The assassin of Che Guevara has just died in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Let’s see in what circumstances the lethal intervention of the Bolivian army sergeant Mario Terán Salazar took place on October 9, 1967:
1) In the midst of combat once morest the guerrillas in the Churo ravine, the Bolivian soldiers Balboa and Encinas observe that one of the rebels drags a wounded comrade and tells them to surrender. It’s 3:30 in the followingnoon. One of those arrested is Che Guevara, the other is Willy Cuba, a Bolivian combatant who has heroically tried to protect his wounded boss from a bullet in the thigh. Another soldier will recover Che’s damaged rifle, disabled by a shot, which bears the inscription ‘Lan Div. United 744.520’ and on the butt of it a capital ‘D’ is visible.
2) Captain Gary Prado, in charge of the detachment, announces the news by radio to La Higuera to “Morocho” (Second Lieutenant Totti Aguilera) who operated the GRC-9 communications equipment and orders that the news be communicated to Major Ayoroa, chief of the Bolivian rangers trained by the CIA, and is transmitted to the Eighth Division Command in Vallegrande where “Saturno”, the commander of the Eighth Division, Colonel Joaquín Zenteno Anaya, is located.
3) After asking for confirmation of such news, “Saturno” orders “Flaco” (Captain Prado) to move with the dead, wounded and prisoners to La Higuera, two kilometers away. In turn, Prado orders to lift the military operation until the next day, leaving guards stationed to prevent the escape of the guerrillas who were still hidden in the ravine, and he returns to La Higuera.
4) The Cuban guerrilla “Pacho” bled to death and without assistance along the way. The day before in his diary he recorded that he had released a butterfly from a spider web.
5) Colonel Selich is the first senior officer to land aboard the LS-4 helicopter in La Higuera. It is not his command area since he is commander of the Number 3 Engineers Regiment, but, knowing the area, he does it to guide the pilot, Major Jaime Niño de Guzmán, in his future flights.
6) Che and Willy are housed in the humble village school, built of adobe and with a thatched roof, which has two rooms barely separated by a wooden partition.
7) Prado organizes a security system to guard the prisoners, he fears a rescue action by the guerrillas who have not been captured, an officer must always be in the room and two soldiers at the door. He orders Lieutenant Totti Aguilera to bandage Guevara’s wound. This non-commissioned officer will tell the journalist R. Ustáriz Arce that the prisoner’s breathing “was difficult, he began to snore, it seemed as if his breathing was blocked, he might not sleep, he sat up.” She was his lifelong companion, asthma.
8) Major Ayoroa orders Che to stand up to feel it. The Bolivian soldier, in our dialogue in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, tells me: “He had nothing on him, except for a hard-boiled egg”, surely he fed it for the whole day. He is barefoot and weighs twenty kilos less. Che will limit himself to asking regarding his men, “they are good people, right now they might be living comfortably, with their families”.
9) Guevara is stripped of his belongings, which are accumulated in the telegraph operator’s room: his campaign diary, Bolivian history and geography books, updated maps of the area by him, his personal documentation, an altimeter that hung around his neck, a 9mm caliber German pistol. PPK Walter 45 with charger, a “Solingen” dagger, two pipes (one homemade), a small wallet with money: 2,500 dollars and 20,000 Bolivian pesos (to be divided among the officers).
10) Julia Cortés is a young 19-year-old teacher from the town who enters the little school “to ask her why she had come so far to kill Bolivians”, she will tell me many years later in her home in Vallegrande where she works as a midwife. ‘I imagined him ugly, with a fearsome appearance, however when I was in front of Che and we looked at each other he seemed to me an incredibly beautiful man. I was blown away.”
11) Later, others who parade to observe the mythical guerrilla who lies on the ground exhausted, dirty, depressed, suffocated, will mockingly comment “he is thinking regarding the donkey’s immortality” to which Guevara will respond, quickly, “no sir, I’m not thinking regarding that, I’m thinking regarding the immortality of the revolution, the one that those you serve fear so much”.
12) When Lieutenant Eduardo Huerta, a 22-year-old man and member of a prominent family in Sucre, took his turn on guard duty, Che would talk with him for a long time. The Bolivian officer will tell me that Che’s look had impressed him, so much so that he felt almost hypnotized.. The prisoner spoke to him of the misery in which the Latin American peoples lived and of the need for a revolution that would change things. Also regarding the respectful treatment that the guerrillas gave their prisoners, so different from that received by those captured by the army.
13) On the night of October 8, 1967, the president of Bolivia, Barrientos, called a military meeting of the highest level in La Paz. He enters with his Chiefs of Staff and Commander in Chief of the Army, Generals Ovando and Juan José Torres, a small exhibition room in the military headquarters. After a serious conversation he raises the point of Che’s physical elimination. He exposed it as a decision surely consulted with the United States embassy. After the meeting, a coded instruction is sent to Vallegrande.
14) At 7 in the morning Colonel Zenteno arrives at La Higuera personally bringing the order to eliminate Che.
15) In the helicopter, in addition to Colonel Zenteno and the pilot Niño de Guzmán, arrives Félix Rodríguez, an anti-Castro Cuban, the CIA agent whose fictitious name is “Captain Ramos.” The secret CIA report that bears the identification in Spanish “Inspector General- 15 2015”, specifies that “Ramos” accompanies him “to interrogate Guevara”. He also points out that he carries “an RS-48 radio transmitter.”
16) Zenteno transmits the order to kill Che to Major Ayoroa. He argues that it is not an order that military regulations require to obey and proposes that it be carried out by someone who volunteers.
17) The false “Captain Ramos” has a violent dialogue with Che, which the pilot Niño de Guzmán will witness: “The alleged captain entered the room and, bringing his face close to almost touching Che’s, in an arrogant attitude, asked him: “You know who I am?”. Guevara looked at him and said. “Yes, a traitor”, and he spat in his face”.
18) Zenteno summons the NCOs and asks for volunteers to kill the prisoners. They all offer themselves. Then Sergeant Mario Teràn enters the scene. Zenteno, at random because he doesn’t know him, chooses him to execute Che. Sergeant Huanca will take care of Willy Cuba.
19) But time will pass and Colonel Zenteno will find himself in a bind: the news has spread like wildfire and journalists and officials are gathering in Vallegrande to receive Che’s body, but he is still alive in La Higuera. In the declassified CIA report one can read: “He told him (Félix Roríguez) to execute Guevara in any way, that he (Zenteno) should fly to Vallegrande and that he would send the helicopter back to pick up the ‘body’ (with quotes in the report) of Guevara at 2 pm and that ‘as a friend’ he asked that the body be ready”.
20) As Zenteno, Selich, Ayoroa and Prado are not present, the highest ranking officer, although false, is “Captain Ramos”. He summons Terán and orders him to shoot Che from the waist down to continue with the fiction of the “bleeding to death from wounds received in combat” because the radios have broadcast that he was wounded in the legs.
21) Sergeant Terán, a simple, semi-illiterate man chosen by fate for an action he suspects will have consequences, has been looking for a better weapon than his. It is not true that he got drunk, much less with whiskey as some biographer invents, impossible to find in a place where it was impossible for me, more than thirty years later, to have a drink. Coca-Cola. But the truth is that it is very difficult for him to pull the trigger and he enters and leaves the room no less than three times, suffering the ridicule of his colleagues who make fun of his cowardice, which contrasts with Sergeant Huanca’s decision.
22) Che will tell his executioner, somewhere between provocative and serene, “Shoot, you coward, you’re going to kill a man.” And her appeal to the executioner is inevitably associated with that “Go and do what you must do” from Jesus to Judas.
