Fellow Traveler on the Road

In the brief burst of warmth toward the U.S. that followed his U.S. visit, Fidel Castro last May temporarily cooled toward Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, the Argentine Communist who served as Castro's top field commander in the Cuban revolution. Castro went on the air, said that he had been invited to many foreign lands to explain the Cuban revolution, but could not go. So, said Castro, "I am sending one of the most responsible companeros of the revolution, Dr. Guevara. Nobody should have the slightest suspicion. He will be among us again within 30 or 45 days."

Last week, nearly three months later, Che was in Khartoum, slowly beating his way home. He had been to Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Ceylon, Iraq and the Sudan for average stays of three to five days, and he had worked as hard as a man could at his boondoggle. He dined with Nehru, got photographed with Nasser, talked with Sukarno, Tito, Pakistani President Mohammad Ayub Khan. His message everywhere was "positive neutralism," but it always came out as neutralism against the U.S.

In Djakarta he assailed President Eisenhower; in Baghdad he conferred with officials of the Russian, Czech, Bulgarian and Yugoslav missions. In Communist Yugoslavia he told interviewers: "It is our wish to see and perhaps apply Yugoslav experiences in Cuba"; in New Delhi he told the pro-Communist weekly Blitz: "We have on our soil a North American base. It is easy to shake off Batista and the landlords, but not American bases." In Ceylon he told newsmen: "Don't believe the American press." In Karachi, where he spent 55 minutes of a scheduled one-hour interview fulminating against "American agents" and the U.S. State Department, a weary reporter finally asked: "Haven't you anything new to say?"

One of Guevara's nominal chores was to promote trade among "nations struggling for their national independence and freedom," but he signed only one concrete trade agreement, by which Ceylon promised that it would buy 20,000 tons of Cuban sugar within the next five months. In Havana a trade expert took rueful note that last year Ceylon bought 38,000 tons of sugar from Cuba.

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