Her mother was Jewish, born in Russia, and both parents were communists. Tania moved to East Germany with her parents in 1952, and at a very early age, she, like them, became a dedicated communist. She had a fascination with things military and an interest in folk music and linguistics, the latter inherited perhaps from her father, who had supported himself in Buenos Aires as a language teacher. Tania studied philosophy at Humboldt University in East Berlin, joined the Communist Party, and became active in the official youth movement, principally translating for visiting Latin American delegations, one of which Guevara headed in 1959. Like many others, she found Cuba's revolutionary success fascinating and may also have been fascinated by the dashing young Argentine commandante turned high government official. Two years later, she turned up in Cuba; as is often the case with stories about Tania, there is more than one version about how that happened. Some say she arrived with an East German cultural delegation and stayed after it returned. More likely, the Cuban Ballet, for which she interpreted in Germany, managed to get her to Cuba. Once there, she did several official jobs, including working in the Ministry of Education. She also attended Havana University and served in the Cuban women's militia, which provided the military ambience she yearned for. In 1963 she began training in espionage.
Some say Tania and Guevara became lovers; certainly, they were close. They were reported together at social events, once going together to a costume party in matching outfits. 14 If, however, rumors of an intimate liaison are true, it did not prevent her from being sent to La Paz on a long-term espionage assignment. Until Tania made a colossal blunder in 1967 that helped destroy Guevara, she was a remarkably effective undercover agent. She arrived in La Paz in 1964, setting herself up as a language teacher and at one point teaching the children of a respected journalist, Gonzalo Lopez Munoz, who, according to some reports, hired her to work for a magazine he had just founded. Not long thereafter he became Barrientos's chief of information. Meanwhile, Tania married a Bolivian. It was a short liaison, and stories vary about that, too. One thing is certain: From the marriage she gained a Bolivian passport, allowing her to travel freely in and out of the country. By then, she had a nonpaying position with the Ministry of Education, which reportedly helped her arrange for her husband to go on a scholarship to Bulgaria, alone. Here, too, however, the record is clouded; some accounts say he went to study in Israel or in Yugoslavia. 15 Nevertheless, he did leave Tania unfettered in Bolivia. Seven months after their marriage, she divorced him. By then, she was meeting the country's artists, intellectuals, government officials, and people prominent in La Paz society. Her continuing connection with the chief of information served Guevara especially well, enabling Tania to help arrange false credentials for him and his confederates, two of whom— Regis Debray and Argentine artist and revolutionary Ciro Roberto Bustos—gained special notoriety not long thereafter.
The notion has persisted that Tania served two, and possibly three, intelligence organizations. As a young woman she undoubtedly had links with East German intelligence, and some say she was soon recruited by the Soviet KGB and was assigned to get herself to Havana to keep an eye on the worrisome Cubans. Several CIA officials closely involved with these events, while admitting to uncertainty, find the double-spy connection "farfetched," but in the 1960s the agency was not entirely of that opinion. Two agents, who remain anonymous, briefed Benjamin Welles of the New York Times on July 22, 1968, on the "HavanaMoscow split." One of the points they used to underpin their thesis that a split existed was "the dispatch of 'Tania' to Cuba in 1961 by the East German Intelligence Service." In their summary of the briefing, they added, "We noted that she was probably but one of many Soviet and Bloc agents run to Cuba to conduct independent operations." That was a view, in fact, that Welles already held: A week earlier he had written a front-page story, claiming that in 1961 Tania had been recruited by Gunther Mannel of the East German Foreign Intelligence Department to keep Moscow informed of Castro's plans for violent revolution in Latin America. She was, Welles wrote, to "infiltrate the Guevara movement," although in 1961 there was no Guevara movement, certainly none regarding Bolivia. In fact, that was some four years before he went to the Congo.
Nevertheless, writer and Guevara biographer Daniel James, for example, makes this case strongly, based n an interview with defected to the West in 1961. James and others who share this view say Guevara eventually became Tania's specific target and that foiling his revolution in Bolivia was her final objective. Some, including James, say her blunder was a deliberate effort to thwart Guevara and his revolution, which the Soviets regarded as ill considered and reckless. To believe that, however, one must accept that the Soviets were willing to see her rusticated to Bolivia in November 1964, more than one year before the Cubans had even formulated a plan for an insurgency there. It was undoubtedly a useful listening post about Cuban schemes on the South American continent, but would that be an adequate use of Tania? One needs also to believe that Tania made her "mistake" deliberately, despite the fact that it would reveal her operations in La Paz, put her in enormous danger, and very likely lead to her execution had she ever returned from her visit to Guevara's camp.
Whatever Tania's motive, what happened is astonishing. Debray and Bustos arrived separately in La Paz in February 1967 and made contact with Tania, who arranged for them to get to Guevara's camp and accompanied them on the trip. It was an arduous journey made by a combination of bus, taxi, and hired jeep. After traveling for more than four days, they arrived on March 5 in Camiri. There, they met a guerrilla named Coco Paredo, who took them to the camp in his vehicle. Tania lived much of the time in Camiri, keeping a hotel room and a jeep there. She had been to the camp once previously, when Monje had his fateful New Year's Eve meeting with Guevara, but was told by Guevara never to return, the danger being too great that her role would be discovered. 19 She went with Debray and Bustos nevertheless, but, perhaps far worse as things turned out, she waited for Guevara, who was on a training and reconnoitering trip with most of his band and did not arrive for two weeks. We can only speculate why she did so. Was it love? Was it the excitement of military life? Did she enjoy the camp too much to leave, especially before most of the guerrillas and their renowned commander arrived? We do not know. While she was there, however, the Bolivian authorities discovered her jeep in Camiri. Accounts of what they found in it vary, but unquestionably they discovered sufficient documentation to link her to the guerrilla band and the La Paz network. And that brings up the key question about Tania: How could a woman who had been such an adroit undercover agent suddenly be so careless? Many commentators find that so implausible that they believe her actions had to stem from treachery, not fecklessness.
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