RALPH SCHOENMAN speaking at a memorial
meeting for Ernesto "Che" Guevara held in
New York November 3 under the auspices of
the Militant Labor Forum.
available so we settled for the five that
we had.
There was a German named Lothar
Menne who had lived a period of time in
Mexico and had a perfect knowledge of
Spanish, which was important.
Q: Are any of the members of the
commission still in Bolivia?
Schoenman: No All of the other
members left very much earlier than I did,
for a variety of reasons.
But to return to your earlier ques-
tion, we entered Bolivia from Lima. In
Peru we had talked with Paz Estenssoro,
who is in exile in Lima, and although we
did not entirely disclose our interest to
him he was very helpful to us in terms of
suggesting how we might get to Camiri.
We entered La Paz and then we began to make approaches for che necessary credentials to get down to the guerrilla zone. At that time there were no journalists in Camiri. We were in fact the first who got there.
We found that it was very difficult to get these credentials -- they were not letting anybody go down -- but we were able to make contact with some people who helped and eventuaily we were in touch with Colonel Rios, the head of army intelligence, and General Ovando, who signed our credentials and facilitated our getting down to Camiri.
“We hired a small Cessna. a tiny one-engine toy of a plane, and three of us flew in that to Camiri over the Andes, a very good experience.
When we arrived in Camiri we were lucky in that we arrived almost simultaneously with the helicopter of Colonel Reque Ter&fn who was returning from a guerrilla encounter. I had obtained a letter of introduction, a note, to Reque Terdn so he took us back to town in his jeep.
We talked to him for two or three hours. He is a very vain man. He enjoyed having his photograph taken frequently. He began to tell us a number of things.
We then were installed in a hotel, but a very short time after that we were arrested by the military police and one of our number in particular, Tarig Ali, became excited, which became complicated for us because we were then held at gunpoint. Reque Terén came in at that moment and asked the officers whether they didn't think that Ovando's signature was good enough, being head of the armed forces, and so we were released.
We were picked up again the next day and this harassment carried on for some time, a day or two, until finally, owing to the credential of Ovando, the army officers accepted our presence, although reluctantly. I have to say that their instincts were correct.
Despite that we then got to Lagunillas which is the operational command of the Fourth Division from which they were launching their antiguerrilla actions in Nancahuazi. We had numerous talks with the army officers involved and were present when some of the equipment captured from deposits was brought in, including documents.
The other members of: the commis-— sion began to consider the importance of getting the material we had obtained out of Bolivia. So we sent out Lothar Menne with all our photographs and other things.
And then Tariq Ali was picked up again and accused of being a guerrilla named Pombo, who in fact is Che's bodyguard, which is a little ludicrous because Tariq doesn't speak a word of Spanish and had never been in Latin America before. In Tariq's case they were resentful of a man with a brown skin and long black hair and a camera who traveled the world; because the army officers are racist. They have a profound contempt for the Indians in Bolivia and they were exercising this with respect to Tariq Ali as well.
They threatened him and in fact it became apparent that they were looking for a way of getting Tariq and so Tariq left.
Shortly after that two of the menbers of the commission decided to return to England and they wrote some articles at the time about their experience in Bolivia.
I remained there and continued to gather information and I was in touch with Régis. I was able to see him ona number of occasions alone, which was not easy to contrive but it was done with the help of some Bolivians.
We had very long, thorough exchanges: and I have a number of letters and documents of Régis' which he wanted to get out of the country.
Then we began to bribe some --— how shall I put it? -- army officers I suppose, and acquired important information relative to the fate of Régis and the fate of certain material witnesses. What became clear was that the Bolivian army doesn't take prisoners unless those prisoners cooperate -- those who do not are dispatched.
We were in a position to document this in a number of instances, the most egregious being that of Jorge VAsquez, who was a guerrilla captured not long after the first encounter in Nlancahuazt.
Jorge Vasquez was a very brave man indeed. He refused to accept anesthetic in order to show the military that he had no fear of pain. He knew very well what they were going to do to hin.
The order came from Barrientos to torture, to kill him. That order was refused by one officer, who I won't name, but it was carried out by another officer named Major Ibes Alecén, who together with one or two others broke the four limbs of VAasquez and killed him. They cut open his chest as well.
That took place in Camiri. He was taken out of the military hospital, socalled, and his body was disposed of. I am almost certain that he was thrown out
4
of a helicopter. This is the only aspect of the case of Vasquez about which I am not absolutely certain. I am, however, fairly confident that that was how his body was disposed of.
I can say definitely that Régis, apart from having been tortured systemat-— ically, his nails broken, beaten into a coma -- he needed five blood transfusions -- Régis was also taken in a helicopter and the effort was made to throw him out, but he was able to resist that.
Then the army began a systematic interrogation of Régis and Bustos. The interrogation was conducted by a man named Gonzales, who is Puerto Rican and certainly a Central Intelligence Agency operative.
The Argentinian police came up and their intelligence interrogated Bustos. It is fairly certain that there were Central Intelligence Agency operatives in that group as well.
Bustos provided a whole series of sketches of the guerrillas that he had seen in Nancahuazi. And with those sketches the army was able to identify a number of people.
Q: Where is Bustos now?
Schoenman: He's in custody. His two children were in Buenos Aires and you know the Ongania regime is very close to that of Barrientos.
Q: What were your general impressions of the state of the left in Bolivia, both the guerrilla movement and its poten~ tial, and the different left parties?
Schoenman: The left is desperately divided and disorganized in Bolivia. The Soviet-oriented Communist party is a reformist party which does not support armed struggle although the youth are very restless in the face of that line.
The Peking-oriented party of Zamora is, of course, much more militant but the evidence suggests that they don't participate actively in the armed struggle. It is possible that some of their cadre has participated but the evidence is that there have been reservations on the part of the Maoist leadership about the orientation of the guerrilla foco.
And in any event the Pekingoriented party is very small, although it has to be said that they are very active despite their small size.
The POR, Partido Obrero Revolucionario [Revolutionary Workers party], which is the Trotskyist organization, is a small party. Its main strength is in the mines. It's true that its cadre is large-
ly working class and of a high standard
but it is small.
And in the mines I would say that
the left of the MNR retains a following,
a large following.
I think that Lechin and PRIN [Par-
tido Revolucionario de Izquierda Nacion-
alista] have a following yet, although
many of the more advanced miners are dis-
illusioned about Lechin because Lechin
made what I think is a disastrous mistake
when, in opposition to Paz Estenssoro, he
supported the Barrientos-—Ovando coup
d'état in the view that he could manipu-
late these soldiers. Of course they did
more than manipulate Lechin. He's now in
exile in Santiago.
Iechin had a number of what I
would think opportunistic dealings with
the MNR, which I think were mistaken. I
think that has cost PRIN some following,
put PRIN still has an important role in
the mines.
The MNR has a hold in the country-
side, but it's a party that has the legacy
of the betrayals of Paz Estenssoro of the
struggle. And the left of the MNR is not
really a coherent group:
There's a federal allegiance be-
tween various groupings, elements -- peo-
ple like René Zavoleta, who was the Min-
ister of Mines, is an extremely capable
and energetic man, and Rivieros Tajada,
who was in the Ministry of the Interior
of Paz, they are people active in the
left of the MNR. But my impression is that
although they have a broad base it's not
a very disciplined one and I'm not very
convinced that they're capable of a sus-—
tained struggle.
As to the guerrilla: the guerrilla
seemed to be comparatively cut off from
the traditional left formations. And one
consequence of this is that in the cities
and in the mines there was an absence of
struggle which related to what the guer-
rilla were doing. In the cities very lit-
tle is known of the Liberation Army.
The absence of an underground paper
or leafleting or political activity, psy-
chological warfare in support of the guer-
rilla, the absence of these things was an
important contributory factor to the iso-
lation of the guerrilla.
I think that the guerrilla made a
number of mistakes. Partly they were mis-
takes in the elements that were permitted
to incorporate themselves into the guer-
rilla: lumpen proletariat in some part,
people untested and who proved totally
incapable of sustaining the trials of a
protracted guerrilla struggle. Certainly
incapable of standing up to the treatment
the Bolivian army metes out to anybody
they have in their control.
I think as well that there are some mistakes for which there is no rational explanation. The Bolivian army was led to a deposit of arms and documents by a young captured guerrilla who broke under torture. He led them to a place where the passports, documents, plans, organization and names of contacts in the cities were buried.
I would regard that as the turning point in the fate of the guerrilla and the fate of Che Guevara. When that was discovered the army was possessed of information which was decisive.
So the question that has to be answered is how on earth was it possible for men of considerable experience and revolutionary discipline to bury anywhere documents of that kind?
I don't know the answer to that. In part it related to some of the members of the guerrilla, in part it relates to the failure on the part of the party to help the guerrilla with cadre and in certain material ways.
I think other mistakes that were made include the selection of the zone, because in my opinion the zone was not suitable in important respects although very suitable in others. That's just a personal opinion.
Q: One last question. How severe is the repression against the POR and the two CPs in the cities and in the mines?
Schoenman: It's perfectly true that the government is attacking the Trotskyist leadership and cadre much more vigorously than it is the Communist party leadership. It is also true that they are attacking the left of the MNR and PRIN. The cadre of the CP, in relation to what the other groupings are experiencing, is unmolested.
I think that's an assessment the regime has made as to the militancy and danger these groups offer. But I want to emphasize that the conditions of struggle in Bolivia are objectively right. The problem is mainly that of the subjective conditions, in my opinion.
I think that the guerrilla in a country such as Bolivia cannot struggle in isolation. An armed struggle in Bolivia must arise from some measure of coordination between the mines and the countryside and the towns.
I don't say that the party of the revolution must direct the guerrilla struggle from the towns, I think that's a folly. But I certainly think that there has to be a revolutionary party which is not merely an expression of the guerrilla foco itself and I also think that the guerrilla must conceive their strategy in terms of some form of coordinated struggle with the mines and the towns in Bolivia.
The mines are the place where the most experienced and the most tested and the most politically advanced elements of the workers and peasants are to be found. And I think that the guerrilla must take that into account in his strategy of struggle. I think the role of the guerrilla in Bolivia is to harass the army, to disperse it and to get it off the backs of the miners.
The miners and the city dwellers have an essential tactical and strategic role to play in the revolutionary struggle.
There isn't any doubt that the setbacks that have been suffered are very severe. And they demand a reassessment, they demand a reassessment largely in the realm of tactics.
No reassessment can go outside the necessity of armed struggle. No reassess~ ment can deny the importance of guerrilla struggle in the country. But a reassessment must be made as to how a guerrilla is going to operate and what his relationship is going to be with regard to the urban proletariat in these countries and the role of the vanguard party.
I think in these respects mistakes were made which need not have been made. But I'm not saying that this could have been known in advance. That would be presumptuous. I'm saying that we can learn from the bitter defeat, setback that has been experienced -- that we have to.
When Che Guevara worked his perspective out, he had an expectation of at least a decade of struggle in Bolivia. The struggle in Bolivia in this phase is no more than eleven or twelve months old.
I'm sure it's going to unfold in the next decade in a form not very different to that expected by Che in the large. In tactical terms there may be differences but I think Che's estimate is the correct one.