Unwitting Betrayal

While they were close friends and joint participants in the recent guerrilla uprising in Bolivia, French Marxist Jules Regis Debray and Castroite Guerrilla Che Guevara unwittingly betrayed each other. The betrayal cost Che his life last month. Last week Debray paid with his freedom. After a 53-day trial in the steaming Bolivian oil town of Camiri, a military court found the dashing young (27) French intellectual guilty of murder, theft and rebellion. It sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Tip on Che. A confidant of Fidel Castro and the author of a new handbook on guerrilla warfare (Revolution in the Revolution?), Debray was captured last April as he walked out of an abandoned guerrilla camp in the Andean foothills. With him were Argentine Painter Giro Roberto Bustos, who stood trial with Debray, and British Free lance Photographer George Roth, who was later released. At first, Debray claimed that he was a journalist on assignment for a Mexican magazine and backed up his claim by describing how he had interviewed Che Guevara in the bush. That gave the Bolivian government its first real evidence that the elusive Che was actually leading the guerrilla movement, and the army immediately stepped up its anti-guerrilla offensive to try to get him. Eventually, it stamped out most of the 50-member band and captured and executed Che himself.

It also captured Che's diaries and decoded messages, which clearly showed that Debray (whose guerrilla code name was "Danton") was no mere journalist.

Evidence from the diaries presented during the trial indicated that Debray was actually a courier between Guevara ("Ramon") and Fidel Castro ("Leche"), who was supplying money, arms, training and medicines to the revolutionaries. "The Frenchman wants to join us," Che wrote in his diary March 21. "I asked him to go organize a network of support in France, where he would return after passing through Havana. He wants to marry his girl and have a son." Then on March 25: "Long oral report on the situation to the Frenchman. We decided to call the movement the National Liberation Front of Bolivia."

After a month in the high jungle wilderness, Debray became anxious to return to France and get on with his task. "The Frenchman," Guevara wrote, "dwells too vehemently on the usefulness of his foreign mission." In early April, Guevara gave the impatient Debray three options: "First, continue with us. Second, get out alone. Third, go to [the town of] Gutierrez," and make his way back to La Paz. Debray chose the third alternative, and toward mid-April he left the camp with Bustos and Roth--only to be captured a few hours later.

An Integral Part. Faced with the overwhelming evidence against him and depressed over the death of Che, Debray finally changed his story and, in effect, pleaded guilty. "I want to make clear," he told the court, "that this mission of mine to tell people abroad of the aims of the guerrillas is an integral part of revolutionary work. In this sense, I not only affirm but demand that the tribunal consider me morally and politically co-responsible for the acts of my guerrilla comrades." And so it did; Bustos, his Argentine comrade, was sentenced at the same time to 30 years. After the sentencing, the Bolivian army seemed determined to close the whole Debray matter, which has become a cause celebre in France. The court's legal adviser denied permission for any appeals and, as defense attorneys rose to protest, Court President Efrain Gauchalla banged his gavel so angrily that it snapped in two, and then adjourned the court.

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