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Havana, February 13, 2015
Words at the presentation of the book
¿Quién mató al
Che? Cómo la CIA logró salir impune del asesinato
by Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, Social Sciences Publishing
House, Cuba.
[Spanish translation of
Who Killed Che? How the CIA
Got Away With Murder]
Unofficial translation by Susana Hurlich, Havana
A Book that was Missing
Ricardo Alarcón
de Quesada
Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, in addition to being eminent
lawyers, are active participants in the most important battles of the
North American people for justice and freedom. Their book, dedicated to
Leonard Weinglass – who, up to his last breath, devoted his life to the
liberation of the Five Cuban antiterrorists who served long years of
unjust and cruel imprisonment in the United States – pays well-deserved
tribute to our mutual friend when our heroes have now returned free to
the Homeland. To fight for justice in that country means, above all, to
seek the truth and make it known in the most difficult of circumstances,
confronting the concealment and manipulation of a powerful machinery
determined to impose nothing else but ignorance on millions of people.
This is a task that Lenny as well as Ratner and Smith have known how to
carry out assiduously and consistently.
To prove that Ernesto Guevara was assassinated by the CIA, that his
death was a war crime – a crime that never perishes – and that this deed
was entirely the responsibility of the U.S. government called for an
unremitting search. After many years of demanding that the authorities
comply with their own laws with respect to public access to information,
today we can read documents that, despite the crossings-out and
deletions that still seek to conceal numerous facts, allow the reader to
discover that the official versions about Ernesto Guevara’s final combat
were deliberately distorted. It’s all about trying to make us believe
that Washington preferred that Che, defeated and taken prisoner, would
continue to live and that the crime was the result of unilateral
decisions made by soldiers of the Bolivian Army who were then a docile
instrument of the Empire.
Much has been written about Che and his epic Bolivian campaign and there
are many authors who echoed the interpretation fabricated by the
exponents of “plausible deniability.” At this stage, when both
selective and massive assassination and the practice of torture and
extrajudicial executions have become a generalized practice of a new way
of making war, the book by Ratner and Smith is an opportune reminder
that such treatment has a long trajectory. It is as old as that of using
servile armies and assassins – uniformed or not - as simple tools
causing countless suffering to the peoples of Latin America under
military dictatorships that the United States equipped, trained and
managed.
In an earlier book, published in 1997 and the result of an equally
relentless pursuit, the authors had revealed how the FBI tracked Ernesto
Guevara’s activities in Guatemala and Mexico when he was not yet Che. In
this book that they offer us now it can be confirmed that during his
Bolivian campaign he was obsessively followed at the highest levels in
Washington.
The U.S. Government’s Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for
the cold-blooded murder of a wounded and unarmed young prisoner by the
name of Ernesto Guervara. The actual perpetrators of the cowardly act
were soldiers who acted under the control of the CIA and obeyed their
orders without batting an eye.
Some are still walking, however, on the streets of Miami or are in their
offices at Langley, mulling over their frustration. Because they could
not kill Che. Che continued to live and his message returned victorious
in a new Bolivia and in a Latin America that confidently moves ahead
towards complete emancipation.
Because Che fought all his life leading the list of those named as
essential by Bertolt Brecht. Essential are those who are never missing
when they are most needed, those who are present, always on the front
line, when the struggle is harder and more complex.
That is why Che lives. Because we need him now more than ever.
The Cuban edition of this book appears in a new juncture in which we
greatly need the Guevarian light. Now we are entering a stage that poses
new challenges that we must face with wisdom and firmness. The historic
enemy of our people has not changed its nature or its strategy of
domination, only its tactics. Because its crude and violent policy – and
it is recognized as such - of half a century failed, now it will test
methods that intend to be more subtle to achieve the same ends.
We must accept the challenge and advance down that path without ever
abandoning our principles. And always remembering Che’s visionary
warning. Do not trust the imperialists “not even a little bit, not in
anything.”
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