Che’s Bolivian Diary – The Lost Episodes (Part IV)

July 1, 1967

They say that in capitalist countries, a lot of intelligence can be picked up in the men’s room. It’s not so dissimilar on the frontline of the revolution, here in the Bolivian wilderness.

I was relieving myself behind some bushes yesterday, and could hear Julio and Felipe chatting nearby, as they cleaned their weapons. Their conversation centered on my relationship with Tania, a comrade who had made her way from La Paz and arrived in our camp late last week. Tania and I had met in East Germany several years ago, and her admiration had blossomed into love. But what of it? I am not only the world’s most charismatic revolutionary; I am also a man, and I have to admit, my feelings for her were strong, as well. After all, there aren’t any cold showers in the jungle – except when it rains, and it wasn’t raining the day Tania came swishing into camp wearing those hip-hugging fatigues, her long, dark hair tied loosely behind her beret, her eyes moist with hero worship. Anyway, I attended to the conversation of my men.

Felipe: “Well, I think it’s disgusting. Here we are, trying to bring the workers’ paradise to these filthy, ungrateful peasants, and Ché spends his time in his tent canoodling with Tania.”

Julio: “Tell me about it! You can hear them all over the camp. All that theatrical moaning and yelling: ‘Oh! Oh! Storm the winter palace, my vanguard of the proletariat! Oh! Oh!’”

Felipe: “Haw! And the thing is, Ché’s the only one who doesn’t know that she’s faking it.”

Julio: “I also heard somewhere that she’s a KGB plant. I know the Russians are our allies, but why would they want to spy on Ché? I don’t trust her.”

I had heard enough. This was potentially very serious business. I took an old copy of Granma from my back pocket and tore off a big piece to wipe with. I was so distracted by what I had heard, that it wasn’t until I finished cleaning myself that I noticed the piece of newspaper I had used featured a page-sized picture of Fidel. No offense, jefe!

I returned to my tent, drew the flap back, and marched in, determined to have it out with Tania. It was quite possible that Felipe and Julio had just picked up some idle, ill-informed gossip, but I couldn’t take any chances.

She was lying on the cot, propped up on the bundle of clothes we used as a pillow. Her left hand cupped her right elbow, and she was holding a smoldering cigarette. Her black eyes gleamed at me with adoration, and although she was a brunette, the way her long raven tresses fell over one eye reminded me of the bourgeois blond American actress Veronica Lake. She was wearing an olive-drab tank-top and those little red panties with the gold hammer and sickle design that made me want to howl for the dictatorship of the proletariat. For a moment, I felt my resolve weakening, but I steeled myself against my baser urges and confronted her.

“Tania. Is it true? Are you . . . faking it?”

She gave me a melting look, tossed her cigarette on the ground, and held her hands out to me. “Che . . . baby. Come to Tania! I’ll show you who’s faking!”

Later, after the . . . “withering away of the state” . . . we shared a cigarette. She cuddled up to me, and I stroked her lovely black hair.

“Che?”

“Yes?”

“Felipe and Julio are showing signs of bourgeois backsliding.” She removed the cigarette from my mouth with her exquisitely long, slender fingers, and took a drag. “Why don’t you have them shot?” she purred.

“Ah, my little heroine of socialist labor! But who, then, would carry our tent? Perhaps, after we have raised the red flag over La Paz.”

“Promise... my stakhanovite stud?”

“I promise.” I rolled over and took her in my arms. “Let’s play ‘hide the stogie’”, I whispered in her ear.

To my surprise, she pushed me gently, but firmly, away.

“Listen, Che, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Ok, I’m listening.”

Tania leaned over the side of the cot and grabbed a magazine from the ground – Popular Mechanics, of all things. She opened it and turned to the ads in the back. “Look at this,” she said, the excitement in her voice mounting.

I took the magazine reluctantly and looked at the advertisement she had pointed out. There was a photograph of a grinning gringo wearing a t-shirt, “Your Message Here” stenciled across the front.

I was puzzled. “Well, yes. So?”

“Darling, this is the solution to our funding problems! The U.S. is honeycombed with enclaves of communists and their sympathizers. We could print a picture of you on the t-shirts, along with a slogan – Viva La Revolución or something - sell them to our supporters in the U.S. and Europe, and use the profits to finance our operations in Bolivia!”

For a moment, I was too stunned to speak; however, I finally found my voice (although, later, I rather wished I hadn’t). “Tania…querida…I’m sorry to have to say it, but that is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life.”

The smile vanished from her face, and she gave me a glare so frosty that it froze my ardor quicker than a double-dose of saltpeter. She quietly closed the magazine and laid it on her lap; her words were now like drops of hydrochloric acid, falling steadily on the tenderest part of my amour-propre. “Permit me to remind you… comrade…that funds from Havana have been few and far between, and that your own efforts to raise money locally have been something considerably less than a smashing success. You remember the bank robbery – pardon me, the attempted bank robbery - in Cochabamba, of course.”

“Hey, listen, that was Julio who was fobbed off with a sack of blank deposit slips.”

“And the mail truck heist?”

“You have to admit, we at least collected some interesting stamps.”

“Great. You can use them to mail letters home from prison when you run out of food and ammunition and have to turn yourself in, half starved, to the first gap-toothed rural cop you can find.”

I took a deep breath and counted silently to ten. I knew this would take patience and finesse. “Tania, my little red cupcake, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your trying to help. But you are talking to the preeminent revolutionary strategist in the world, you know. Now, why don’t you stop worrying your pwitty widdle head over such matters and let’s get down to that other business we were discussing; how does that sound?”

* * *

Night had fallen some time ago, and the men’s cook fires were dying down. Julio and Felipe were rolled in their blankets snoring. I nudged Julio with my boot.

“Huh? Wha…whazza matter? Oh…it’s you, comandante. What’s up?”

“Move over.” I threw my bedroll on the ground, climbed into it, and wrapped it tightly around myself. Julio was looking at me quizzically and was about to speak, when I silenced him. “Just shut up and go back to sleep.”