The Death of Che Guevara Read Free

people say about him? How do they live?) Fidel Castro, a courageous man, brings charges against Batistain the Cuban courts, accusing him of violating the Constitution. (Castro’s gesture, his tactic, will become theory: a people’s war cannot be begun until every hope of legal redress has been exhausted.) General Perez Jimenez takes over Venezuela by coup. In Bolivia a force made up of Indians, peasants, miners, and cadre of the Movement for a National Revolution smash the regular army and bring Paz Estenssoro to power. (Pieces of a new interpretaion: if power belongs to the army, or those who can purchase the army, then only another armed force can defeat the regular army, gain power for the people. In Latin America the peasant will be the base of the Revolution.) In Argentina, Peron’s policies, the corruption of his government, and the opposition of the industrialized countries have crippled the Argentine economy. Land reform begins in China. In Guatemala, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman signs a land-reform bill expropriating 225,000 acres of United Fruit Company land, for distribution to the peasantry. The United Fruit Company, and the State Department of the United States, express their displeasure. The United States takes over the financing of French forces in Vietnam. (Greece, Macedonia, Rome, Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, as all schoolchildren know, had empires.) In Argentina, Eva Peron, Protector of the Forsaken, Defender of the Workers, Guiding Light of the Children, dies. Peron, perhaps not sensitive enough to the country’s feelings, takes up with a series of attractive women. 1953 Fidel Castro, a reckless man, leads a hundred twenty people in an attack against the Moncada barracks in Santiago. They plan to seize arms, and by their actions spark a general uprising. The attack occurs during the confusion of carnival time. The rebels, disguised in carnival costumes, had planned to emerge from the crowd, and move on the barracks. Badly coordinated, poorly armed, the insurgents lose their way in the streets of Santiago. Those who make it to the barracks are defeated by the soldiers. The rebel reinforcements, wandering in the unfamiliar streets, never arrive. Most of the insurgents are captured, tortured, and then killed by the police. Fidel Castro, a fortunate man, escapes to the mountains, and is not discovered until after the Bishop of Santiago has interceded to stop the executions. Fidel Castro, isolated, is tried in secret for the rebellion. A rhetorical man when menaced, Castro delivers a speech to the court, concluding that “History will absolve me.” He is sentenced to fifteen years in prison on the Isle of Pines. The United States, no longer diverted, has recovered economically from the war. The State Department, and the CIA, begin operations to overthrow the government of Guatemala. They train mercenaries in Honduras for the invasion. Bolivia nationalizes its tin mines and passes land-reform laws that are acceptable to the United States. The Vietnamese Communists have an army now of 125,000. The French have 230,000 soldiers in Vietnam. The main center ofFrench strength is the huge entrenched (and doomed) camp at Dien Bien Phu. 1954 Batista again declares himself President of Cuba. (He takes the commas out of letters, reties his tie. He plays canasta for hours, sitting on the edge of his bed. He has the television stations show more horror movies, his favorites.) Peron begins an attack against the Catholic Church and its power. There is an insurrection in the city of Algiers against the French. The insurrection is quelled. (Certain theoretical proofs must be made in practice.) The war against the French will continue in the countryside for seven more years. In Vietnam Dien Bien Phu falls, overrun by the Communist forces. (The country surrounds the city: a children’s nursery rhyme.) Peron makes all labor decrees of his government binding on the now powerless unions. General Castillo Armas,