Che Guevara’s last night: the hours in front of his executioners and the message for the woman he loved

The beginning of the end of the Bolivian adventure of Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, Che, was a poster pasted on the walls of the most important cities of the country. In large print, a reward is offered: “$ b. 10,000 (ten million Bolivian pesos) for everyone alive. These are the mercenary bandits in the service of castro-communism. These are the cause of mourning and pain in Bolivian homes. Information that is true will qualify you for the reward. Bolivian citizen, help us capture them alive if possible”.

Below, four photos and four names identify the guerrillas: “Pombo – Benigno – Urbano – Inti”. And he closes a warning: “Note.- They may wear beards or have false names.

Two days before his death, on October 7, 1967, and after 22 fights fought by its 52 men divided into three platoons, Guevara receives the last civilian aid. She is a shepherdess with goats. It’s called Epifanía Cabrera. The guerrillas call him “The old lady with the goats”. They fear that I will expose them. However, he informs them that they are a league from Higueras, gives them food and takes refuge in his mountain house with his daughter.

This day is eleven months after entering Bolivia. Guevara uses a pseudonym: Ramón. He only has 17 men left. Their strength is decimated, they have a great ignorance of the terrain, fatigue and a few injuries turn walking into a nightmare.

Before nightfall comes a new confrontation. Filming in the Quebrada del Yuro. Several dead, and Che, injured in the leg. All – even the dead – are brought to The FIG tree, two kilometers from the place of combat, and lying on the floor of a small school.

There, they take all his belongings: his campaign journal, his documents, an altimeter, a German 9mm pistol. Mark PPK Walker, a steel dagger from Solingen, kites, 2500 dollars and 20 thousand Bolivian pesos that officers share.

The last night of his life has begun.

Three officers treat him like a prisoner of war, with respect. They are Captain Prado and Lieutenants Totti Aguilera and Huerta Lorenzetti. They give him cigarettes, they ask questions about his family. Others mistreat him: Colonel Selich and Lieutenants Ramos and Pérez. Selich insults him and pulls his beard.

Outside, drunk, a group of soldiers taunt him. A non-commissioned officer, Ustariz Arce, notice that the injured person is breathing poorly, “with a snoring”, cannot sleep, and sits up, as if this allows them to take more air into their lungs. The cause is asthma from which he has suffered since childhood and from which he has never been cured.

As tells Pacho O’Donnell in his book All of Che’s lives, result of a thorough investigation, the captain of the rangers at the time Gary Prado, who spoke for several hours with the prisoner, says that Guevara complained:

“My two watches were stolen.”

-Who is it? Prado asks.

– Their men.

The captain searches for them, saves them and sends them back.

“One of them is mine,” Guevara explains. The other is from Tuma, a dead comrade. I take it to deliver it to your family.

“How will you know which one is yours?” “

Then he grabbed a pebble on the ground, scraped his back, and drew a cross. According to Prado, “I sent them to Cuba, but I don’t know where they ended up.”

Suddenly, furious, one of the village teachers confronts Che, Julia Cortes, 19 years old, and yells at him:

– Why did you come so far to kill Bolivians ?!

But after a few minutes of looking him straight in the eye, he said: “He struck me as an incredibly handsome man. I was dazzled! “.

While this is happening, In the high command of power, there is a stormy situation: what to do with Che? Because detained and brought to justice, he was going to trigger months of protests, demonstrations, demands for freedom. A hot nail.

Finally, the president René Barrientos and the general Alfredo Ovando Candia do not hesitate: lets kill it.

The command in code: “Say hello to daddy”. Colonel Miguel Ayoroa Montano receives her. He passes it on to Lieutenant Pérez Panoso. And this one, NCO Mario Terán Ortuño and Sergeant Bernardino Huanca: executors.

But how to kill him? Someone suggests that the troops simulate a riot, and in the confusion, Che is “accidentally” killed.. However, contrary to what was imagined, the soldiers refuse to be part of this farce, so that Terán and Huanca are the only possible triggers.

Félix Rodríguez, aka Captain Ramos, a CIA agent, is also on the scene at the end. Who enters the makeshift cell and provokes Guevara:

-You know who I am?

-Yes, a traitor – and spits in his face.

After a while, the phone rings. Félix Rodríguez attends. He is the oldest Ayoroa:

–By mandate of the most

authorities, comply with code 500-600.

Rodriguez, of course, knows the secret code: 500 means “Commander Che Guevara.” 600, “run”. 700, “preserve life”.

It is the reconfirmation of condemn to death. Guevara’s argument was of no use when he was defeated and injured:

-I am Che. Do not kill me. I’m worth more alive than dead.

Years later, Rodríguez left this testimony:

“I informed him that the order to execute him had arrived. He turned white as paper. I told him: ‘I’m sorry, these are orders from the Bolivian high command.’ He fell silent, and a minute later said, “It’s better this way, I should never have been arrested, alive.” He took one of his two pipes from his pocket. One, homemade. He asked me to give it “to a little soldier who has been good to me,” he said. But then Sergeant Mario Terán, the executioner, came in and asked me. But Guevara refused and gave it to me. Then he continued to speak.

Tell Fidel that he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America. And to my lady, let him remarry and try to be happy.

He was talking about his second wife, the Cuban Aleida Mars. The first was the Peruvian economist Hilda gadea. Che’s children: Aleida, Camilo, Hilda, Celia and Ernesto.

Terán prepares for the end and changes his weapon for a better one: a Garand M-1 rifle, intermediate between the bolt-action rifle and the assault rifle, with an eight-shot comb. But it is not decided. Enter and exit three times. His comrades laugh at him. He is nervous.

Two versions circulate on the last words of the condemned, addressed to Terán:

“Be calm and aim well! You are going to kill a man!

The other:

– Pull, coward, you are going to kill a man.

Terán takes two steps back and, without looking at Che, shoots. The first bullets, in a burst, hit him in the legs. He falls to the ground screaming in pain. Terán shoots again. The second blow hits him in the arm, shoulder and heart. A few minutes later, he died. Are there one fifteen.

The corpse is taken to Vallegrande and placed on a sink in the laundry room of the local hospital. Her eyes are still open. The parade to see it lasts for hours. Officers and soldiers share locks of hair as spoils of war. The next day, they cut off his hands to identify him and made the body disappear.

The enigma lasts three decades: his remains and those of some of his companions appear in a mass grave near the airport of Vallegrande in June 1977. A month later, they are transferred – forever – in a Cuban urn. In Santa Clara, key scene of the fighting against the army of dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In the distance, the executor Terán celebrates a minimal victory. Faced with his almost desperate insistence (“I killed him, I deserve it!”), The CIA man gives him the pipe.

It’s October 9, 1967. Che was shot. When he died, he was 39 years old.

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