The Americas: Have an Exploding Cigar

As Che Guevara’s Bristol Britannia finally landed back in Havana last week, the home folks cheered, and the rest of the hemisphere permitted itself a mighty sigh. Not only had Che done his best to steal the spotlight at the Alliance for Progress conference, but he managed to sow sweet confusion at every step along the road home, leaving behind one government toppled and another muttering dark thoughts. He even found a way to dangle a coexistence cigar before the U.S. White House and depart having given that implacable foe something to think about.

People to People. Che even managed to have a talk with U.S. Presidential Adviser Richard Goodwin, 30, in Montevideo. With Cuba’s economic plight growing daily more desperate (see below), Che’s entire pitch at the conference was his desire for coexistence. According to reports, he sent Goodwin a box of Havana cigars with a note: “As writing to an enemy is difficult—and I am not good at writing—I hereby extend my hand.” The two finally got together at a birthday open-house party at the apartment of a Brazilian diplomat named Gerson Augusto da Silva.

According to those who were there, Che started off with a smiling crack about the abortive, U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. He really ought to thank the U.S., said Che, because it gave Castro the victory he needed to achieve world prestige. Answered Goodwin: It was too bad Castro had not followed it up by an attack on the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base. Che replied that under no circumstances would Cuba attack.

Castro’s man then got down to business. He said that his people needed more consumer goods, and wanted peace with the U.S. Cuba was willing to compensate the losses suffered by expropriated U.S. companies. As for those Red weapons and advisers, said Che smoothly, “we do not have, nor intend to have, any political or military alliance with anyone unless we are pressed toward it.” All the U.S. had to accept was the fact that the Castro revolution was “irreversible.”

Just Talking. Goodwin denied having had anything more than a few chance minutes of conversation at a party. “We talked perhaps 20 minutes.” he said, “no longer, with interruptions for autographs—from him, not from me.” Che surprisingly agreed. He told an interviewer that it was a “short, courteous and cold meeting, and was not important.” But Che used the Goodwin talks as a wedge to wangle himself a secret appointment with Argentine President Arturo Frondizi. He then flew off to make the same coexistence offer in Buenos Aires.

At news of the private meeting. Argentina’s anti-Castro armed forces went up like land mines. The three service secretaries threatened to resign. Frondizi lamely explained that if Kennedy’s man Goodwin could talk to Guevara, then he, as President of Argentina, could see him, too, couldn’t he? Over TV, he emphasized that his government was Christian, democratic, and committed to the West. Two nights later, he was on TV again saying that Castro “employs procedures which we Argentines reject categorically.”

At week’s end, the brass was still rumbling noisily. And Frondizi’s Foreign Minister Adolfo Múgica. who originally leaked the news of the Frondizi-Guevara téte a téte, was asked to resign.