Publishing: Bidding for Che

When Bolivian troops seized and killed Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara last October, they got an unexpected dividend.

Among Che’s possessions they found a 30,000-word diary, written in his own hand in Spanish and detailing all his activities from the time he arrived in Bolivia in 1966 almost up to the day of his capture. The government used excerpts from the diary to convict French Agitator Jules Regis Debray for aiding the guerrillas. It also arrested some 20 Bolivians who were mentioned as collaborators. Then, once the political usefulness of the diary had been exhausted, it was put up for sale.

It contains much of interest for a student of guerrilla tactics. Che’s ambitions far outran his means to implement them. He wrote that he wanted not only to create a “second Viet Nam” in Bolivia but also to start a guerrilla movement in Argentina. Almost from the outset, however, he was harassed by government forces from without and backsliding Communists from within. His diary bristles with complaints about the Bolivian Communist Party, which he characterizes as “distrustful, disloyal and stupid.” For solace, apparently, he wrote some poetry and a short story about a young Communist guerrilla who learns to overcome his fears. Che’s example must have been contagious, for jottings of other guerrillas were found along with his, plus a large assortment of snapshots.

Shadowy Offers. Several publishers and individuals thought enough of this material to rush to Bolivia to bid for it. Michele Ray, the French freelancer who was held for three weeks by the Viet Cong, offered $400,000 from a mysterious source on the grounds, as she put it, that the “last thing Che would have liked was to have his diary in the hands of Americans.” For a while, the bidder most likely to win was a consortium headed by Manhattan-based Magnum Photos. Offering $125,000 for the right to publish excerpts from the diary, the group included the New York Times, Parade, Stem, Mondadori publications, the London Sunday Times and the Times of India. The group took pains to establish the authenticity of the material. Besides the verification of Che’s handwriting, the fact that there was so much of it was reassuring. “How did they have time to fight?” wondered Parade Managing Editor Ed Kiester, who went to La Paz. “It looks as though all they did was write about each other and take pictures.”

Late last week, though, the consortium fell apart. One reason was that some of its members feared a court battle over the ownership of the diary. The Bolivian government, to be sure, had issued a decree claiming it owned all documents captured from the guerrillas. But Che’s family might make a fight for the diary. There was the additional danger of pirated versions being circulated before the consortium members could publish. Already, several Bolivian army officers had made photocopies. Whoever finally buys the diary, it will probably be February at the earliest before readers around the world can learn what was on Che’s mind as he watched his guerrilla movement disintegrate in the inhospitable Bolivian mountains.