Fidel Betrayed Che?

[Sanjee]

Hey guys I've bin wondering if it's true what some people say that Fidel betrayed Che...
I personally think he didn't do it but...there are a lot of people who do believe this. What do you guys think??

[Marxist]

No he didnt ! Che and Fidel were best friends and if Fidel sent cuban military to Bolivia , then he will encounter USA troops - which will problably cause a nuclear war.
Che was betrayed by [COLOR=red]Bolivian comunists .

[TC]

No...of course not. I don't know where the rumor came from but its probably some left-"communist"/anarchist attempt to attack socialist Cuba and its leadership while at the same time co-opting Che's image.

Like...Fidel is a tyrant because the american media said so and its scary to actually support any regimes considered enemies of the west...but Che couldn't have been a tyrant because Che was sexy and so many kids with punk clothing have black and white photos of che...so if sexy che and dictator castro were ever buddies, castro must have betrayed che and che must have become an anarchist before his death...or some such thing.

I mean come on, thats what you guys would *like* to believe!


The reality is that Che was even a much harder line Communist (in the capital 'C', Stalinist sense of the word) then Fidel Castro though there was never a split between them or any other cuban revolutionary leaders.

[Led Zeppelin]

though there was never a split between them

Castro supported the USSR, Che criticized the USSR.

Castro is anti-Stalin, Che was pro-Stalin.

[Orthodox Marxist]

No its completely untrue I have a book at home it has the F.B.I files kept on che that rumor came from an american agent/spy who's sources were unreliable at best

[ComradeOm]

Originally posted by Marxism-[email protected] 6 2005, 04:45 PM
Castro is anti-Stalin, Che was pro-Stalin.
From all I've heard Che was pretty unimpressed with Soviet Russia. I was under the impression that he was more interested in that other tyrant, Mao.

[Urban Guerrilla]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 05:00 PM
From all I've heard Che was pretty unimpressed with Soviet Russia. I was under the impression that he was more interested in that other tyrant, Mao.
He was. He was impressed with China and was offered $60 million of credits with to purchase an industrial plant :che:
(my resources come from "The Che Handbook.")

[TupacAndChe4Eva]

Castro was pro-Soviet. They offered him missiles, funding, etc.

Che was pro-China. He saw them as more representative of the "Socialist Man".

Che felt that the Chinese showed a higher Socialist mentality. Also, he didn't agree with the USSR's policy of "Peaceful co-existence". Guevara's theories on Guerrilla Warfare ( such as creating revolutions) was in direct contrast to the policy of the Soviets. His ideas were very similar to Mao's work, which called for enraged peasants to encircle villages. This led to various members of the Politburo to label Che as a " Cuban Maoist".

Did Fidel betray Che?

Despite all of the above, I strongly disagree.

Fidel did all he could. The Bolivian Communist Party only grew some balls once they realised the actual situation ; once they had seen Che was killed, they actually began working, and got some of Che's Guerrilla's out of the Country. Fidel actually tried to persuade Che to return to the Cuban Government after the Congo fiasco, but he refused, saying he needed to broaden the Revolution.

Fidel grudgingly agreed, and the rest is history.

[TC]

Originally posted by ComradeOm+Oct 6 2005, 05:00 PM--> (ComradeOm @ Oct 6 2005, 05:00 PM)
Marxism-[email protected] 6 2005, 04:45 PM
Castro is anti-Stalin, Che was pro-Stalin.
From all I've heard Che was pretty unimpressed with Soviet Russia. I was under the impression that he was more interested in that other tyrant, Mao. [/b]


Unimpressed with contemporary Soviet Russia, not Stalin's Russia, Stalin was already dead at the time Khrushchev, who of course was terribly against Stalin, was in power.



Castro supported the USSR, Che criticized the USSR.

Castro is anti-Stalin, Che was pro-Stalin.

That wasn't a split, it was a difference in opinion in an area outside of Che's governmental responsibilities.

[Severian]

Castro also criticized the USSR.

Anyway, no, Castro did not betray Che. From the sticky thread on the Death of Che:

First of all, there's no evidence of any major political disagreement between Castro and Guevara. Differences of emphasis, maybe. It's sometimes suggested that Guevara was critical of the USSR and Castro wasn't, but in fact Castro also criticised Soviet policies in a number of mid-60s speeches.

Second, the Cuban government was heavily involved in supporting the guerilla effort in Bolivia. Cuban intelligence supplied the passports that Che and others travelled on, a large number of Cubans participated as guerillas, etc.

Third, Che never expressed any dissatisfaction with Castro or the support he received from the Cuban government. Not even in his private diary, which has been published, so anyone can read it. Not in any conversation with any of the other guerillas.

Guess who's the origin of the claim that he did express dissatisfaction with Castro? One of Che's murderers, CIA agent Felix Rodriguez. He claimed that Che seemed to him "bitter over the Cuban dictator's lack of support for the Bolivian incursion...." Yeah, right, Che's going to confide something with his captors something that he never confided in any of his comrades or in his diary. What BS.

The rumors, originating with Rodriguez, have circulated ever since, spread by enemies of the Cuban revolution and of everything that Che Guevara stood for. The New York Times, for example. Here's a letter to the NYT - which the NYT refused to print in full - explaining in detail why an NYT article on this was purest BS. Link to letter (http://www.themilitant.com/1995/5947/5947_14.html)

Fourth, it's sometimes said that the Cuban government failed to rescue Che once the guerillas got into trouble. What were they supposed to do, drop an army of paratroopers?

One excellent book that definitively debunks this rumor and others: Conflicting Missions by Piero Glijeises. It's a history of Cuban foreign policy, including Africa and Latin America. It's so massively well-documented - with declassified papers from a dozen countries - that it received the Ferrell Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations even though it's not mostly about U.S. foreign relations.

BTW, it's interesting to note how little conflict there has been within the core leadership of the Cuban Revolution. I'm sure there have been disagreements, but they have been resolved amicably. The Cuban Revolution, unlike some others, has never eaten its children.

The main leaders of the guerillas in the Sierra are all still leaders of the Cuban Communist Party today - with the sole exceptions of Camilo Cienfuegos, killed in a plane crash, and Che Guevara, murdered by a CIA agent and the Bolivian military dictatorship.

As for Che's, and Fidel's attitudes towards the PRC (also from the sticky thread):
From his famous "Message to the Tricontinental", one of his last general public statements. Here's what Che actually thought about the Chinese-Soviet split:


When we analyze the isolation of the VietNamese we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment in the history of humanity. U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression. Its crimes are immense, extending over the whole world. We know this, gentlemen! But also guilty are those who at the decisive moment hesitated to make VietNam an inviolable part of socialist territory-- yes, at the risk of a war of global scale, but also compelling the U.S. imperialists to make a decision. And also guilty are those who persist in a war of insults and tripping each other up, begun quite some time ago by the representatives of the two biggest powers in the socialist camp.

Let us ask seeking an honest answer: Is VietNam isolated or not, as it tries to maintain a dangerous balancing act between the two quarreling powers?
Emphasis added.
source (http://www.seeingred.com/Copy/2.3_che_tricont.html)

As on most other issues, this is basically similar to the ideas expressed by Fidel, in this March 1965 speech for example:

Without a doubt, the South Vietnamese people and the people of North Vietnam are suffering all this and suffering it in their own flesh, because there it is men and women who die, in the south and in the north, victims of the shrapnel and Yankee bombings. They do not have the slightest hesitancy in declaring that they intend to continue to carry all that out because not even the attacks against North
Vietnam have resulted in overcoming the divisions in the bosom of the socialist family.

And who can doubt that this division is encouraging the imperialists? Who
can doubt that a united front against the imperialist enemy would have made
them hesitate--would have made them think a little more carefully before
launching their adventurist attacks and their increasingly more brazen
intervention in that part of the world?
source (http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro/1965/19650314)

Hard to see any "conflict", or even "difference of opinion" between Fidel and Che there.

[PRC-UTE]

Good work, severian.

[viva le revolution]

There is a lot of talk like this going around. For example, Trotskyites were calling Fidel a murderer and accused him of eliminating Che because he was a contender for Cuban leadership. However a year later, Che resurfaced in Bolivia.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Fidel actually tried to persuade Che to return to the Cuban Government after the Congo fiasco, but he refused, saying he needed to broaden the Revolution.

According to my knowledge, Che did return to Cuba, to train new guerillas for Bolivia.


Not even in his private diary, which has been published, so anyone can read it.

Wasn't parts of the diary withheld? I have read that the Cuban government were editing some parts of the book.


Yeah, right, Che's going to confide something with his captors something that he never confided in any of his comrades or in his diary. What BS.

Well, Benigno, one of the guerillas, blamed Castro for his death.


The main leaders of the guerillas in the Sierra are all still leaders of the Cuban Communist Party today - with the sole exceptions of Camilo Cienfuegos, killed in a plane crash, and Che Guevara, murdered by a CIA agent and the Bolivian military dictatorship.
According to my knowledge, Carlos Franqui was a Commandante.


Carlos Franqui
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Carlos Franqui (born 1921) is a Cuban writer, poet, journalist, art critic, and political activist.

Born in a cane field, he was able to enter a vocational school, where he joined the Communist Party of Cuba. He gave up the opportunity to enter the University of Havana to become a professional organizer for the party at the age of 20. After successfully organizing the party in several small towns, he broke with the organization and became an unaffiliated leftist.

He turned to journalism to make a living, where his voracious reading provided him with a much better education than he would have received in the university. After the Fulgencio Batista coup in 1952, he became involved with the "Movimiento 26 de Julio" which was directed by Fidel Castro. He was jailed and tortured by the police. On his release, he went into exile in Mexico and Florida, but was soon drafted by Castro into the Sierra Maestra to head Revolución, the guerrilla movement's clandestine newspaper and Radio Rebelde, their clandestine radio station.

Upon the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, he was placed in charge of Revolución, which became an official paper. He maintained a degree of independence from the official line, which eventually caused him to leave for Europe. There, he met artists and intellectuals, such as Pablo Picasso, Miró, Calder, Jean Paul Sartre. Having resigned from Revolución, he dedicated himself to art, organizing the famous "Salón de Mayo" exhibit in Havana (1967), where all leading artists in the world were represented.

Because of his dissident attitude, he continued to have problems with the Cuban government. Eventually, he was allowed to leave Cuba with his family and settled in Italy. In 1968, he officially broke with the Castro regime when he signed a letter condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

After his definitive exile, his literary production markedly increased. He has written several major historical accounts of the Cuban Revolution ("El Libro de los Doce", "Diario de la Revolución Cubana"). Another facet of his production are a number of poetry and graphic arts collections (for which he has collaborated with Miró, Tapies, Calder and others), several books of poetry, as well as several narrative works on art (some edited in Italian under pen names).

He has continued to campaign against repression in Cuba and other countries. He is officially branded as a traitor by the Cuban government, which accuses him of CIA ties. However, many Cuban exiles in Miami shun him because of his active role in the revolution.

In the early 1990s he moved to Puerto Rico, where he lives in semi-retirement. In 1996, he founded Carta de Cuba, a quarterly journal featuring high-quality work produced in Cuba by independent journalists and writers. Franqui continues to edit the publication to this date.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2005, 02:14 PM
Wasn't parts of the diary withheld? I have read that the Cuban government were editing some parts of the book.
Nope. Parts were omitted from the CIA-sponsored edition, however. (They had the captured diary, after all. Cuba was only able to obtain and publish it thanks to a leak.)


Well, Benigno, one of the guerillas, blamed Castro for his death.

Many years later, after Benigno defected and told a passel of other lies. Including claiming to have been in the Congo when in fact he wasn't. See Conflicting Missions by Piero Gliejeses.

The documents written at the time, and not intended for publication, are decisive! Che's Congo and Bolivia diaries express only the greatest esteem for Fidel Castro. The diaries of some other guerillas have been published, including the Bolivian diary of Pombo (Harry Villegas).....also no hint of a rift with Havana.


According to my knowledge, Carlos Franqui was a Commandante.

Can't find any mention of that rank for him in my copy of Che's "Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War." In any case, Franqui did run Radio Rebelde, and after the triumph of the revolution edited Revolucion newspaper. But he certainly wasn't a central leader of the revolution on the level of the people I referred to.

Maybe my point would become clearer if you consider the historical examples I was contrasting it to: Danton, and later Robespierre and Saint-Just in the French Revolution, leading to the phrase about the revolution eating its children. The purge of the great majority of pre-1917 Bolsheviks under Stalin. The incessant waves of purges under Mao, including his closest collaborators: Liu, Deng, his "designated heir" Lin Piao....

If Fidel had followed their example, he woulda jailed and killed Che as he was accused of doing, plus Camilo, Almeida, and many others, maybe even Raul....

And Franqui wasn't executed or even jailed, was he? He chose to go into exile.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Thank you for the information on Benigno.

Regarding Franqui and his rank. I believe I read it in his book "Family portrait of Fidel". He said he was later in the central leadership, too. But he is today editing a newspaper which is very anti-Cuban government. Perhaps he is not the best source.

[Wanted Man]

I was wondering about Benigno, about half a year ago some TV channel here did a documentary about him where they visited him and he told his story again, it was just crazy shit because it completely conflicts the dominant idea of a close friendship between Che and Fidel. Che was indeed more attracted to Mao's China, but I don't think either he or Fidel cared much about the Sino-Soviet split, or that they supposedly broke over such a thing. Besides, what would Fidel have to gain from Che's death? The loss of a brilliant comrade and a great friend, with the only upside being that Cuba would have another martyr, that seems to be really pointless to me.

[Wiesty]

yes, it was che's choice, 100% to go to bolivia, fidel was questioning if he should stay in government, because of the argument with the ussr, che had, but che stepped down, and left to bolivia.

[Axel1917]

I have not read much, but it did seem that Che was in disagreement with the USSR, and was at least interested in China. He seemed to be thinking a bit more in his last days, and I have heard that some of Trotsky's works were found to be his after his death.

[el-che]

Originally posted by Marxism-[email protected] 6 2005, 04:04 PM

though there was never a split between them

Castro supported the USSR, Che criticized the USSR.

Castro is anti-Stalin, Che was pro-Stalin.
Che was more pro-Chinese, not Soviet in the sense that he viewed the peasants as vital to the revolution. The Soviet model centred far more on the urban working classes. He was hugely disillusioned with the USSR after the missile crisis, particularly the fact they simply withdrew and left Cuba unguarded. He felt they had betrayed Cuba and abandoned her.

Im also pretty sure I read somewhere that both Che and Raul Castro were committed communists before the revolution had begun, whereas Fidel was not - he was initially wary of communism, and it was almost forced on him by the fact Cuba needed protection from the USA. He had nowhere else to turn and, with much encouragement from his brother and Che went down the communist path.

[Simotix]

Che critized the USSR and supported the China. Che I believe also critized the USSR during a later speech.



Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2005, 07:33 PM

Fidel actually tried to persuade Che to return to the Cuban Government after the Congo fiasco, but he refused, saying he needed to broaden the Revolution.

According to my knowledge, Che did return to Cuba, to train new guerillas for Bolivia.
I believe he would have stayed longer if Castro did not read his Farewell speech.

[TupacAndChe4Eva]

Regarding my earlier post, and the subsequent comments, I meant "Officially return" to the Government, as in a public re-appearance.

He remained hidden during his time spent in Cuba after the Congo.

Also, the farewell letter was made public during Guevara's time in the Congo. This was only done in an effort to prevent any implications for Cuba, i.e. one of their Government officials was taking part in a Guerrilla War in the Congo.

[Severian]

I'd guess this is something like the 500th thread on this. Maybe we need a sticky, huh? (A separate one. There's already stuff in the sticky thread on the Death of Che.)

As for the supposed difference between Che and Fidel on the Chinese-Soviet split, here's a repost from the sticky thread on the Death of Che:

The claim is that Che supported the Chinese side of the Chinese-Soviet split, and that this led to conflict with Fidel. Nobody's been able to point to any statement by Che where he expressed such a view, and I've found one that definitely contradicts it.

It's from his famous "Message to the Tricontinental", one of his last general public statements. Here's what Che actually thought about the Chinese-Soviet split:


When we analyze the isolation of the VietNamese we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment in the history of humanity. U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression. Its crimes are immense, extending over the whole world. We know this, gentlemen! But also guilty are those who at the decisive moment hesitated to make VietNam an inviolable part of socialist territory-- yes, at the risk of a war of global scale, but also compelling the U.S. imperialists to make a decision. And also guilty are those who persist in a war of insults and tripping each other up, begun quite some time ago by the representatives of the two biggest powers in the socialist camp.

Let us ask seeking an honest answer: Is VietNam isolated or not, as it tries to maintain a dangerous balancing act between the two quarreling powers?
Emphasis added.
source (http://www.seeingred.com/Copy/2.3_che_tricont.html)

As on most other issues, this is basically similar to the ideas expressed by Fidel, in this March 1965 speech for example:

Without a doubt, the South Vietnamese people and the people of North Vietnam are suffering all this and suffering it in their own flesh, because there it is men and women who die, in the south and in the north, victims of the shrapnel and Yankee bombings. They do not have the slightest hesitancy in declaring that they intend to continue to carry all that out because not even the attacks against North
Vietnam have resulted in overcoming the divisions in the bosom of the socialist family.

And who can doubt that this division is encouraging the imperialists? Who
can doubt that a united front against the imperialist enemy would have made
them hesitate--would have made them think a little more carefully before
launching their adventurist attacks and their increasingly more brazen
intervention in that part of the world?
source (http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro/1965/19650314)