[In the following excerpt from a collection of essays written for The Times Literary Supplement during 1968, the critic discusses the insights that Guevara's diaries provide into his life and revolutionary activities in Bolivia. The critic also compares the Cuban and English editions of the diaries.]

Early in the afternoon of October 8, 1967, at Quebrada del Yuro, in the remote south-east corner of Bolivia, a small guerrilla force, led by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, found itself surrounded by units of the Bolivian Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion and suffered a decisive defeat. Six guerrillas were killed and Che himself was wounded and captured. Twenty-four hours later, on October 9, he was executed. Two diaries were found among his papers: the first, a spiral notebook, covered the period from November 7, 1966 (the day he arrived—heavily disguised—from Havana, via Prague, São Paulo and La Paz, at the guerrilla base of Nancahuazú), to the the end of the year; the second, an appointments book bearing the name of a German pharmaceutical company, ran from January 1, 1967, to October 7, the day before the final battle.

Clearly the Guevara diaries were documents of the greatest political and historical interest and importance. However, neither the Bolivians nor the Americans—American counter-insurgency specialists had been training the Bolivian anti-guerrilla forces and the C.I.A. agents were apparently in at the kill—were at first prepared to authorize their publication. Photocopies of the diaries did nevertheless reach Havana, where, in June of this year, after their authenticity had been satisfactorily established, they were published, together with a 'Necessary Introduction' by Dr. Fidel Castro, in which he honoured the memory of Che, declared his solidarity with the Latin-American revolutionary movement, and argued strongly that although recent events in Bolivia constituted a setback for the Revolution they were not a defeat. The Cuban Government has consistently refused to reveal the source of the photocopies, but it is now known that they were handed over by Sr. Antonio Arguedas, the Bolivian Minister of the Interior, no less, whose defection in July triggered off a major political crisis in Bolivia. The Cape/Lorrimer edition of Che Guevara's Bolivian diaries is a translation of the Cuban edition complete with Dr. Castro's introduction and a translation of the July Proclamation by the Bolivian guerrilla, Inti Peredo, which begins with the stirring declaration, 'Guerrilla warfare in Bolivia is not dead! It has just begun.'

It has been widely assumed that besides being incomplete—in his introduction Dr. Castro admitted that a few pages were not yet in his possession—the Cuban edition of the Guevara diaries had been heavily edited in order to suppress or 'soften' passages damaging to the Castro regime. However, the publication in this country by Allen and Unwin of the American edition of the diaries, which their American publishers, Stein and Day, claim to be the 'only authentic, uncensored and complete version', makes it quite clear that this is not the case. Certainly the American edition is complete: it includes entries for January 4, 5, 8 and 9, February 8 and 9, March 14, April 4 and 5, June 9 and 10, July 4 and 5, which do not appear in the Cuban edition. Interesting as they are, however, Dr. Castro was quite correct when he wrote, 'they are entries for dates when nothing important happened and they in no way alter the diary's overall contents'. So far as the remaining 300 or so entries are concerned, there are minor variations in translation but no significant differences between the two editions. The very fact that both sides had the diaries (or photocopies of them)—and that each knew this to be the case—ensured that neither could tamper with the text and hope to get away with it.

Besides the thirteen entries missing from the Cuban version of the Guevara diaries, the American edition offers as an additional bonus, the captured diaries of three of Che's closest lieutenants, all, like himself, veterans of the Sierra Maestra and officers of the Cuban Revolutionary Army: first, Pombo (Captain Harry Villegas Tamayo), a 27-year-old Negro and one of the few survivors of the campaign, whose diary begins on July 14, 1966, and ends on May 29, 1967, and is therefore particularly valuable for the information it gives about the establishment of the guerrilla base before Che's arrival; secondly, Rolando (Captain Eliseo Reyes Rodríguez), a member of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party, killed in action at the age of twenty-four, whose diary runs from August 11, 1966, to April 20, 1967: and, thirdly, Braulio (Lieutenant Israel Reyes Zayas), whose diary, the least interesting of the three, covers the period October 25, 1966, to August 9, 1967. The book also includes some fascinating photographs of Che himself, and the guerrilla camp, a useful chronology of the eleven-month campaign, and a complete list of the guerrillas, all of whom have been identified. (As is now well known from sensational newspaper stories, Tania [Laura], the only girl among the guerrillas, killed in August, 1967, was Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider, an East German double-agent keeping an eye on Che for the Soviet K.G.B.)

There is, moreover, a valuable, if poorly organized and at times inconsistent, introduction by the American editor of the diaries, Mr. Daniel James, a journalist and historian, who has had access to all the captured documents and who has for some time taken a close interest in the career of Che Guevara (a biography is expected to appear soon). In his introduction, Mr. James recounts Che's movements from the time of his 'disappearance' in March, 1965, to his arrival at Nancahuazú eighteen months later; he traces the idea of a Bolivian campaign back to the meeting between Dr. Castro and Sr. Mario Monje Molina, the First Secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party, during the Tricontinental Conference held in Havana in January, 1966; and he explains the purpose of the campaign which was to make Bolivia the catalyst for revolution against 'Yankee imperialism' throughout Latin America. Che is on record as saying: 'Bolivia will sacrifice itself so that conditions [for revolution] can be created in neighbouring countries. We have to make [Latin] America another Vietnam, with its centre in Bolivia.'

The Diaries themselves consist of daily jottings and monthly analyses relating to the guerrillas themselves—Che never had a fighting force of more than forty or so (almost half of whom were Cuban)—and guerrilla operations along a corridor approximately 200 miles long and seventy miles wide, within the triangle formed by the towns of Santa Cruz in the north, Sucre in the west, and Camiri in the south. No doubt they were very like the 'hasty notes' from which Che eventually compiled his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, which was also recently published in English. Without literary pretensions, the Diaries make compelling reading. Like the Reminiscences they include a great deal of information about the everyday problems of food supply, sickness, discipline and morale, as well as comments on Bolivian and Voice of America news broadcasts relating to the guerrilla war, and descriptions of patrols and skirmishes with Bolivian government troops. Again, as in the Reminiscences, Che writes with considerable self-awareness, frankness, modesty and not a little coarse humour (May 13: 'Day of belching, farting, vomiting and diarrhoea; a real organ concert'). As late as June-July Che was still optimistic (on July 7 the guerrillas had one of their greatest successes when they took Samaipata on the main Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway), but it was from that time that things began to go wrong: the guerrilla force was gradually reduced in number and Che himself suffered a serious physical deterioration. The end came at Quebrada del Yuro early in October.

The most important question to be asked about Che Guevara's Bolivian campaign is why did it fail? The diaries themselves provide a number of clues. In the first place, and perhaps the most important, the peasants of southeast Bolivia failed to support the guerrillas. On the contrary, they seemed more disposed to assist the Bolivian army in tracking them down. Secondly, the guerrillas maintained little contact with the Bolivian miners, students and other urban revolutionary groups. One important reason for this was the deep rift which opened up between Che and the leaders of the Bolivian Communist Party. Pombo's diary reveals Che's bitterness over what became in effect communist sabotage of the guerrilla cam-paign, and in his introduction to the Guevara diaries Fidel Castro goes out of his way to denounce the Bolivian Communists for 'narrow and vulgar chauvinism'. And thirdly, the Bolivian army, hopelessly ineffective at first, improved its counter-insurgency methods as a result of intensive United States training and, in the end, had little difficulty in mopping up what remained of the guerrilla force.