It closed with Guevara's defeat and death in Bolivia in 1967. During that six-year period, the U.S. government so improved its counterinsurgency capability in Latin America that it effectively ended Havana's prolonged effort to spark a revolutionary conflagration in the Western Hemisphere. Near the end of the century, under very different geopolitical circumstances, the United States still ponders the dilemma of armed intervention overseas, something it is now more reluctant to undertake than in the 1960s, when U.S. interests seemed more clearly at stake. Still, as policymakers look at today's military options, the Latin American experience of the 1960s provides important lessons and examples, as we shall see. It also demonstrates the ways the U.S. government operates abroad, even today, and the sometimes conflicting roles of its soldiers, spies, and diplomats.
In the 1960s, Guevara was one of the most renowned of guerrilla leaders in an age when they loomed like giants on the world political stage. His ongoing war with Washington pitted U.S. theories of counterinsurgency against Cuba's unique theories of revolution. It also represented a clash of fundamental beliefs. Cuba's efforts to "export revolution," as U.S. officials put it, threatened U.S. interests and influence, especially in Latin America, and largely accounted for Washington's energetic response. It would be a mistake, however, to assume, as is often done when his story is told, that ideological motivation existed only on Guevara's side.
Unquestionably, few, if any, historical figures have displayed more loyal adherence to an ideology than Guevara, whose dedication to principal is inspirational, regardless of what one feels about his beliefs. He brings to mind early reformers of the Christian church, with his extensive learning, his disregard of worldly rewards, his devotion to an ideal, his despair over the imperfect commitment of colleagues, and his certainty that he would someday become a martyr for the faith, as indeed he did.
On the other side, most representatives of the U.S. government overseas have always displayed a powerful ideological commitment, and never more so than during the Cold War years of the 1960s. They are often criticized, in fact, for taking a messianic approach to diplomacy. Their ideology encompasses individualism, personal rights, equal opportunity, popular democracy, and free-enterprise economics, despite whatever gaps may exist at home between ideals and reality. The two American officials who had the most to do with checking Guevara in Bolivia had especially good reason to espouse those ideals. One, Douglas Henderson, the U.S. ambassador in La Paz, was a carpenter's son who had won scholarships to prestigious eastern schools and subsequently gained admission to the career foreign service. When this book was written, he was living in retirement in a comfortable house, partially built by his father, in a rural suburb of Boston.
The other official, Ralph "Pappy" Shelton, headed the Green Beret detachment sent to train the Bolivian army in methods of countering guerrillas. The son of a Tennessee dirt farmer, Shelton joined the army as a private, learned Spanish, and developed an easy rapport with the Bolivian peasants (campesinos), something Guevara was never able to do. He rose to become a commissioned officer and retired with the rank of major, serving, when this was written, as a federal government executive in Memphis.
But the difficulties of hardscrabble farming in rural Tennessee could never compare with the misery in much of Latin America that Guevara encountered in extensive travels through the region as a boy and a young man. He wanted desperately to alleviate the suffering he witnessed, searching for ways to do so, first through medicine and then through violent revolution. An armed confrontation with the democratic, capitalist powers was, he came to believe, the only way to solve the problems of the hemisphere and much of the rest of the world, especially Africa, where he also focused his efforts. Out of that great conflict, he believed, would emerge Marxist states dedicated to improving the material well-being of the masses.
Both in theory and in actuality, such societies were anathema to Americans, who for many years dedicated their diplomacy to preventing them from spreading. A Green Beret sergeant in Bolivia put it as well as anyone, if inelegantly, when he said of Guevara, "He believed in his way, and we believe in our way. We ain't buyin' communism. In the United States and these other countries, it ain't movin' in ... not if I can help it."
The story of Washington's response to Guevara's Bolivian insurgency begins at the end of World War II, when the United States started creating systems of economic aid, military advice, and intelligence gathering in the Western Hemisphere designed to forestall exactly what Guevara attempted. Some of the structure was left over from the war, some from even earlier. But the Cuban Revolution led by Castro, Guevara, and others electrified Washington, and in the shock that resulted, it saw Latin America in a strong new light. The consequent renewal of U.S. involvement in the Western Hemisphere, begun late in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was intensified by President John F. Kennedy and continued by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Effective counterinsurgency techniques ranked high among Washington's new approaches to Latin America, beginning in Kennedy's administration. Fortunately for the U.S. government, when it became aware of Guevara's rebellion in Bolivia in 1967, it stuck to carefully designed tenets for combating guerrilla warfare. Despite Bolivian fears and pressure, Washington did not panic, nor did it Americanize the conflict. It avoided repeating the mistakes it had made and continued to make in Southeast Asia, and did so to a great extent because of Ambassador Henderson's calming influence. As a result, Guevara's announced intention to create another Vietnam quickly became a hopeless cause
Anti-Napoleon Coalition and Russian Ascension in Caucuses
