Bolivian officer Mario Teran Salazar, assassin of Che, died at the age of 80

Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, here in the 1960s, were brothers in arms who wanted to spread revolution across Latin America.

CUBADEBATE/AFP/File

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3 mins

54 years ago, on October 9, 1967, Ernesto Guevara, known as "Che", fell under the bullets of the Bolivian army.

On the orders of his hierarchy, a Bolivian soldier executes the man who will become a myth, a legend for all of Latin America.

Mario Teran Salazar was the one who executed him.

He died at age 80 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.

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“ 

,” said Teran Salazar, the Bolivian officer who pulled the trigger.

"

," he told me, "

,” said Mario Teran Salazar later, who also confided that it was the worst moment of his life.

It was Gary Prado, the officer who captured Che in the Bolivian jungle 54 years ago, warned by the family, who made the soldier's death public: " 

”.

After thirty years of service in the army, Teran Salazar had retired and remained discreet, fleeing the media.

He tried for a time to forget and affirmed that he was not Guevara's assassin, proof that admitting his responsibility in this historic moment was difficult to assume.

The Argentinian Ernesto Guevara, known as “Che”, in 1967 engages in a guerrilla war in Bolivia, with a handful of faithful companions, with a view to hatching a revolution there.

AFP/Archivos

On October 8, 1967, the Bolivian army arrested Guevara, in La Higuera, in an isolated region in the foothills of the Andes.

This is where he will spend his last night.

A mythical figure of the revolutionary action carried out with Fidel Castro ten years earlier in Cuba, he was executed on the orders of the dictator Barrientos and the CIA.

He was then taken by the Bolivian army by helicopter to Vallegrande hospital.

His body is exposed and photographed.

At 39, he becomes a legendary figure.

►

: Fifty years ago, the death of Che

The body of Ernesto Guevara displayed by Bolivian forces on October 10, 1967 in Vallegrande, Bolivia.

AFP/Archivos

Che's companions who were will be captured or killed in the following days.

In 1997, their remains as well as those of Che were identified by DNA tests and sent to Cuba.

Thirty years after his death , Che received

The Cubans' tribute to Ernesto Che Guevara, in October 1997. Sygma via Getty Images - Alain Nogues

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