We won’t forget Tamara
by Günther Pohl and Marion Baur
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He has become a popular face on meaningless designer-label clothes (many of them products of the very poverty and child labour Che fought to ban for ever). He has also been rediscovered as a motif for political posters of all kinds. “The true revolutionary” is the slogan on one by Sinn Féin that reappeared recently: Che is pictured on it alongside Bobby Sands and “Join Sinn Féin.” Whoever designed it forgot the other half of Ernesto Che Guevara’s words: “The true revolutionary is always a communist.”
Despite all the abuse Che gets, his presence for the forty years since his killing proves that revolutionaries aren’t easily forgotten; even the most commercialised image of him will lead at least some to research the mind behind the bearded face.
If one does they might come across a woman who died a little earlier. Men make for better heroes in the male-dominated capitalist world at all times, and a person as dangerous to the system as this woman had to be banned from the collective memory of the ordinary people in the “free world.” They almost managed.
It is our job to reintroduce “Tanja la Guerillera”—not to the world of fashion designers but to those who take the cause of Che and his comrades seriously.
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The truth: the thirty-year-old woman was Haydée Tamara Bunke, daughter of the Russian communist Nadziega (Nadja) and German communist Erich Bunke.
Tamara was born on 19 November 1937 in Argentina, the country her parents had fled to from Nazi terror two years previously. After the liberation from fascism the family moved to the German Democratic Republic. Tamara joined the Free German Youth (FDJ) and later the Socialist Unity Party. She often interpreted for Latin American delegations visiting the GDR. In 1959 she first met Cuban fighters after their victorious revolution, and at the end of that year Che came to the GDR on his first official visit.
In 1961 Tamara Bunke emigrated to Cuba and joined the Militias for the Defence of the Revolution. In 1963 Che remembered Tamara. As part of a plan to take the spirit of the Cuban revolution to other countries in Latin America, he was looking for a woman revolutionary to do preparatory work in an unspecified South American country. The network this woman had created was to be used at a later point in a revolutionary situation for military activity.
The Cuban writer Ulises Estrada, who has just published a book about this period—Tanja: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia—was one of the two officers who met Tamara Bunke in March 1963. They put the suggestion to her, and Ulises describes her response like this:
“Without hesitation she said that it was not necessary to give her any further details. We could count on her in any secret mission for the Cuban Revolution. The dangers she was going to face she called not so important . . .” This absolute commitment and an iron discipline shone through all her activities. Even her parents did not know anything about the mission. For her undercover work she chose the name Tanja, which she took from a Russian partisan fighter she admired.
During the following months Tamara had to keep away from her friends in Havana and was being trained in all techniques of undercover work. The man responsible for her training was Ulises Estrada.
In March 1964 a final discussion with Che Guevara took place. It was only then that he told her the country of “Operation Fantasma”: Bolivia. There she was going to work as an ethnologist and try to develop contacts with the highest possible circles of the Bolivian bourgeoisie.
In April 1964 Tamara Bunke went to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which meant parting with Ulises Estrada. In a chapter of his book he describes the developing love between himself and Tamara—the reason why he was not permitted to accompany her. The new residence was a house outside Prague that had been supplied by the Czechoslovak secret service. The aim of her stay in Europe was to prepare Tamara for her time in Bolivia, to build a new identity for her.
The original plan was to turn her into a half-German half-Italian woman who had lived in Uruguay. This was found not to be good enough, and Tamara took on her new identity as Laura Gutiérrez Bauer, an Argentine who was supposed to have lived in West Germany for several years. In order to get to know the place she travelled there and to West Berlin twice. On these journeys she used the name Maria Iriarte.
In October 1964 Tamara Bunke left Prague, went to Peru, and from there immigrated into Bolivia. As Laura Gutiérrez Bauer she did ethnological research and built her new identity. She managed to obtain access to circles even the Bolivian president, René Barrientos, moved in. Barrientos had come to power in November 1964 through a coup against the relatively progressive Victor Paz Estenssoro.
To obtain citizenship and thereby a permanent residence permit she married a student, who had no idea of her true identity. She taught German and worked for a newspaper. This opened new useful contacts, among others to the press officer of the president’s office.
To keep up certain connections with Cuban revolutionaries she travelled to Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico during this period. In April 1966 she received her membership card of the Communist Party of Cuba—an unusual honour for a foreign national. It was made out in her real name and signed by Fidel Castro.
In November 1966 Che Guevara moved into Bolivia.
Tamara Bunke, after years of preparation, was in close contact with the growing number of guerrilleros from Bolivia, Cuba, and Peru. On New Year’s Eve 1966 she visited their camp at Nacaguazu.
After that she went to Argentina twice to fulfil missions Che had asked for. Nobody in Bolivia knew who she was until March 1967. When she guided the French journalist Régis Debray to the fighters’ camp she felt that her cover had been blown, and she remained with the guerrilleros.
The first clash with the Bolivian army occurred on 23 March. The military situation was poor from the start. The revolutionaries split into two groups; they were never to meet again.
Tamara joined the rearguard on 17 April. On 31 August seven of the ten remaining fighters were killed at a river near Puerto Mauricio. Ernesto Guevara, who was leading the same group of fighters, died later. For a long time people were not sure of the exact day of his death, but now the experts believe it was 9 October 1967.
Tamara’s body was found downstream seven days later. Her remains were rediscovered by Cuban experts on 19 September 1988. On 30 December 1988 she was buried in Santa Clara, Cuba.