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The rumor mills had him fighting with the rebels in Santo Domingo, stirring up guerrilla trouble variously in Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and Argentina. Other stories whispered that he had been demoted, possibly put in jail, maybe even executed. In his speech last week, promising to clear up the status of "el Companero Ernesto Guevara," Castro gave only the vaguest hints as to what that status might be. "The enemy has put out many guesses and rumors, sometimes confused, sometimes trying to confuse," said Castro. "Well, in a few days, we are going to read a document by el Compañero Ernesto Guevara that explains his absence during these past months." With that, Castro teased his audience by waving a sheet of paper. "This is the act to which I refer," he said. "Read it! Read it!" pleaded the crowd. "Not now," said Castro.
All on Paper. Washington's Cuba watchers thought the document might have to do with a Soviet-style constitution calling for the usual circus elections some time in the next few years. According to this theory, Che might have been ordered to draft such a constitution as a kind of act of contrition. The document might also be a manifesto, with Che either penitently apologizing for his errors or bringing his doctrinal dispute with Cuba's Kremlin-Castro leadership into the open. Che is not the type to be easily weaned from belief in his violent revolutionary war and his grinding distaste for Cuba's Soviet-enforced position as a supplier of raw materials in return for fancy-priced industrial goods. Whatever the paper is, if there is one, and whatever position Che holds or appears to hold when and if he emerges, the split with Castro is real. Toward week's end Castro's government announced the formation of a new party leadership, and Guevara's name was notably absent from the list. In place of the old national directorate, of which Guevara was a top-ranking member, the party created a new secretariat, central committee and a higher-level political bureau that will serve as the party's principal executive council. As one U.S. expert puts it: "Castro is now willing to go down the line with the Russians. Che is not."
Some people may find it hard to imagine Fidel Castro going down the line with anyone, remembering his swagger after defeating the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs exile invasion, his white fury when the Russians pulled their missiles out of Cuba, his vows that "we will never be anyone's satellite." But that was years ago, before cockeyed Communist economics, compounded by an almost willful Latin mismanagement, brought Castro's revolution to its present state of decay. "We are now," says one Havana observer, "watching the slow decline of Cuba into another Bulgaria."