By Alejandra Garcia on October 8, 2024 from Havana
Plaza of the Revolution, photo: Bill Hackwell
“Shoot, coward, you are going to kill a man,” were the last words Ernesto Che Guevara said to his executioner, Mario Teran, on that October 9, 1967, in La Higuera, Bolivia. Those words pronounced in the humble school of the village, with a thatched roof, tormented the Bolivian sergeant for the rest of his life, because of the courage of that man who looked serenely at death.
Teran was ordered to shoot the revolutionary leader from the waist down, so that the world would think he had died of combat wounds, a decision previously consulted with the US embassy in the country. A day earlier, on October 8, Che had been taken prisoner with a bullet wound in his thigh. He was stripped of his few belongings: his campaign diary, books on Bolivian history and geography, maps of the area updated by him, his personal documentation, an altimeter hanging from his neck, a German pistol caliber 9 mm, a “Solingen” dagger, two pipes (one homemade), a wallet with some money.
The Bolivian sergeants and soldiers who guarded the little school paraded by to observe the mythical guerrilla who lay on the ground exhausted, dirty, depressed, asphyxiated. One of them mockingly commented “he must be thinking about the immortality of the donkey,” to which Guevara answered, quickly, “no sir, I am not thinking about that. I am thinking about the immortality of the revolution, that is so much feared by those whom you serve.”
During the hours before his assassination, the prisoner also spoke of the misery in which the Latin American people lived and the need for a revolution to bring about change. He also spoke of the respectful treatment that the guerrillas gave to their prisoners, so different from that received by those captured by the Bolivian army.
The photo of the guerrilla leader that was taken one day after Teran’s fatal shots shocked the world. His face conserved the beauty of a man who was larger than his time, who traveled Latin America with his best friend on a motorcycle, learning about the most urgent needs of the people.
In a side note to Che’s reference as to how his revolutionary ideas would live on, forty years later Mario Teran’s cataracts were removed by Cuban doctors and he was able to see again. He was the direct beneficiary of Operation Milagro, a joint project of Cuba and Venezuela that restored sight to millions of poor Latin Americans; the exact type of joint effort that Che fought and died for.
For Cuba, the news was especially painful. Fidel Castro, for almost one hour, explained every detail of what was known up to that moment. Days later, in a solemn evening, he delivered an unforgettable speech in his homage.
photo: Bill Hackwell
“I remember Che’s immediate, instantaneous willingness to offer himself to carry out the most dangerous mission. And that behavior, naturally, aroused admiration for that comrade who fought alongside us, who was not born in this land, who was a man of profound ideas, who was a man in whose mind boiled dreams of struggle…”
Cuba was also an endearing place for Che Guevara, the place where his family decided to stay and put down roots. A safe, beautiful place, under the protection of a revolution he helped build. This Tuesday, his daughter Aleida Guevara appeared on national TV to talk about her father and his example. “In the times we are living today it is very important to return to Che. His ideas and thinking must always accompany the youth, they must create, as he said one day, and be an example and vanguard,” Aleida assured.
Freshness, dynamism, daring, audacity, are features of his example that the bullets could not quell, while his murderer and captors were condemned to lead a hidden life of shame and fear. Without sorrow or glory.
“Those who sing victory are mistaken – said Fidel in October 1967 – and believe that his death is the defeat of his ideas, tactics, guerrilla conceptions, or the defeat of his theses. Because that man who fell as a mortal man, as a man who exposed himself many times to bullets, as a military man, as a leader, is a thousand times more capable than those who killed him with a stroke of luck.”
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US