Unlike the Sierra Maestra, campesinos did not flock to the rebel colors. Guevara himself could see as early as mid-April that much of the rural population was more than apathetic in regard to the guerrillas; rather, it was frightened and hostile—"terrorized," as he put it—by the band's presence, an observation that occurs again and again in his diary. The Indians of southeastern Bolivia found the bearded guerrillas outlandish, as many of them literally were, and in what must have been a bitter irony for Guevara, sometimes called them "Gringos" because of their peculiar speech. Although many campesinos spoke Spanish in addition to their native Indian languages, they did not speak it with Cuban or Argentinean accents.
The population was thin in the area in which Guevara operated. Living in rugged, difficult terrain that was unable to support many inhabitants at the best of times, it had been decimated by plague, endemic in the area, a few years before he arrived. Consequently, few recruits were available. Further complicating the situation for Guevara, the region's campesinos, less sophisticated and politicized than their counterparts on the Altiplano and in the Cochabamba Valley, had little understanding of the central government and little feeling for or against it. President Barrientos once told a visiting U.S. general that his greatest political problem was to persuade his countrymen that such a nation as Bolivia existed with a capital called La Paz. Nowhere did national identity have less impact than among the Indians of the southeast.
They considered government representatives to be foreigners and regarded them with the same deep suspicion with which they viewed any other strangers. Although they collaborated with the army constantly throughout the guerrilla episode, informed observers, including Charles Grover, the chief political officer at the U.S. embassy, believe that they may have done so occasionally from coercion but principally as a means of freeing themselves of both soldiers and guerrillas. Furthermore, given the two sets of interlopers, the soldiers seemed less foreign and less threatening.
Had Guevara tried to appeal to the miners, among whom disaffection was rampant and who continued to have bloody clashes with the government, he might have found greater support. Had he headquartered his band near the mines, however, it would have faced much greater danger, especially without the protection of mountains and jungles. As one CIA official pointed out, the government could and often did mass troops in the high, arid mining areas, and it would surely have liquidated his small guerrilla force very quickly had he placed it there.
Once, stopping just outside Muyupampa, a small town in southern Bolivia, Guevara and part of his band met with the village leaders—the subprefect, the doctor, and the priest. The guerrillas pointed out that they were fighting for a "total change in the present structure" and asked for food and medicine. The civic leaders, fearful for the town's safety, agreed to deliver the supplies that afternoon at an agreed-upon time and place. When the time came, the air force bombed the delivery site instead. Some accounts of this event maintain that the civilian leaders did not willingly betray the guerrillas but that military units in the town forced them to change their strategy. Nevertheless, according to Bolivian news reports, the city had organized a volunteer force of some 100 men to stand guard at night, and a similar force was organized at nearby Monteagudo, which suggests that the local populations did indeed fear the intruders.
These units seem to have been something a joke militarily. Guevara, who encountered one near Muyupampa on April 19, said, "One of these, with two M-3s and two revolvers, surprised our outposts but the patrol surrendered without presenting combat." Furthermore, if the guerrillas were unpopular, so, too, were some of the "home guard" groups. A campesino unit formed in Cochabamba, which proceeded to Camiri, so worried the local populace that the citizens complained to the army about its presence. Moreover, the Bolivian Army found them of little military value, but General Alfredo Ovando Candia, armed forces chief of staff, said it tolerated them for political reasons.
He did not elaborate, but Grover believes he may have meant to avoid offending the campesinos, especially from Cochabamba, who formed an important element in Barrientos's political coalition. 12 But whatever their drawbacks, these groups were another indication that Guevara's message of the need for revolution was not convincing its audience, if, in fact, most of that audience ever even heard the message.
Khan's Notes of His Stay in UK
