Che Guevara #2: Surreal End

Continued from the Hourly History book on Che Guevara… At the UN, as the head of the Cuban delegation, an angry Che ripped into the US for interference throughout Latin America. In 1965, during a visit to Algiers, he tore into the USSR saying they were practically imperialists, looting third world countries for resources. Castro was furious. The two soon parted ways.

 

Che seemed to vanish. Until he surfaced in Tanzania (Africa). From there, he went to Congo, always trying to spread his revolutionary ideals. But he had no success. So he decided to return to Latin America, to Bolivia.

 

The Bolivian communists weren’t willing to cede leadership to Che. Che was now stranded in Bolivia, with barely any supporters. Yet, his small guerrilla outfit managed to surround and defeat a Bolivian army unit of 35 soldiers. Che could have executed those soldiers. Instead, he let them go. A fatal mistake.

 

For the commander of that army unit, it was very embarrassing. And so, when he returned, he inflated the count of the guerrillas fighting under Che to 500:

“The shocked Bolivian military authority began to overcompensate from the greatly exaggerated threat.”

While the number of soldiers deployed on the manhunt was now very high, they still didn’t know Che’s whereabouts. They offered a tiny sum of $4,000 as the reward for anyone leading them to Che:

“In a great irony, despite all of Che’s efforts to galvanize the local peasants to his side… (it was one of those very peasants who would) sell him out for the peso equivalent of thirty pieces of silver.”

 

The Bolivian army captured and executed Che. After all:

“(Bolivians) viewed him as a foreigner invading and attempting to ruin their country.”

The official version was that Che had died in a gunfight. But there was another problem: his grave might become a shrine for his followers. So they buried him in an unmarked grave in a faraway place.

 

The Bolivians anticipated that others might question if Che had indeed died. The best evidence they could think of? His fingerprints:

“This drive for verification is what led them to desecrate Che’s body by chopping off his hands.”

His severed hands were placed in jars of formaldehyde for preservation. Hardly the end one imagined for the likes of him… but that’s real life for you.

 

Che was an idealist. Pragmatism wasn’t his cup of tea. That though was also the source of his problems with his own followers and supporters:

“They found that his idealism was like a fire that burned so bright that they would get burned if they got too close to him.”