October 9, 2020
The life of Che is an inspiration to the Cuban people. Santiago de Cuba, Photo: Bill Hackwell
During her speech today, the unelected coup president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez declared that in recent years the country had confronted “an enemy within” and warned that any foreigner, “whether Cuban, Venezuelan, or Argentinian” who might “cause problems, would find death.”
“I express with pride and satisfaction my sincere thanks to the memory of these Bolivarian heroes,” the de facto president stated, referring to the soldiers who killed Che Guevara and who died in the conflicts exactly 53 years ago. “The lesson we Bolivians gave the world with the defeat and death of Che Guevara in Bolivia is that a communist dictatorship has no opening here. Neither communist, nor fascist, nor populist – no dictatorship will advance or plant itself in this nation… what the republican tradition of Bolivia will never allow is the installation of tyranny,” stated the senator who seized power in a parliamentary session without a quorum after the coup d’etat that removed Evo Morales.
Just two weeks before the presidential elections, Áñez was the main speaker in a ceremony in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, in which the principal honorees were the former soldiers who fought against the guerrilla fighters in that region.
Che left Cuba to lead the guerrilla movement in south-east Bolivia where he fought for six months until he was wounded and captured on October 8 1967 and executed the next day in an improvised prison in a farmhouse in the area, in the region of La Higuera, in the province of Santa Cruz.
Luis Fernando López, the Minister of Defense, also addressed the retired military men and disparaged ex-President Evo Morales. “In recent years we have had an enemy at home, a shameful episode, which tried to lower our self-respect, devalue the history of one of the victories of the 20th Century.”
Ex-President Morales sought asylum in Argentina after the coup d’etat in Bolivia, and since then, from Bueno Aires, has supported the campaign of his ex-Minister of Economy as candidate for president of the Movement Toward Socialism Party (MAS) in the October 18 election.
Yesterday, in anticipation of today’s anniversary and in a message with completely opposite sentiments, Morales remembered Che Guevara in his Twitter; “The ideals for which he fought still live!”
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau