The Double Life of Fidel Castro (13 page)

What is more, the Cubans had Beatriz Allende, the president’s daughter, twisted around their little finger. She had even married a Castrist diplomat posted in Santiago de Chile. Coincidentally or not, it was she who persuaded her father to get rid of the policemen of the presidential guard, inherited from the previous government, to replace them with a new, more informal escort. Composed of militants of the left and christened the Group of Personal Friends, it included among its ranks two famous Cuban agents, twin brothers Patricio and Tony de la Guardia.

Whatever the case, the coup by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973, ruined all the reconnaissance work carried out by the Cuban espionage services. Augusto Olivares, Allende’s media adviser, committed suicide at the same time as the Chilean president in the Moneda on the day of Pinochet’s putsch. The revolutionary leader Miguel Enríquez was killed by the police in 1974. His associate Andrés Pascal Allende managed to escape to Cuba, where he still lives today. Finally, Beatriz Allende, who had also taken refuge in Havana, killed herself in 1977.

However, the Commander in Chief ’s interest in Chilean affairs was not extinguished with the death of Allende and the establishment of an extreme right-wing dictatorship in Santiago, for at the precise moment Pinochet took power in 1973, hundreds of Chileans were in Cuba, where they were studying agronomy, medicine, or engineering. Since they were blocked in Havana, Fidel offered them politico-military instruction by sending them to the training camp of Punto Cero de Guanabo, where they were quickly joined by other compatriots from the Chilean revolutionary left who were also in exile in Cuba. Among these new pro-Castrist recruits was Juan Gutiérrez Fischmann, aka El Chele (the Blond). Son of a Bolivian architect and a Chilean woman and already living in Cuba, he was noteworthy on several counts. First, in 1983, El Chele grew close to the immediate circle of power by marrying Mariela Castro, Raúl’s daughter, whom he would divorce a few years later after having a child with her. The same year, the Blond cofounded the FPMR, a guerrilla movement that would carry out the spectacular failed attempt against Pinochet in 1986 with
tropas
officers and under the supervision of Gen. Alejandro Ronda Marrero. Long sought by Interpol (who have been unable to bring him to court since 2009) for his participation in various assassination attempts and kidnappings of right-wing Chilean politicians, including the assassination of senator and ex-adviser of Pinochet, Jaime Guzmán, in 1991, the
guerillero
Juan Gutiérrez Fischmann is currently living in Havana—even if the Castrist regime, now under the leadership of his ex-father-inlaw Raúl Castro, denies it.

Like the Chileans, generations of Latin Americans have come to take advice, or orders, from Havana. Nothing surprising in that: in the eyes of South American guerrillas and even the left in general, Fidel Castro is an inspiring example—a compass, guide, and mentor. Indeed, no one else possesses as much experience garnered over as long a career. In Latin America, his CV is unequalled. Overthrowing a dictatorship in 1959, he inflicted an unprecedented humiliation on the United States (in the Bay of Pigs in 1961) and then hurtled the planet to the edge of nuclear war during the missile crisis in 1962. Castro battled eleven American presidents and determined the outcome of at least two historic events of the cold war, as we will see later: the Sandinista revolution in 1979 and the Angola war in southern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

Whether we like it or not, Fidel Castro is one of the most influential political figures in the history of Latin America, just behind the
libertadores
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and José de San Martín (1778–1850), emblematic heroes of South American independence. To give an idea of Castro’s charisma and ascendancy over the Latin American left, I shall reveal an event—never before publicized—that I witnessed at the
Palacio de la Revolución
and which shows the degree of similarity between Fidel and the Colombian guerrilla fighter. As background, I need to go back to the creation of one of the most original guerrilla movements of the continent: M19, which arose in Colombia in 1974 and which was launched to the fanfare of a publicity campaign in the principal cities of the country.

Between January 15 and 17 of that year, advertisements were published in the main newspapers announcing, in an enigmatic, anonymous manner, a great event. In
El Tiempo
, Bogota’s leading daily, a marketing campaign proclaimed:
¿Parásitos? ¿Gusanos? ¿Falta de memoria? ¿Inactividad?
i
Ya viene
M19!
(Parasites? Worms? Memory loss? Lack of activity? The M19 is coming!) Speculation among the public was rife. Some people presumed that a new miracle drug, the M19, was going on sale in pharmacies.

On the evening of January 17, 1974, just as national monuments were closing, an armed commando stole the sword of the
Libertador
exhibited in the Quinta de Bolívar, the house museum in which the hero had lived for a certain time. Before they left, the
guerilleros
painted their signature onto the white walls: M19. And thus the guerrilla group was launched, with this scandalous, nose-thumbing gesture. Its distinguishing feature: it was an urban, intellectual guerrilla movement, unlike the FARC and the ELN, the two other rebel organizations in the country, both rural in origin.

The theft of Simón Bolívar’s sword was, to say the least, the talk of the town, and for seventeen years Colombian journalists tried in vain to track down the sacred relic. And then, around five p.m. one fine day in 1980, when I was on duty in the anteroom of Fidel’s office, Jaime Bateman, one of the founders of M19 and the main protagonist in the organization of the sword theft, was announced at the Palace of the Revolution. That day, Fidel did not stand waiting for his visitor in his office, as was his custom, but walked across the anteroom to place himself in the corridor, visibly impatient to welcome Bateman. Was the occasion truly so special? Yes, it was. A minute later, Jaime Bateman emerged from the elevator, at the other end of the corridor, accompanied by Redbeard, and made his way toward us. He was holding a long object wrapped in a piece of simple black cloth. It was a solemn moment. Jaime Bateman was holding the Excalibur that had been stolen six years earlier. Once in front of the
Líder Máximo
, he took it out before our astonished eyes and presented him with the “holy grail” horizontally, holding it with both hands.

“
Comandante
, here is the sword of the
Libertador
that we took from the museum to put into better hands,” said the Colombian
guerillero
, clearly moved. “So that you can take care of it until the day it is possible to return it.”

“
Compañero
, now I am the guardian of the sword!” replied Fidel, staring into his eyes.

Then the
Comandante
brought us into his office—Bateman, Redbeard, Eugenio Selman (his personal doctor), and me. At that moment, there were five of us who knew that the sacred sword of Simón Bolívar was in Havana, in Fidel’s hands. He would keep it for twelve years, hidden somewhere in his office or in his adjoining bedroom, without anyone else knowing about it. Almost a decade passed, and then in 1989 the M19 laid down its weapons with the intention of entering political life. However, the Colombian government demanded a precondition in exchange: M19 had to give back the sword. And so, just as Jaime Bateman (who died in 1983) had come to entrust it to Fidel, another leader of M19, Arjaid Artunduaga, came to recuperate it from the hands of the
Comandante
in January 1991, so that it could be secretly repatriated to Bogotá. After an absence of seventeen years—including a stay of twelve years in Fidel’s office—the sword was securely placed in a safe in the Banco de la República in Colombia while a replica was exhibited at the Quinta de Bolívar.

Since then, the theft of Simón Bolívar’s sword has continued to produce heated discussion: Colombian newspapers have repeatedly made “revelations” about what really happened to the relic during the seventeen years it was missing, with much publicized “exclusive” testimonies. Former members of the Colombian guerrilla movement even spoke out on the subject. In 2013, thirty-nine years after the news story that had so perturbed Colombia, I saw Antonio Navarro Wolff, a historic leader of M19 who subsequently became a senator of his country, explaining without giving any further detail that “the Cubans” had previously looked after the sword. This guerrilla fighter, who must have known the truth, never once mentioned Fidel’s name, so as to protect the image of the
Líder Máximo—
who would never get involved in some vulgar foreign burglary. This incident demonstrates the powerful sense of gratitude and loyalty that the Colombian guerrilla movement, like most of the Latin American left, felt toward Fidel Castro, even long after they had laid down their weapons.

A natural leader in Latin America,
El Comandante
also played a role in the politics of North Africa and the Middle East. From the beginning of the Revolution, he cultivated and developed his networks in these two regions of the world and made the Palestinian cause his own. In addition, numerous Palestinian students came to study medicine in Havanan universities while the fighters of the PLO came to do military training courses at Cuban training camps.

Cuba was also a haven for fugitives on the run from Fidel’s enemies. During my career with the
Comandante
, I learned, for example, that the Puerto Rican Victor Manuel Gerena was on our territory. Linked to the Macheteros—a clandestine proindependence organization that demanded the emancipation of Puerto Rico from the United States—he was the object of an FBI search since 1984 in connection to the armed holdup of a Wells Fargo bank security truck. At the same period—during the Reagan years—Assata Shakur (the aunt of the deceased rap singer Tupac Shakur), accused of the murder of a white policeman in 1971, also took refuge in Cuba. After escaping from a high-security American prison in 1979 and spending years on the run, the famous Black Panthers militant landed in Havana in 1984, where Fidel granted her political asylum, much to the irritation of the American Congress. She still lives there.

Fidel also established links with the Basque separatists from the ETA, whom I often encountered. In Havana, the Etarras (as they were known) were in their element, welcomed with open arms by Fidel. At the time, they were always received in the building of the Department of Urban Struggle for the
tropas
—the Cuban shock troops—situated in 222nd Street in the Havanan quarter of Coronela. I remember their names in full: José Ángel Urtiaga Martínez, José Ignacio Echarte Urbieta, José Miguel Arrugaeta, and Miguel Ángel Apaletegui, known as Apala.

The Basque separatists of ETA brought us a lot. They mastered to perfection the art of exploding homemade bombs via remote control. Fidel therefore asked them to teach these procedures to the specialists of the
tropas
who, in their turn, taught them to the guerrilla fighters from Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala during the training courses at Punto Cero de Guanabo, where there was a quarry expressly designed for testing explosives. It was here that the Etarras developed their famous rocket launcher, known as the Jotake, a weapon that was subsequently used during attacks in Spain and . . . which was ultimately found in the hands of the FARC in Colombia.

At that time, Fidel directly controlled everything relating to ETA; nothing was decided without his approval. During negotiations in 1984 on the resolution of the Basque question, Cuba signed an agreement with the Spanish government (then headed by the socialist Felipe González) and Panama (under the leadership of Manuel Noriega) that granted political asylum in Cuba to the Etarras. In summary, ETA terrorists were allowed to settle in Cuba, on the condition that they gave up their weapons and no longer conspired against Spain. On his side, Fidel promised that he would control their maneuvers and that he would inform Spain if they took the slightest false step.

The snag was that shameless lying was one of Fidel’s many talents. Later, confronted with Madrid’s growing suspicions, the
Comandante
insisted on the fact that the Basques had “never used the Cuban territory for activities against Spain or any other country.” He even specified that “Cuba scrupulously respects the spirit of the agreement.” Now, not only was Havana welcoming more Basques than Madrid suspected but, in addition, far from being watched, these exiled Etarras were actively collaborating with the Castrist regime by offering their know-how in terms of terrorism. Other than the art of handling explosives, these experts in clandestine urban struggle also taught Fidel’s officers the arts of kidnapping, shadowing, and evasion techniques.

That was not all. The Etarras also served as clandestine envoys in Latin America. When the
Comandante
needed to send a secret message to one of his contacts on the continent, he would send a Basque messenger to meet the trade unionist, politician, or guerrilla leader. Equipped with a Cuban passport but passing for a Spaniard, the Basque was obviously much less identifiable than a Cuban with his highly distinctive accent.

One day in 1993, Fidel decided to go to the main “protocol house” of the
tropas
, so off we went in convoy, in the Mercedes. In Cuba, protocol houses are villas of which the government has discretionary use to accommodate passing guests, celebrities, or spies visiting the island. They guarantee greater confidentiality than the presidential palace, which was why Fidel liked them.

When we arrived, I was introduced to the high-level Basque leader Jokin Gorostidi Artola, the official head of the Basque deportee board that was officially responsible for establishing contacts with the diaspora of Basque terrorists in exile, under cover of the international agreement.

Fidel and Jokin sat down in the sitting room of the protocol house, situated right next door to that of the Castro couple. It was obvious that Jokin was a Castrist sympathizer. Together, the two men first discussed the comings and goings of Etarras between Cuba and South America, theoretically forbidden under the international agreement. Then they talked business, for, above all, Fidel wanted the Basques to carry on circumventing the American embargo at that difficult time—the beginning of the 1990s—when the economic situation of the island was so catastrophic that it threatened the Revolution.