50th anniversary The execution of Che Guevara: secrets, lies and hidden plots
Bolivian media that gave the scoop on Che's death and other exclusives recount the details of a historical coverage and request the opening of the archives
The Bolivian soldier Mario Terán Salazar, who claimed to have killed the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla Ernesto
Che
Guevara in 1967, died this Thursday at the age of 80 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in eastern Bolivia, his relatives reported.
"He died of prostate cancer,"
his son Mario confirmed to AFP, adding that the soldier died around midnight on Thursday, at 5:00 a.m. on the peninsula.
"He was sick and there was nothing to do," said Gary Prado, the soldier who captured
Che
in the Bolivian jungle 54 years ago.
"The family and comrades from the Armed Forces notified me because he was admitted to the Military Hospital," explained Prado, who was Terán's instructor at the sergeant's school.
On October 8, 1967, the Bolivian army arrested Guevara,
a mythical figure of armed revolutionary action
during the Cold War, with the support of two Cuban-American CIA agents.
Che was
at
the head of a handful of guerrillas who had survived combat, hunger and disease.
Wounded in combat, he was taken to an abandoned school in the town of La Higuera.
He spent his last night there: he
was riddled with bullets the next day by Terán
with the approval of President René Barrientos (1964-1969), a fierce anti-communist.
The body of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara exposed to the public a day after he was assassinated, in Vallegrande, Bolivia.AFP
"That was the worst moment of my life.
At that moment I saw
Che
big, very big, huge. His eyes shone brightly," Terán recounted then.
"I felt that he was on top of me and when he stared at me, it made me dizzy. I thought that with a quick movement
Che
could take the weapon away from me.
"Be calm -he told me- and aim well!
He's going to kill a man!'
Then I took a step back, towards the threshold of the door, I closed my eyes and I fired", narrated the soldier.
At the age of 39,
Che
became a legend, while his inert body and open-eyed face were
exhibited like a trophy in the neighboring town of Vallegrande
, an image
immortalized by AFP photographer Marc Hutten.
Anonymity
After 30 years of service, Terán retired and remained anonymous, avoiding the press.
He even
went so far as to affirm that Guevara's murderer had not been him,
but another soldier with the same name and surname.
After completing his medical studies and multiple trips that forged his convictions, Guevara, born in the Argentine city of Rosario, met Raúl and Fidel Castro in Mexico before enlisting in the guerrilla that
brought the "bearded" to power in Cuba
, in 1959.
Years after his unsuccessful attempt to spread the fire of the armed revolution in the Congo, months of "disappearance" followed, before he undertook his last guerrilla warfare in Bolivia.
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