ON a cold and clear night in 2008, Antonio Peredo Leigue received us in his modest apartment in a modern suburb of La Paz. He was then a Senator of the Republic of Bolivia – the Plurinational State had not as yet been constitutionally approved – for the Movement Toward Socialism-Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP), which two years previously had won the general elections and brought Evo Morales Ayma to power.

The meeting was part of the investigation process for the book Evo, espuma de plata, covering the vicissitudes of the struggle and rise of the leader of the Chapare coca growers and the difficulties he had to negotiate at the beginning of his presidency at the head of a process of change. Various topics of our conversation became part of the material contained in the book.

But we could not avoid the magnetism of the interviewee’s biography: the brother of Inti (Guido) and Coco (Roberto), courageous compañeros in the guerrilla movement led by Comandante Ernesto Guevara, and Antonio himself, a revolutionary with a long history, a protagonist and witness of crucial moments in the history of contemporary Bolivia.

Antonio Peredo died in La Paz June 2, 2012. In his memory, we are publishing a synthesis of the interview he gave us on that opportunity. His experiences merit being shared and his judgment remains valid today.

On January 12, 1936, in Trinidad, Beni department. I am the oldest of the brothers. My parents had us all in a row. After me, came Emma Olga Elvira, who we called la Gata (the Cat). She died in a traffic accident in 2004. After the guerrilla movement she mostly lived in the United States. She was working in the Ministry of Agriculture when certain individuals from Military Intelligence approached her. "Look, we’ve investigated you and you’re not involved in subversion, but if you know something about your brothers, you’d better tell us." She went into exile. Inti was born in 1937; Coco, in 1938 and, in 1941, Oswaldo, who we nicknamed Chato. Coco was one of twins, but the other died at birth from asphyxia. In Quechua, twins are called tojito. And la Gata, who was very little, couldn’t pronounce tojito properly. She said coquito, and from that came Coco. Perhaps to compensate for the loss of the other twin, my father raised Inti and Coco as if they were. They were dressed the same, and did everything together all their lives.

Although I was only a few years older than them, they saw me as if I were much older. They developed impressive physical activities, but I adopted more sedentary habits. They used to say, half jokingly, that I was the intellectual of the family. But we grew up sharing ideals of justice and belief in the triumph of socialism.

During my student years I felt attracted by the winds of change of the period, which subsequently turned out not to be because, as you know, the Revolution of 1952 became diluted by populism, opportunism and pressure from the United States to prevent leftists from winning in the hemisphere. There was a nucleus of Communist sympathizers in Trinidad in the early 1950’s and we joined the Party. As I was the oldest, they elected me general secretary. We wrote to the Central Committee. And do you know who came with the response to our membership application? No less than Antonio Arguedas, who was a telegraph sergeant. We wrote again to La Paz asking them what kind of Party was it to have a militiaman in its ranks. Over time, we had a direct but intermittent relationship. After 1953, I came to La Paz. The direction of the Party didn’t seem correct to me and I was part of a split called the Revolutionary Left Party.

I became a journalist in my early youth, in 1949, at the age of 13. I started with a printing press as a typographic apprentice; but what is called keeping up columns in newspapers and magazines; in effect, that was in the 60’s. Whenever you exercise opinion journalism in a country like this, your run a risk, but at the end of the day you are respected, even when you place yourself in the sights, as was the case after René Barrientos organized the military coup in 1964.

That wasn’t about journalism as such, but life itself. In 1967 guerrilla activity in Oriente was noted and the soldiers knew that my brothers were involved, and so they suspected me as well. While that was happening Arguedas, who was Minister of the Interior at the time, sent for me and showed me some sketches. They had already captured Regis Debray and the Argentine Ciro Roberto Bustos, with whom they confirmed that Che was at the front of the guerrilla movement. Bustos had done the sketches. One of them showed a man very much like me, from which they deduced that I had facilitated those individuals’ journey from La Paz to the theater of operations. Shortly afterward they murdered Che. The order came from the United States. The National Liberation Army was fighting in order not to disappear.

That was when I noticed that I was being pursued. I called home to find out what was happening. From early morning there was an automobile parked outside with two guys in civilian clothes who had their hair cut very short. I called Mireya, Coco’s wife, and told her, "I want you to take this message to the movement leadership. I am being pursued. So, I have three options: to leave the country, go underground or hand myself in. And I am prepared to do whichever one you consider the best." By the next day they still had not replied. So then I decided to grab the bull by the horns. At lunchtime, I went to Arguedas’ house. I told him, "You’re looking for me, here I am." "No, Antonio, I’m not looking for you, Naval Intelligence is looking for you." I know what you must be thinking: in a country without a sea exit, we gave ourselves the luxury of have a repressive force of that denomination. Arguedas said to me, "What you have to do, is to get out of here." I replied, "Impossible." "Why?" "I don’t have any money, I don’t have anywhere to go, I don’t have money to leave at home." And he replied, "Here’s your ticket, your passport, money for the journey, money for you to leave at home. Travel in the next two days." And he took me to the airport. Arguedas was a very contradictory man, who held many mysteries for me, despite the fact I thought I knew him. I left Bolivia and arrived in Chile.

That’s right. He was president of the Senate. He rebuked me, "What are you doing here? Your brothers fighting and you here." Believe me, I felt ashamed. But he understood the circumstances. Salvador possessed an exceptional ethical sense. He demonstrated that on September 11, 1973.

The story is as follows. Arguedas and I had a friend in common, Lorenzo Carrí, an Argentine sports journalist who had lived in Bolivia for many years. Lorenzo told me that one day, Arguedas, who was still a government minister, knocked on his apartment door at 9:00pm and asked him to look after a portable typewriter case. He looked at what was inside, saw some photocopies and began to read them. That is when he knew that the government wanted to sell Che’s diary. The next day, Arguedas came by in the morning: "I want to ask you a favor. I want you to go to Chile but of course you can’t travel directly to Chile. Where can you go first?" "Ah, I could go to Argentina." "Right, go to Argentina and from there to Chile. Then you give Antonio this and tell him that I am prepared to hand over Che’s diary." Lorenzo said no, that people must know what Arguedas was doing and that that could cost him his life. The copy of the Diary reached Cuba by another route, that of the comrades at the Chilean Punto Final magazine. Hernán Uribe related the story in a book.

The last decades of the past century were characterized by the rise of neoliberalism and corruption in Bolivia. In that state of affairs, those who plotted to assassinate Che believed themselves heroes, not villains. And there were even supposedly people on the left who began to renege on Che’s legacy. I understood that Che’s thinking was necessary for the battles which had to be waged. That’s what Inti and Coco would have wanted. I did nothing more than be faithful to them. The formula of a Foundation allowed us to operate autonomously and, in passing, make politics. Not party politics, but a contingent politics. Until Evo Morales appeared on the horizon.

He was a different leader. You could see that. There were no more than 30 activists in the Foundation, an infinitesimal number. Around 2001 we approached Evo. We told him we were prepared to do this and this is what we could do and that we were asking absolutely nothing. We didn’t want to be candidates, we didn’t want anything. "Well then, please, why don’t you help me form the commission to seek a vice presidential candidate for the 2002 elections." He wanted someone to represent the middle class. So he said to me: "Antonio, you have to run with me as vice president." Initially I refused, but then he convinced me. I am sure that if we had won those elections, they would have been snatched from us. But, as you say, things have a way of working themselves out. If Evo had won the presidency with me in 2002, they would have brought us down within a week. We were not totally ready to govern at that moment.

The incapacity and collapse of the neoliberal regime is known history. Popular struggles and the response to the repression bore their fruits. The elections at the end of 2005 were a forecast victory, although we had to take precautions, because the forces of reaction are always prepared to do anything in order not to lose their hand. Álvaro García Linera fit well in the MAS presidential formula. I was elected a senator.