Last
known picture of Che Guevara alive, seen here standing next to to the
man who captured him: CIA agent Félix Rodríguez. Ernesto "Che" Guevara
died 50 years ago, on this day. He was 39 years old.
Nine years later, his friend Fidel Castro announced the day as the day of the Heroic Guerrilla. Che lives on.
See also: Here is the list of 10 famous people who were executed in history. Their execution changes the world
His leg riddled with bullets, his gun knocked out of his hand, Ernesto “Che” Guevara surrendered.
“Do
not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead,” he
said as U.S.-trained Bolivian forces closed in. The Argentine-born
doctor and Marxist rebel leader who helped Fidel Castro seize power in
Cuba was finally captured after 2 1/2 years of living in secrecy.
Guevara,
the beret-wearing guerrilla leader who had led firing squads after the
Communist victory in Cuba, had abruptly resigned from his government
posts and left Cuba to spread the revolution in Africa and South
America. But the missions, including the one to arouse an uprising in
Bolivia, were all but doomed. On that afternoon of Oct. 8, 1967, Guevara
was taken prisoner and carried by soldiers to a one-room schoolhouse in
the town of La Higuera in Bolivia, about four miles away from where he
was captured, according to Richard Harris’s biography, “Death of a
Revolutionary: Che Guevara’s Last Mission.”
Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban American CIA operative posing as a Bolivian
military officer, would find him covered in dirt inside that schoolhouse
the next day. His hair was matted, his clothes were torn and filthy,
and his arms and feet were bound. The U.S. government wanted him alive
to be interrogated, but Bolivian leaders decided that Guevara must be
executed, fearing a public trial would only garner him sympathy. The
official story would be that he was killed in battle.
Rodríguez,
who was instrumental in Guevara’s capture, had mixed emotions at that
time, as he acknowledged later in an interview. Here was a man who had
assassinated many of his countrymen, Rodríguez said, and yet he felt
“sorry for him.”
Then, he told the guerrilla leader that he was about to die.
“I
looked at him straight in the face, and I just told him. He
looked straight to me and said: ‘It’s better this way. I should have
never been captured alive,’ ” Rodríguez recalled during a “60 Minutes”
interview years later.
The two men shook hands. “He embraced me. I embraced him,” Rodríguez said.
Then
Rodríguez left, ordering a soldier to shoot below the neck because that
would fit the official story that Guevara had died in combat.
Guevara’s
last words were to Sgt. Jaime Terán, the soldier ordered to shoot him,
according to journalist Jon Lee Anderson’s biography, “Che Guevara: A
Revolutionary Life.”
“I know you’ve come to kill me,” he said. “Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.”
Terán fired, striking Guevara in the arms, legs and thorax.
The guerrilla leader, loved and idolized by many but hated by others, died 50 years ago Monday, at age 39.
Read also: Here is the list of 10 famous people who were executed in history. Their execution changes the world
Before
Guevara was secretly buried in a mass grave, Bolivian soldiers laid out
his scrawny body and put it on display for the media in the Bolivian
village of Vallegrande. His corpse was placed on a hospital laundry sink
as photographers took pictures that were later published
internationally. The Bolivian commander also ordered both of Guevara’s
hands cut off so authorities could run his fingerprints and give Castro
undeniable proof that his ally was dead.
Certainty of Guevara’s
death did not reach the United States until a few days later. A short
memorandum written by adviser Walt Rostow to President Lyndon B. Johnson
on Oct. 13, 1967, said: “This removes any doubt that ‘Che’ Guevara is
dead.”
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