Word: bolivia
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Cuban Revolutionary Che Guevara's diary of his abortive eleven-month campaign in Bolivia was first published by Fidel Castro last month and picked up in the U.S. by Ramparts magazine and Bantam Books. It was widely criticized as bowdlerized, with key dates and names edited out. Last week New York publishers Stein & Day weighed in with an unexpurgated edition entitled The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents...
Probably the most valuable part of the book is the introduction by James, who puts the diary's daily notations in thoughtful perspective. Che failed in Bolivia, James concludes, by ignoring his own precepts. He picked Bolivia as a centrally located focus for Latin American revolution, disregarding the fact that Bolivian peasants had already benefited from one revolution in 1952, and had no quarrel with the government or army. He highhandedly overruled local Communists and relied on imported Cuban revolutionaries. He wandered about the country with no coherent strategy, and in the end, he let his guerrillas be hemmed...
...much as anyone, it was Castro himself who ensured Che's defeat by leaving him to wander in Bolivia with neither the proper material nor moral support. James ascribes that betrayal to their longstanding rivalry. Had Che succeeded in leading a continental revolution, he would have emerged the greater leader, and might well have jeopardized Castro's future position. For his part, Che, as the apostle of Communist revolution in Latin America, had little choice but to go to Bolivia. Concludes James: "He needed a revolution far more than the revolution needed...
Cuban Revolutionary Che Guevara spent the last year of his life trying without success to topple the government of Bolivia. Ironically, Che has come close to doing in death what he could not achieve in life. Last week the 14-man Cabinet of Bolivia's President René Barrientos resigned in the embarrassed furor following the leak of Che's diary to his old boss, Fidel Castro...
...friend and chief assistant: "He claimed to be a Marxist, and I tried to convert that into Bolivian nationalism." Though he flew off to London at week's end-the Argentines and the Peruvians had refused him a visa-Arguedas professed a willingness to return to Bolivia and "confront the responsibilities inherent in the deed that I committed." Barrientos at first considered his favorite resort in times of stress: a flight into the hinterlands to talk with the Indian campesinos, who provide much of his popular support. But at week's end he settled down to the task...