The Argentine was injured in a strange incident in Pinar del Río, and the US president rejected the CIA’s plans.
14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 19 April 2025 — The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 is celebrated with reluctance on one side and remembered with disappointment on the other. This year has been an exception. Several events—the most powerful of which was the declassification of the “JFK Papers” in the Unites States—have fueled rumors about what really happened during those days when, for many, Fidel Castro consolidated his absolute authority.
Old historical issues have returned to public conversation: the strange absence of Ernesto Che Guevara in the defense against the 2506 Assault Brigade; the degree of responsibility of John F. Kennedy in the defeat of the invaders, who still call him a “traitor” to the Cuban cause; the initial disagreements and disputes within the regime’s high command; and, finally, the campaign of interference —discreet, though not secret—carried out by Castro in the region.
Luis Hernández Serrano, a heavyweight in pro-government journalism, came out this week to defend the official explanation for Guevara’s absence at Girón. The story couldn’t be more far-fetched, but it appears in several Cuban and foreign biographies, such as that of American Jon Lee Anderson.
Supposedly, Che Guevara shot himself accidentally on the eve of the attack, using his Soviet Stechkin pistol. The bullet hit him in the face. “I don’t know how it happened, but I dropped the pistol and it went off, that’s the absolute truth,” he explained to the surgeon who treated him, Orlando Fernández.
The fact that José Arigbay, the second-in-command in Pinar del Río, gave the doctors the news suggests that the incident took place somewhere in that province. According to Hernández Serrano, the emergency operation was also performed at the provincial hospital in Pinar del Río.
“The lead entered through his left cheek. They were going to examine the wound with a scalpel to determine its possible trajectory,” the surgeon said at the time. “There is no paralysis. There are no signs of neurological disorders. Nor has the duct that carries saliva from the parotid gland to the mouth been injured; not even the jawbone has been touched. The lead traveled the small stretch inside his face.”
A 1966 photograph of Guevara, completely shaved, shows that if the shot actually occurred, it barely grazed him. The portrait suggests a wound, which is inconsistent with Hernández Serrano’s account of the gunshot wound. Anderson confirms that the incident took place, although he emphasizes that the real damage was not caused by the bullet, but by an antihistamine injection that caused toxic shock.
Hernández Serrano argues that this story should be retold because “false arguments have been said, written, and published on the subject, out of ignorance or malicious intent.” In reality, no one has published anything about it in recent weeks. The Bay of Pigs received extensive but chaotic media coverage, and even the surviving photos of the Cuban leadership barely show who is there and who is missing.
However, the author reacts against the “enemies of our socialist process” who claim that it was some kind of dispute with Fidel or Raúl Castro that caused Guevara, in a fit of anger, to disappear from the scene.
Artificial intelligence has its own explanation for the incident. When this newspaper asked Hernández Serrano the same question as the GPT Chat—”Why didn’t Che fight at Girón?”—it was clearer than the journalist.
“At that time, Che Guevara was in the Pinar del Río area, in western Cuba, leading a diversionary operation following a false landing warning in that region. During that deployment, there was an accident involving a Cuban patrol, in which several men were killed by friendly fire, an incident he later regretted.”
Needless to say, Hernández Serrano never alludes to this hunt for this “false lead” or to the accident in western Cuba. It wasn’t until April 20, when the fighting was already over, that Che went to the Bay of Pigs. Why? The official response is another reduction to absurdity: “He traveled to the arenas of combat just because.”
Using the guerrilla fighter who died in 1967 as a myth of the perfect revolutionary has been a constant practice, despite the ambiguity and confusion that characterize these “anecdotes.” The circumstances of the supposed discovery of his remains in Bolivia, for example, provide many reasons to doubt that the bones buried in the Santa Clara mausoleum are actually Guevara’s.
Several independent media outlets have taken the opportunity to return to another classic topic when discussing the Bay of Pigs: Kennedy’s “betrayal.”
But the anniversary hasn’t only been a topic of discussion on the island. Several independent media outlets have taken the opportunity to return to another classic topic when discussing the Bay of Pigs: Kennedy’s “betrayal” of the exiles.
The Democrat’s pusillanimity and his “manifest lack of audacity and leadership”—in the words of an exiled Cuban historian—have been the standard opinion of Kennedy among veterans of the invasion. However, a memo from presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, dated June 30, 1961, and published as part of the “Papers,” blames the CIA for the failure.
In 17 pages, Schlesinger offers a picture of the disorganization and failures of the military operation, denounces its complete lack of coordination with Washington’s policies, and urgently demands that its agents be called to account. These factors fatally damaged the invasion, since the CIA’s vision of the plan—excessively influenced by the opinions of the exiles—differed from that of the White House.
The agency claimed that Cuban support for Castro was low and that it would not be difficult to provoke an internal uprising. History proved them wrong, as at that time the leader’s popularity was at its highest.
“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” Schlesinger lamented.
“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” Schlesinger lamented, referring to the CIA’s pressure to get Washington to authorize its plans, despite disagreeing with them. Furthermore, while praising its top brass, he described its agents in the field—specifically those in contact with the invasion organizers—as “rough and even vicious” men whose actions provoked diplomatic consequences at the highest levels.
Cuba’s history took a radical turn in April 1961. Kennedy was assassinated two years later in Texas; Guevara was killed in Bolivia six years after that, thanks in part to the abandonment of Havana. It was just the beginning of an era in which Fidel Castro cleared his path of friends and enemies in his quest to become one of the most powerful men on the continent.
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