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Muller describes that the escape responded to a pattern of behavior in Guevara. Asthmatic since childhood, he had incorporated in his psychology the desire to move away from the suffocation of the center towards the periphery. Among the derivations of this escape is his constant abandonment of home and the family in search of adventure.

In 1965, Guevara had already disappeared from public life. He was in hiding in Prague after the failure of the guerrilla in the Congo, which Egyptian President Gamal Abder Nasser had mocked in a previous interview. The president had asked him if he believed himself to be Tarzan, because “a white man like him had no business” among the Congolese guerrillas, who smeared dawa magic ointment and got drunk with pombe to be invulnerable to bullets.

After the African failure, Guevara begins to plan his incursion into Latin America, with the aim of taking Argentina as a base for a continental revolution. However, Castro and Manuel Piñeiro Barbarroja –- the famous architect of Cuban State Security -– redirected him to Bolivia, a country that did not offer favorable conditions for the guerrilla focus that Guevara intended to organize.

Disguised as a bald and myopic economist, Ernesto Guevara landed in La Paz on November 3, 1966.

Mario Monje, president of the Bolivian Communist Party, had held several meetings in Havana with Castro, Guevara and other officials in the first five years of the 1960s. In them he had argued that Bolivia would not respond to any revolution because the peasants owned their lands and the Party was against the armed struggle.

For this reason, Muller argues, the interference in Bolivia was a strategic suicide, since not even the communist cadres themselves supported the guerrillas. In a meeting with Monje in Ñancahuazú, the Bolivian leader leaves enraged by the guerrilla’s authoritarianism. Guevara, of course, interprets it as a betrayal of his movement.

Monje informs Fidel of the rupture –- which the American Central Intelligence Agency would also find out about -– but he never reveals the letter to the guerrillas, who are already going through their worst moments. Muller notes that, in the famous Diario del Che in Bolivia, Guevara writes feverishly, over and over again: “Total lack of contact with Manila.” Manila was the code name for Havana and Fidel Castro.

After an accusation, the guerrillas engage in combat with the Bolivian army in the Quebrada del Churo, on October 7, 1967. Guevara is captured by the military, who order his execution, despite the US request to keep him alive.

Guevara’s death was the result of what Muller calls “links of abandonment” between Fidel Castro and the Argentine. Because of his inflexibility and his criticism of the Soviet Union – Guevara preferred the alliance with China – he had become undesirable on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The writer affirms that the abandonment was a tactical procedure that Castro carried out frequently. That is why his book includes a long and documented list of historical figures whom Fidel eliminated or dislodged – from Huber Matos to General Arnaldo Ochoa – considering them an obstacle.

“El Diario del Che en Bolivia,” according to Muller, “is the great prosecutor against Fidel Castro. There is no need for subterfuge or speculation or inventiveness. The document is available to everyone. Read it.”

Lastly, the book contains a collection of key files to understand the estrangement between Guevara and Castro, and how the latter turned the former, after his death, into one of the most invoked amulets by the international left.

The master move came from Castro himself, who built a mausoleum in Santa Clara in 1992 to house the supposed remains of the guerrilla and those of his fallen comrades. It was the definitive step to consolidate the romantic myth of Che Guevara and attract those nostalgic for communism to visit the Island.

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The author of ¿Por qué Fidel abandonó al Che?, the journalist and professor Alberto Muller, was born in 1939 in Havana and spent 15 years imprisoned in Castro’s dungeons. Even today, an official encyclopedia defines him as a “terrorist.” When he met Jorge Luis Borges in 1983, in Caracas, and they talked about the Island, the Argentine writer pronounced the phrase with which Muller titled his memoirs: “Poor Cuba!”

¿Por qué Fidel abandonó al Che?  Editorial Betania-Ediciones Universal, Madrid-Miami, 2022, 227 pages.

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In the dungeon, the boys – of all colors, religions and ages – asked him if God had crossed Cuba off the map. “I told them that the opposite was true, and we began to pray together and talk,” adds the priest. “I was able to understand those young men, what they were risking. And I knew from their expressions that they would not stop risking.”

From the Special Period, the Cuban began an unstoppable “path of liberation”, reflects the priest. However, the most urgent challenge is “to believe in politics, to believe that a human association can be made with certain rules. We cannot think only of the family, which is perhaps the group to which Cubans advance in association, but also in the country.

For this priest, 11J was a “bright day,” which awakened the old happiness of Cubans. However, some hope gained in the protests “was frustrated by what happened around 15N [15 November].”

“We cannot despair,” he adds, “because the path through violence may be quick, but less durable. The peaceful path is slower, but having the conviction of the hearts and the agreement of men and the wills of all is more successful, more harmonious.”

In Havana, another priest, Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, was also moved to walk with the people during 11J. “I remember that afternoon I left the streets for an hour to go celebrate mass. It was a mystical moment, because spiritually accompanying this people is also urgent.”

The social networks, the growing burden and the generational change are transforming the Cuban reality, he thinks. In addition to light, 11J brought a lot of pain, both for those who “did not know how to peacefully claim their rights,” and for those who were supposed to be “guarantors of citizen order” and ended up calling for “brother against brother” violence.

Several photographs show the priest standing at the entrance to the police stations in Havana, demanding proof of life from the disappeared. Many of the prisoners were Catholic lay people, people of faith and culture, and minors, people about which the establishment in which they were detained was not even known.

It was decisive then, recalls Father Jorge Luis, that the Conference of Religious Men and Women of Cuba organized an accompaniment service for prisoners and their families. In a year of work, the Conference has provided numerous legal, psychological and counseling resources to families who have felt helpless in the face of the harsh sentences of 11J. This service has put the Catholic Church, regularly monitored at all levels, in the sights of State Security.

However, “the repression has been very harsh. Certainly international and media pressure have managed to reduce some sentences, but even so, they continue to be unjust and morally unacceptable for the most part.”

Father Jorge Luis agrees with his colleague from Camagüey that “the Cuban people must learn to listen and welcome each other. Individual agendas must be postponed by common agendas. Violence cannot be viewed in any way as a way to solve anything. The civic education of the people is urgent.”

11J surprised Alberto Reyes outside of Cuba, but this priest would have liked to “experience the protests in the first person.” It is no secret that the G2 has a particular viciousness towards him and that his surveillance file must be extensive and thorough. Despite this – and many other misunderstandings, even within the ecclesial environment – ​​Father Alberto is a voice of resistance and radicalism.

“From a distance, I experienced 11J with a mixture of emotions, with joy and hope that the demonstrations would open a path of definitive change,” he tells 14ymedio. Then came the “profound sadness,” “concern and anger at the repression that was unleashed, and at the opportunity that the government was once again missing to start a dialogue with civil society that would lead to change.”

Although it does not publicly acknowledge it, the power leadership is also experiencing “a situation of continuous wear and tear.” According to the priest, this political system “has more than demonstrated its inability to build a society that is not only prosperous, but also capable of responding to the most basic aspirations of human beings.”

“We are a tired and worn-out people,” he continues, “we are a people whose life is running out in the struggle for survival; we are a people who have learned to defend ourselves as best we can and who go out to parade and applaud energetically while preparing our definitive emigration from the country. We are a people submerged in misery and precariousness where it becomes increasingly difficult to cultivate the values ​​of the spirit. And we are a people who no longer believe in the empty promises that their rulers insist on repeating.”

A burning issue around 11J has been the attitude of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, accused of weakness in the face of government pressure. Father Jorge Luis, however, assures that “the bishops have interceded a lot, from silence, to help the detainees; they have also spoken in various messages. Their action has been discreet, from anonymity, but they have been present.”.

“In my case,” Father Castor agrees, “my bishop was there both days to get me out of prison,” adding that “many of our laity were also arrested. Many people have expressed approval of our attitude in confronting the authorities in favor of justice, respect, freedom of expression.”

In these three priests a critical spirit and civic roots coexist that they share with many priests and nuns, such as Rolando Montes de Oca or the superior of the Daughters of Charity in Cuba, Nadieska Almeida.

“It is true that not all the pastors have been involved,” recognizes Father Castor, “but you also have to understand the charisms. I believe that there has been a light within the pastors of the Church towards the people. And the people know that they can always find support there.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.