Seeing Rojas’ white marker, they did not secure the opposite bank, but began to slowly wade across the ford in a file. When the majority of the guerrillas were in the water Vargas sprang the ambush from both banks of the river. Most the group, including Tania, Joaquín, Moisés Guevara, and Braulio, were killed in the opening salvo. The lone survivor, “Paco,” one of the “dregs,” was captured and immediately cooperated with the Army.38 It would be days before Che learned about the disaster.
Che poses with his mule Chico in September 1967. Ill from the effects of asthma and malnutrition he could no longer endure the pace and had to ride to keep up with the vanguard.
Ironically during August, Che had turned southwest towards the Río Grande River. Desperate for his asthma medicine he sent a small patrol to Ñancahuazú to get some from the supply caches. Shortly after the patrol departed, he heard on a transistor radio that two deserters from Joaquín’s group had led the army to the original campsite.39 The Bolivian soldiers discovered Che’s medicine, as well as documents, several rolls of film, and weapons. The news was a severe blow to his morale. ”Now I am condemned to suffer asthma for an indefinite period. It [the loss of medicine] is the hardest blow they have given us.”40 He was so weak that he had to ride a pack mule.
Hunger and thirst plagued them in the inhospitable terrain north of the Rio Grande. They ate anything they could find. “They [the hunters] caught a condor and a rotten cat. Everything was eaten together with the last piece of the anteater meat. I am quite ravenous,” lamented Che.41 The patrol sent to the cache sites returned empty handed, but they had current intelligence on the Army. The foco, now reduced to 22, needed every man. Unaware of the destruction of Joaquín, Che summarized August as ”without a doubt, the worst month we have had so far in this war.” The usual optimism and confidence was missing. But the demoralized and exhausted vanguard continued forward.42
After clashes with Bolivian army patrols on 3 and 6 September near Masicuri Bajo, Che and his men moved back to the northwest. En route to the village of Alto Seco, the guerrillas were jolted by two radio broadcasts. One detailed the ambush of Joaquín’s group. The second announced the arrest of 16 members of the La Paz support network. The documents and photographs collected by Bolivia’s intelligence service, police, and army had finally paid off.43 More bad news for the guerrillas was yet to come.
Unknown to Che and the vanguard, the Ranger Battalion was ready to join the fight. On 15 September 1967, the 2nd Ranger Battalion completed the 19-week counter-insurgency training provided by the 8th Special Forces Group Mobile Training Team.44 After the 17 September graduation ceremony the battalion would be sent to the 8th Division’s area to hunt down the remaining guerrillas.45 By then, the guerrilla threat had lost most of its potency.
The dejected remnants of the foco finally reached La Higuera, near the Río Grande River, on 26 September. As they entered the village, Che noticed that it was nearly deserted, except for a few women. While securing the telegraph office, Coco Peredo found a telegram warning the mayor that the guerrillas were in the area. As the guerrillas fled, an Army unit ambushed them just outside of town. In their efforts to escape annihilation, they lost three men, all killed, including the invaluable Coco, one of the few Bolivian leaders.46 Che summarized September as a repeat of August, except that the peasants refused to help and were “ turning into informers.”47
Of the three foco elements, two were effectively neutralized. The Debray-Bustos case was slowly moving along through the court (it would last until November).48 The trial had brought negative international attention to Bolivia. President Barrientos and the Army leadership dreaded a repetition of the international leftist sympathy for Che Guevara if he was captured. Some Army officers feared that another highly publicized trial would rally dissident factions in Bolivia to mount another revolt.49 The elimination of Joaquin’s force had given the Army and the government a large morale boost. The Bolivian Army that Che had considered the worst in South America had proved better than he thought and was about to send an elite counterinsurgency force to deliver the coup de grace.
ENDNOTES
Paco Ignacio Taibio II, translated by Martin Michael Roberts, Guevara, Also Known as Che (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 511; Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 73; “The Case of Regis Debray,” Time, 28 July 1967, online article, http://www.time.com/printout/0,8816,837239,00.html.[return]
Daniel James, Che Guevara (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), 204; Richard Harris, Death of a Revolutionary, Che Guevara’s Last Mission. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1970), 77; According to Daniel James the fake Bolivian press credentials were obtained by Tania through her network of “fellow travelers.” That included President Barrientos’ brother in law, Marcelo Galindo, in the Ministry of Press and Information (James, Guevara, 204; Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 77; Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara, A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 765.[return]
Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 73; Gary Prado Salmón (trans by John Deredita), The Defeat of Che Guevara (New York: Praeger, 1987), 88-89.[return]
Ernesto Guevara, edited by Daniel James, The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other captured Documents (New York: Stein and Day, 1968), 152.[return]
Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 94-96; Ignacio, Guevara, Also Known as Che, 519; “Unwitting Betrayal,” Time, 24 November 1967, online article, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9171,844152,00.html; “Operation Cynthia,” Time, 28 July 1967, online article, http://www.time.com/printout/0,8816,837099,00.html; Jean Lartéguy (translated by Stanley Hochman), The Guerrillas (New York: Signet Publishing, 1972), 219.[return]
Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 95-97; Prado, The Defeat of Che Guevara, 95-97.[return]
Inti Peredo, “My Campaign with Che,” in Ernesto Che Guevara, edited by Mary-Alice Waters, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1994), 368.[return]
James, Diaries, 151 and 144; James, Guevara, 254-255; in that ambush.[return]
James, Guevara, 222-227 and 248-249; If one counts the combatants there are 21 foreigners, 20 Bolivians, and the 4 Bolivian “discharged dregs,” as Che called them.[return]
James, Diaries, 43 and 131; Paco is José Castillo Chávez, Pepe is Julio Velasco Montana, Chingolo is Hugo Choque Silva, and Eusebio is Eusebio Tapia Aruni. Note: The exact numbers in Joaquín’s rearguard still vary, with numbers from ten to seventeen; Inti Peredo, “My Campaign with Che,” in Guevara, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, 367.[return]
James, Diaries, 143; Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 105; Inti Peredo, “My Campaign with Che,” in Guevara, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, 369; Prado, The Defeat of Che Guevara, 85-86.[return]
Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 71; “Letter to the Government of the Bolivian Republic on the behalf of Régis Debray,” The New York Review of Books, Volume 9, number 1, 13 July 1967, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12024; Prado, The Defeat of Che Guevara, 95-99.[return]
John D. Waghelstein, “A Theory of Revolutionary Warfare and its Application to the Bolivian Adventure of Che Guevara,” (Master’s Thesis, Cornell University, 1973), 87.[return]
Harold T. Carpenter, 8th Special Forces Group, telephone interview by Dr. Charles H. Briscoe, 29 October 2008, Las Vegas, NV, digital recording, USASOC History Office Classified Files, Fort Bragg, NC.[return]
Carpenter interview, 29 October 2008. This was a composite unit hurriedly thrown together from the NCO School in Cochabamba. It had two officers, three NCOs, three NCO candidates, seventeen soldiers from the 12th Infantry Regiment, and sixteen from the 8th Cavalry Group. Prado, The Defeat of Che Guevara, 151; James, Diaries, 48-50.[return]
Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 119-120; Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, 724-726; Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 118-120; The Bolivian, “Paco,” José Catillo Chavez, was one of the “discharged dregs.” There are reports that a second guerrilla survived the river ambush, Freddy (“Ernesto”) Maymura. He was supposedly shot by the soldiers after he surrendered, Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, 724-725; Prado, The Defeat of Che Guevara, 150-152.[return]
“Unwitting Betrayal,” Time, 24 November 1967, online article, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9171,844152,00.html.[return]
Harris, Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 128-129; Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, 736-737.[return]
Daniel James, Che Guevara (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), 222-227 and 248-249; Ernesto Guevara, edited by Daniel James, The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents (New York: Stein and Day, 1968), 324-327.[return]
