‘Che’ Guevara was not in Bay of pigs and I didn’t want to be Kennedy either

Havana/The invasion of Bay of pigs in April 1961 is celebrated with reluctance on one shore and is remembered with disenchantment in the other. This year has been the exception. Several events – the most powerful of them: the declassification of the “JFK papers”In the US – rumors have struggled about what really happened during those days in which, for many, Fidel Castro consolidated his absolute authority.

Old historical problems have returned to public conversation: the strange absence of Ernesto Che Guevara in the defense against the 2506 Assault Brigade; The degree of responsibility of John F. Kennedy in the defeat of the invaders, who still call him “traitor” to the Cuban cause; the first dissensions and fights in the regime’s high command; And finally, the Interference campaign –Discreta, although not secret– developed by Castro in the region.

Luis Hernández Serrano, a heavyweight of official journalism, came out this week to defend the Official explanation about the absence of Guevara in Girón. History cannot be more rocambolesque, but appears in several Cuban and foreign biographies, such as the American Jon Lee Anderson.

Supposedly, the Che He shot himself on an accident on the eve of the attack, with his Soviet pistol Stechkin. The bullet gave him on his face. “I don’t know how I could happen, but the gun fell and shot, that is the pure truth,” he justified himself before the surgeon who attended him, Orlando Fernández.

That the news was given to doctors José Arigbay, second military chief in Pinar del Río, suggests that the event took place at some point in that province. According to Hernández Serrano, it was also at the Pinarño Provincial Hospital where “Emergency” operated.

“The lead penetrated him on the left cheek. They were already going to explore the wound with a scalpel to see his possible trajectory,” said the surgeon. “There is no paralysis. There is no sign of neurological disorder. Nor has the duct that carries the saliva of the parotid gland to the mouth has been injured; not even the maxilla has been touched. The lead ran through the small section inside the face.”

A photograph of Guevara in 1966, completely shaved, shows that if the shot really happened, he barely touched it. The portrait hints a brand, which does not match the story of the bullet of Hernández Serrano. Anderson confirms that the episode took place, although it emphasizes that the real damage did not make the bullet, but an antihistamine injection that caused a shock toxic.

Hernández Serrano argues that this story must be counted again, because on the subject “they have been said, written and published false arguments, for ignorance or bad intention.” Actually, no one in recent weeks has published anything about it. Bay of pigs had profuse, but chaotic media coverage, and even in the photos that are preserved from the Cuban main flat barely notice who is and who is missing.

However, the author reacts against the “enemies of our socialist process” who affirm that it was some fight with Fidel or Raúl Castro that caused Guevara to, in an abduction of anger, would miss the place.

Artificial intelligence has its own explanation about the event. By formulating this newspaper to the same question by Hernández Serrano – ”why Che did not fight in Girón? ” – It was clearer than the journalist.

“At that time, Che was in the Pinar del Río area, to the west of Cuba, directing a distraction operation due to a false landing in that region. During that mobilization, there was an accident with a Cuban patrol, in which several men died by friendly fire, an episode that he himself lamented later.”

Needless to say, Hernández Serrano does not allude to this hunt for this “false track” or the accident in the Cuban west. Only April 20, when the fight was more than finished, the Che He went to Bay of pigs. So that? The ruling response is another reduction to the absurd: “He traveled to the sands of combat because yes.”

Using the dead guerrilla in 1967 as a myth of the perfect revolutionary has been a constant practice, despite the ambiguity and confusion that characterizes these “anecdotes.” The circumstances of the supposed finding of their remains in Bolivia, without going any further, give multiple reasons to doubt that the burned bones in the mausoleum of Santa Clara are really those of Guevara.

Several independent media have used to return to another classic theme when talking about Girón: Kennedy’s “betrayal”

But the event has not only given what to talk about on the island. Several independent media have taken the opportunity to return to another classic theme when talking about Girón: Kennedy’s “betrayal” to exiles.

The pusilanimity of the Democrat, his “manifest absence of audacity and leadership” – in the words of an exiled Cuban historian – have been the usual opinion that Kennedy have had veterans of the invasion. However, a memorandum of the presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, dated June 30, 1961 and published as part of the “papers”, blames the CIA of failure.

In 17 pages, Schlesinger offers a disorganization panorama and failures in the military operation, denounces its total uncoordination with Washington’s policies and demands urgently calling attention to its agents. These factors wounded the invasion, since the CIA had a vision of the plan – excessively influenced by the opinion of the exiles – that did not agree with that of the White House.

The agency assured that the support of Cubans to Castro was low and that it would not be difficult to cause an internal uprising. The story showed that it was wrong, since at that time the popularity of the leader was in one of its highest moments.

“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” said Schlesinger

“We have become prisoners of our own agents,” said Schlesinger regarding the pressure of the CIA so that Washington authorized their plans, despite not agreeing with them. In addition, although he praised his senior positions, he described his agents in the field – he suffered those who were in contact with the organizers of the invasion – to be “rude and even perverse” men, whose actions caused diplomatic consequences at the highest level.

The story of Cuba took a radical turn in April 1961. Kennedy was killed two years later in Texas; Guevara was killed in Bolivia six years later, partly thanks to the abandonment of Havana. It was only the beginning of an era in which Fidel Castro cleared his path of friends and enemies, in his claim to become one of the most powerful men on the continent.