Hunting Che

Title: Hunting Che – How a US Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World’s Most Famour Revolutionary

Author: Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer

Publisher: Berkley Caliber, 2014 (First published 2013)

ISBN: 9780425257470

Pages: 300

The handsome but grim face of the revolutionary wearing a beret is the most popular personal icon in the world. Many of the people who wear this badge on their tee-shirts don’t know the man or what he fought for – and died for.  Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was an Argentine doctor who abandoned the medical profession to fight alongside Fidel Castro in his rebellion against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Che was made the head of the Cuban National Bank after the Revolution, but his heart was set on spreading the proletarian revolution to all parts of the globe. He fought in Angola in vain but came back to Cuba disillusioned. As relations between him and Castro began to sour, Che Guevara selected Bolivia as his next field of action. Even though the party machinery was weak and he had no prospects of success, Che’s fighters in Bolivia scored a few spectacular gains. Bolivia roped in US Special Forces from their Panama base to help train its elite troops in counterinsurgency. In a span of six months from Che’s activities began, he was hunted down by the Ranger battalion of the Bolivian army. Che surrendered to the troops, but they shot him dead hardly 24 hours later. This book narrates the story of the training mission by US forces and how the troops zeroed in on Che and snatched him from his hideout in its talons. Mitch Weiss is an investigative journalist for the Associated Press. He had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his series that uncovered the longest stint of atrocities carried out by a US fighting unit in the Vietnam War. Kevin Maurer is the author of several books and has seen action in Afghanistan when he was embedded with American troops operating there.

Che and Castro began their revolutionary war from a few humble mountain camps in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba which later spread to all parts of the country with the support of newly recruited fighters from the famished countryside. Within a matter of a few months, Batista had fled. Castro was the leader of the revolution, but Che was its icon. But, behind the noble rhetoric of toppling governments that exploited the people, he was as brutal as any third world dictator. Che was the man in charge of executing political prisoners. He relished the job and dispatched hundreds in cold blood, with their hands firmly tied behind. He justified such brutality with a lofty flourish. “In the arduous profession of a revolutionary, death is a frequent occurrence”, said Che in his book Guerilla Warfare. In spite of this, Che held a special place in the hearts of romantic leftists around the world, and a different spot in those of Cuban exiles who had to flee the land when Castro’s fighters took power in the country and many of their fathers were killed in retaliation by the regime. For them, Che Guevara was a thug, a killer and the butcher of La Cabana prison in which he eliminated hundreds of Cubans who opposed Castro and his revolution. The CIA had a field day in recruiting agents from such groups and this book talks about two such men who set up the intelligence network in Bolivia for the US military. Che hoped to emulate the Cuban revolution in Bolivia, operating from remote jungles of the southeast. He was both feared and adored in equal measure in Bolivia.

The author provides a very good summary of how Che’s insurrection began in March 1967 in the Nancahuazu river basin with a deadly ambush on Bolivian troops. The inexperienced and inefficient soldiers were no match for the diehard rebels in the initial stages. Bolivia tried to assemble a joint task force with neighbouring states to no avail. Argentina sent arms and ammunition to replace very old equipment and Brazil made a large shipment of combat rations. But none were willing to commit their own troops on the ground. The US was bogged down in the disastrous Vietnam War and was in no mood to open another front in their backyard in Latin America. However, Rene Barrientos Ortuno, the autocratic president of Bolivia, was determined to crush the guerillas and he pledged that Che won’t leave his country alive. Bolivian army scored a point after three months, when Jules Debray, a French Marxist, was caught and interrogated. He confirmed Che’s presence in the region. Ciro Roberto Bustos, a captured Argentine painter and revolutionary, provided the geographical details where Che was holed up. Clinching details on his exact position was obtained with the arrest of Paco, a reluctant fighter. The diary of a dead guerilla gave valuable information of the strengths and weaknesses of the rebels.

As can be expected, this American book exemplifies the help offered by their Special Forces team in imparting training to the specially constituted Ranger battalion of the Bolivian army in counterinsurgency measures. Major Ralph Shelton led the team. The Bolivians were constrained by lack of resources. Only ten live bullets were issued to a trooper for training. Shelton ensured that they be given at least 5000 live rounds. Shelton’s fast-learning acolytes proved their mettle very soon. Che Guevara was captured near El Churo Pass on Oct 8, 1967 along with Simon Cuba. It is surprising to learn that Che meekly surrendered to the soldiers on account of a small bullet injury on his leg. The prize catch came with full paraphernalia – Che’s detailed diary, a notebook with addresses and instructions, two notebooks with copies of messages received and sent, and two codebooks. To add insult to injury, the troops also confiscated five hard-boiled eggs Che had been saving to eat later in the day!

Like all bloodthirsty warlords who’d remorselessly sent hundreds of young men to death, Che Guevara also cringed when his own life was at stake. His unconditional surrender with the precious codebooks and contact information of sympathizers in Bolivia lend everlasting shame to his legacy. All of them were hunted down by Barrientos’ regime and severely punished. At a minimum, Che could have destroyed the books before turning himself in to the army. The book quotes his exact words at the time of capture as “I suppose you are not going to kill me now. I mean more to you alive than dead. We have always healed prisoners” (p.202). Perhaps he might have been counting on repeating the performances of Lenin and Castro. Lenin was imprisoned by Kerensky immediately after his return from Germany, but was later released. Castro was also sentenced to a long prison term by Batista’s regime, but he also got out safely. Such magnanimity on the part of non-Communist regimes dug their graves. It was the Communists who learned the lesson from these episodes to annihilate its opponents at the first opportunity. In the present instance, Che was immediately taken into custody at a dilapidated schoolhouse in La Higuera village. The authors truthfully reproduce the confusion produced in Bolivian power circles with the uncharacteristic surrender of the famed revolutionary. They had expected him to get killed in battle. Death penalty was already revoked in Bolivia and the alternative was thirty years in prison. But, keeping such a high-profile guerilla in jail for all those years was going to be a nightmare which Bolivia decided to avoid at any cost. Consequently, he was shot dead at 1.10 pm the next day while still in military custody. It must be noted that Che courageously faced the executioner while he sprayed a series of rounds into his chest. A catholic priest administered the last rites when his body was tied in a stretcher to the landing gear of the helicopter which was to transport it to Vallegrande, a nearby town. It was displayed to curious onlookers in the laundry of a local hospital. The bodies of all slain guerillas were subsequently interred in an unmarked grave near that town’s airstrip. Both his palms were amputated to preserve as proof of his death because there was every chance that Castro might deny it. The book presents a moving picture of the last days of Che. In the epilogue, the authors remark that a team of Cuban excavators found a skeleton near the airstrip thirty years later in 1997 with both palms missing. It was taken to Santa Clara in Cuba and put in a grand mausoleum built for Che.

Weiss and Maurer give a logical analysis of the blunders committed by Che in Bolivia that ultimately led to his capture and execution. The errors began with the choice of location of starting the revolution, with its tough and treacherous landscape of jungles and steep canyons. The inhabitants of this sturdy terrain were called campesinos whose sympathies could not be gained by the guerillas. They reported the fighters’ every move to the authorities. Had the rebellion been staged closer to the mines and urban networks of La Paz, it would’ve had a better chance of success. There were quarrel among the rebels as well. The Bolivian communists wanted to lead the revolution staged in their country, but Che Guevara entrusted that task only on Cubans. This caused the supply lines to dry up. The guerillas were desperately wandering in the forests in search of food and ammunition in the final days. The book is very easy to read and provides a pleasant reading experience.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star