Latin America Diaries by Ernesto «Che» Guevara Page B

We slept in a bin used for storing rice and fought all night over the blanket.
    The next day, after walking until 3 in the afternoon, making a dozen or so detours around a river, we finally reached Peñas Blancas. We had to stay there as no more cars were heading to the neighboring town of Rivas. 28
    The next day dawned to rain and by 10 a.m. there was still no sign of a truck, so we decided to brave the drizzle and set off for Rivas anyway. At that moment, Fatty Rojo appeared in a car with Boston University license plates. They were trying to get to Costa Rica, an impossible feat because the muddy track on which we ourselves had been bogged a few times was actually the Panama-Costa Rica highway. Rojo was accompanied by the brothers Domingo and Walter Beberaggi Allende. We went on to Rivas and there, close to the town, we ordered a spit roast with mate and cañita , a kind of Nicaraguan gin. A little corner of Argentina transplanted to the “Tacho estate.” They continued on to San Juan del Sur, intending to take the car across to Puntarenas, while we took the bus to Managua.
Nicaragua
    We arrived at night, and began the rounds of boarding houses and hotels to find the cheapest accommodation. In the end we settled on one where for four córdobas we each had a tiny room without electricity.
    We started out the next day tramping round the consulates and encountering the usual idiocies. At the Honduran consulate Rojo and his friends appeared; they’d been unable to get across and were now rethinking the plan because of the outrageous price being charged. Things were then decided very quickly. The two of us would go with Domingo, the younger Beberaggi, to sell the car in Guatemala, while Fatty and Walter would travel by plane to San José in Costa Rica.
    That evening we had a long session, each of us giving their perspective on the question of Argentina. Rojo, Gualo and Domingo were intransigent radicals; Walter was pro-Labor; and myself, a sniper, according to Fatty Rojo at least. Most interesting for me was the idea Walter gave me of the Labor Party and Cipriano Reyes— very different from the one I had already. He described Cipriano’s origins as a union leader, the prestige he slowly won among the Berisa meat-packers and his attitude toward the Unión Democrática coalition, when he supported the Labor Party (founded by Perón at that time) in the knowledge of what it was doing.
    After the elections, Perón ordered the unification of the party, causing its dissolution. A violent debate ensued in the parliament,in which the Labor supporters, headed by Cipriano Reyes, didn’t bend. Finally talks got underway for a revolutionary coup d’état, headed by the military under Brigadier de la Colina and his assistant, Veles, who betrayed him by telling Perón what was happening.
    The three main leaders of the party—Reyes, Beberaggi and García Velloso—were imprisoned and tortured, the first barbarically. After a time, the judge, Palma Beltrán, ordered the prisoners’ conditional release into police custody, while the state prosecutor appealed against the sentence. Beberaggi managed to escape when the parliament was in session and made his way secretly to Uruguay; all the others were arrested and are still in prison. Walter went to the United States and graduated as an economics professor. In a series of radio talks he denounced the Perón regime in no uncertain terms, and was stripped of his Argentine citizenship.
    In the morning we left for the north, having left the others on the plane, and reached the border as it was closing.
    We only had $20. We had to pay on the Honduran side. We crossed the whole narrow strip that is Honduras at that point and made it to the other border, but couldn’t pay because it turned out to be too expensive. We slept in the open air—the others, on rubber mattresses, me, in a sleeping bag.
    We were the first to cross the border