Word: che
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Aleida Guevara, dressed in black and fighting tears, listened as Fidel Castro read a servile, six-month-old farewell letter from her husband Che, once the dictator's trusted lieutenant-who may or may not be alive. The incident revealed the deep fissures in Castro's regime. See THE HEMISPHERE...
...letter bore no date-only "Havana, Year of Agriculture."* It was signed by Argentine-born Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, Castro's longtime No. 2 man, who has been missing for seven months after a bitter doctrinal dispute with the dictator; Che preferred a hardline, Peking-style Communism, Castro the softer, Moscow variety (TIME cover, Oct. 8). Two weeks ago, Castro promised a document that would explain Che's absence and his status. Now before 5,000 Cubans in Havana's Chaplin Theater, Castro said that Che gave him the letter last April, asking him to read it publicly...
...then some. "My only fault of any gravity," Che's letter continued was in not having trusted more in you from the first moments of the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood your qualities as leader and revolutionary. I have lived magnificent days. I thank you for your lessons and your example.' As for Che's young wife Aleida and his three children, whom he left behind, "I ask nothing for them because the state will educate them and give them enough to live on." Out front in the audience, as Castro read the letter was Aleida...
...Rumors. Was the letter genuine? Washington's Castrologists doubted it. It seemed like one of those familiar fictions that Communist regimes publish to paper over the cracks in the façade. It was too mawkish in its Fidelity for a tough guy like Che, too humble for a man who once snickered that Fidel joined in only one battle of the revolution, and that "proved a failure." Nor did it explain anything about Che's fate-except that he was out of power in Cuba...
...most of them genuine technical advisers. The Chinese, once very much in evidence, are scarcely seen any more. They have almost nothing to sell and very little to say. The one place where their influence was still strong until recently was in Castro's overseas operations, where, at Che Guevara's inspiration, the whole tone was a blatant call for immediate bloody revolt. Castro is still permitted to support his "wars of national liberation," but Moscow insists on knowing all about such operations and wants to be sure that they are carried on without leaving such obvious traces...