Bolivia marks capture, execution of 'Che' Guevara 40 years ago
Lola Almudevar, Chronicle Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Bolivia marks capture, execution of 'Che' Guevara 40 years ago
Ernesto "Che" Guevara's body was photographed in a hospital laundry room in October 1967, after he was shot to death in Bolivia. Associated Press Photo, 1967
Ernesto "Che" Guevara's body was photographed in a hospital laundry room in October 1967, after he was shot to death in Bolivia. Associated Press Photo, 1967
(10-09) 04:00 PDT Santa Cruz, Bolivia --
Gary Prado, the former Bolivian soldier who captured Ernesto "Che" Guevara, is angry the renowned Argentine revolutionary still has legions of fans four decades later.
"There was nothing of the heroic guerrilla about him," Prado, 68, said at his home here. "The attention Che Guevara has received is totally disproportionate to his reality."
To Prado's chagrin, thousands of Guevara devotees are expected to travel this week to the town where his body was displayed and the remote village where he was executed to mark the 40th anniversary of his death. The events are organized by Bolivia's Che Guevara Foundation.
Backed by the CIA and following a tip from a Bolivian peasant, Prado, then a captain, led his soldiers through southeastern Bolivia to capture Guevara on Oct. 8, 1967, and hold him overnight in a ramshackle schoolhouse in the village of La Higuera.
"It was a sorry sight to see him dirty and banged up," said Prado as he sat behind an antique desk. "His dream was over and his adventure had ended in failure."
The following day - 40 years ago today - Guevara was executed on orders from Bolivian President Rene Barrientos and his body flown by helicopter to nearby Vallegrande, where a haunting photograph was shot showing a Christ-like figure lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestro Senor de Malta hospital. His remains were then buried clandestinely at a nearby landing strip. In 1997, a Cuban team exhumed the bones and flew them to Cuba.
"Imagine Che Guevara's trial. It would have gone on forever - it would have been a circus. They (the Bolivian government) decided to avoid that problem," said Prado. "There were no prisons secure enough to hold him in Bolivia at that time. ... They said let's end this story once and for all."
But the story hardly ended. Instead, Guevara became an international icon and the subject of countless myths and misconceptions - especially in the region where he fell.
Prado himself features in the myth that suggests that those involved in Guevara's capture and execution were subsequently cursed. In 1991, Prado was paralyzed in a gun accident and now uses a wheelchair.
Gen. Joaquin Zentano, the commander in charge of the army division that hunted down Guevara, was assassinated in Paris in 1975. Barrientos died in a helicopter crash in 1969.
In Vallegrande and La Higuera, many residents boast about alleged encounters with Guevara, despite the fact he had had little contact with those outside of his guerrilla band and a smattering of rural collaborators. Most peasants mistrusted the outsiders.
"I met him on Sept. 26, 1967. He told me his name was Cmdr. Che Guevara," said Miguel Costas, a La Higuera resident. "He was a big man - well built. He drank with us and said he was fighting for the poor and the weak."
Costas, now 63, lives in a dilapidated hut and is one of many locals who charge tourists between $2 and $50 to hear stories about Guevara.
"They are people who, because of ignorance, do these things. Why do they exploit Che Guevara?" asked Ligia Moron, a 67-year-old Vallegrande resident who said she saw Guevara's body laid out on a stretcher after it was delivered to the hospital and has a framed portrait of Guevara next to a picture of Jesus Christ in her living room. "If they knew anything about his personality, a man who had so much love for human kind, they would not charge."
Even though many local residents still have emotional and commercial connections with the legendary Guevara, some still reject his politics.
"I sometimes sit Mass for Che Guevara because he was a good person. But that does not mean I support Evo Morales or socialism," said Consuelo Molina, a Vallegrande hotel owner, in reference to Bolivia's leftist president.
Guevara was a medical doctor who believed social ills and economic inequality could only be remedied by armed revolution. Between 1956 and 1959, he fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution, serving as one of his main commanders. After Castro took power in 1960, Guevara supervised the executions of hundreds of suspected war criminals and became head of the national bank and minister of industry.
Bored with administrative work, he left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution in the Congo. When that turned out to be a disaster, Guevara headed for South America to create what he called "another Vietnam in the Americas with its center in Bolivia."
Guevara arrived in Bolivia in November 1966 intent on starting a peasant-led uprising that would bring down the ruling political elite and lead to a more equal and just society. Today, Bolivia remains the poorest country in South America, and many residents in this region still eke out a living as subsistence farmers with no access to safe drinking water or electricity.
In 2004, some government officials hoped such conditions would change by attracting tourists to Vallegrande, La Higuera and other destinations along the so-called Che Guevara Trail, where the revolutionary fought the Bolivian army. Today, tour operators in Santa Cruz offer "Che packages."
But a lack of infrastructure has kept many tourists away, local entrepreneurs say. Vallegrande City Hall estimates that only 1,500 visitors annually visit the Che Guevara Trail.
"We have asked for help and received some, but not as much as we would like," said Carlos Vargas of the local Economic Development Agency. "We expect more from the government of Evo Morales."
Indeed, such help may be on the way.
Morales, who has a portrait of Guevara painted in coca leaves in his office, will unveil a plan this week to develop 420 miles of the Che Guevara Trail.
Back in Santa Cruz, Prado shakes his head in disbelief at the tourist plans and today's festivities.
"Che's story has become a fable, a business, an invention of things that ridicules history," said Prado. "It has become a show."
Prado said Morales should instead honor the 55 soldiers who died putting down Guevara's attempted revolution. He describes the planned ceremonies as "an offense to Bolivia's dignity."
"Rather than honor a man who came to invade the country, we should honor the armed forces, the soldiers who defended the country," he said.
This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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