After he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in November for aiding Che Guevara's guerrillas in their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Bolivian government, French Intellectual Régis Debray, 27, was accorded extraordinary privileges for a prisoner. At the small provincial town of Choreti, he is living under guard in Bolivian officers' quarters, getting the same food and accommodations and busily reading and writing, apparently on philosophical themes. Debray continues to be an un usual prisoner in other ways. Last week Bolivia's President René Barrientos Ortuño offered to trade him for an anti-Castro hero now imprisoned in Cuba, and Debray himself let it be known that he had been saved from execution by none other than the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency.
In a "Message to My Friends," smuggled out to Paris' Le Nouvel Observateur, Debray said that three days after his capture in central Bolivia, his life seemed doomed. "I was in very bad shape," wrote Debray, "and the excitement of the officers who were venting their anger on me, with no precise goal in mind, had reached its peak." They were "amusing themselves," said Debray, "by firing between my legs and as close to my head as possible." Then along came some Spanish-speaking CIA agents who "called a halt to such shenanigans, summoned a doctor and at first treated me with utmost courtesy." In Washington, the CIA would neither confirm nor deny Debray's story. Whatever role the CIA may have played, Debray's life was probably saved ultimately by the intervention of U.S. Ambassador Douglas Henderson.
Dilemma for Castro. President Barrientos told newsmen in Zurich, where he was having a medical checkup, that he would trade Debray for Huber Matos, 48, a onetime Castro aide who was convicted of "high treason" in 1959 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. "I admire Matos profoundly," Barrientos said. "He has the same ideas I have. He fought for social reforms, but he refused to be an agent for Moscow."
A schoolteacher by profession, Matos joined Castro in the Sierra Maestra in 1957, rose to the highest revolutionary rank—major—and, after Castro's final victory, became military leader of Camagüey province. Then, as Castro began swinging toward Moscow, Matos sounded the alarm. "The Communists are in the driver's seat," he warned, "trying to steal the revolution." When Castro refused to kick the Communists out of his inner circle, Matos resigned. The next day, Castro had him arrested. After a seven-hour courtroom harangue by Castro, he was convicted.
At week's end, no formal negotiations were under way between Cuba and Bolivia. If the Cubans are interested, they will likely wait a while to avoid the public embarrassment of negotiating with a government that they have been trying so hard to overthrow. Whether or not Castro will part with Matos, he would certainly like to see Debray freed. A longtime Castro confidant, Debray traveled frequently to Cuba and spent months interviewing the dictator for his book Revolution in the Revolution?