Thirty-four years after Ernesto Che Guevara was killed by a drunken Bolivian sergeant, Grove Press has published on the anniversary of his death the diaries he had kept during the year he had spent in the Congo before setting forth for another and final futile attempt to bring about a revolution, this time in Bolivia.
The cover bears the rather romantic title of “The African Dream,” subtitled “The diaries of the revolutionary war in the Congo.” Below a glam black-and-white photograph of the iconic Guevara is a citation from the Sunday Times (London): “This fascinating secret history at last illuminates the missing chapter of a revolutionary icon.”
While Regis Debray was serving time in a Bolivian prison, being taken prisoner after visiting Guevara in the Bolivian back country (Guevara credits him as being “courageous” at his trial which Guevara heard over the radio), Debray’s mother, a well-born woman of the haute bourgeoisie, was working at the couturier Pierre Cardin organizing cultural events. In one of history’s little ironies, Cardin’s quarters were directly across the street from the American Embassy.
I interviewed Madame Debray for the New York Times. She was very gracious, very dignified and not really richly rewarding as interviews go. Not much later, through her family connections, she prevailed upon Gen. De Gaulle, then president, to get her son sprung and returned to France. His only comment on his return to Paris was, “Being in prison gives you a lot of time to get caught up on your reading.”
A little later, while I was European Editor for Ballentine Books, I thought it would be a coup if I could get the U.S. rights to the Congo diaries and managed a meeting with Debray himself. Debray at this time still visited Cuba, and appeared to be on excellent terms with Castro. He acknowledged the Congo diaries would certainly make for very interesting reading, but, shaking his head sadly, he said, “The Cubans will never let them out. They’ll keep them in their archives forever.”
A brief footnote on Debray: Some years later, my husband in New York – in Greenwich Village, in fact – spent an evening together with him. All Debray wanted to talk about was how much he loved New York, those skyscrapers and Los Angeles – he couldn’t find enough adjectives to express his enthusiasm for that city.
It wasn’t too much later when I noted one of the major French publishing houses had just brought out an important biography on Gen. De Gaulle by Regis Debray – one very favorable to the general, judging by reviews in the French press. Madame Mitterand, known for her sympathies for the left, was thought to be behind one of the last official visits made by a foreign head of state before President Mitterand’s death: Fidel Castro.
Now, why have the Cubans decided after 34 years to publish these diaries? Could it be that Castro in his old age is getting envious of Guevara’s lasting fame? Find a demonstration anywhere in the world today and you’ll find some of those big iconic photographs of the dashing, idealistic young revolutionary rising above the crowd.
The title, “The African Dream” is fairly rich in irony, as “The African Nightmare” would be a more apt title. Everything went wrong. It had been decided that Guevara would not be viewed as the leader, but as a Cuban councilor, so it wouldn’t appear a white man was giving them orders. But Guevara found so many of the Congolese and Rwandans incompetent, when not plain hopeless, that he was forced to take charge, which constantly bred bad blood. And he had constant problems with the black Cubans acting superior and contemptuous to the Congolese. As for igniting revolutionary fervor among these men who would lie at the least provocation, he found it just about impossible.
As Guevara and a number of Cubans finally pulled out of the Congo, he notes, “A mooring rope seemed to have broken, and the excitement of the Cubans and Congolese rose like boiling liquid over the little container of our boats, affecting but not infecting me. During those last hours of our time in the Congo, I felt more alone than I had done even in Cuba or on any of my wanderings around the globe. I might say: ‘Never have I found myself so alone again as I do today after all my travels!'”