CUBA -
Che Guevara:
A Guerrilla to the End
January 1999
A 54 minute documentary
00.03.55 Music.
Man lighting a cigarette
Cuba's Fidel Castro has been in power for 40 years - his is one of the last communist bastions on earth. But one man has done more for Communism's image than even Castro himself: An Argentine killed by Bolivian rangers in 1967. His memory still enthralls and inspires revolutionaries from South America to Africa. Ernesto 'Che' Guevara: a guerrilla to the end.
00.04.26 Writing: Guerrilla to the end
00.04.37 Letter
“Dear folks, I am doing well here, I have lost another two lives so I still have five to go. I’ve still got the same job, new ones are few and far between, and that’s how they’ll always be. But have faith that God is Argentinean. A big hug, Tete”
00.05.01 Image of man
This simple letter from a son to his parents reached them only after they learnt of his death. A modest man whose quest for social justice would take him to Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and Africa, Che Guevara became the icon of a generation dreaming of change. But to his family, he was just 'Tete'.
00.05.22 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
Tete was the nickname that he was given when he was a baby. He was called our Tete. That was something only his father and mother knew. So when we read this letter we knew he was still alive.
00.05.43 Born in 1928 to an aristocratic, land-owning family in Buenos Aires, life was good for the young Che Guevara, despite severe asthma which would plague him throughout life. Che grew up in a hotbed of political discourse. His mother Celia was the most profound intellectual inspiration in his life, until he met Castro in 1955.
00.06.07 Celia was a radical socialist and feminist who hosted many meetings of the Argentine women’s movement. She taught him to read and write, instilling in him a lifelong love of books and learning. He practiced by writing to his family and boasts at seven to his Aunt:
00.06.24 Letter
“Dear Beatriz, I have a surprise for you. I learnt to swim on your birthday. Kisses from “Ernestito”
00.06.37 Che became politicized young, following the Spanish civil war as a boy, and later criticizing Argentina's racist right. After starting medical school he travelled Latin America on his motorbike. He found a continent locked in poverty, under the thumb of the United States, the CIA and American business. He resolved to join Castro's struggle for ’liberation’ from the Cuban dictator General Batista. Guevara joined the Revolutionaries training in Mexico in 1956, and his new comrades began to call him 'Che' or 'friend' in Argentinean. He was first arrested in Mexico.
00.07.19 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister He wrote a very funny letter in which he said: I'm writing from my new home at Miguel Schulta - which was the prison - he said, you must be a bit surprised so I'll explain. But his family already knew what was going on. This was their way of life.
00.07.45 But Che's family had no idea the path the young man's life was taking. He had read Marx and Lenin and impressed Castro with his 'revolutionary development'. In turn he had been fired by Castro's passion for freeing Cuba. Although he had married and produced a daughter, Hildita, Revolution was in his blood.
00.08.10 One night in November 1956, 82 guerrillas boarded a small pleasure boat 'Granma'. Their mission: to oust Batista and end US domination of Cuba.
00.08.23 On December 2nd they ran aground in rough seas. It was the first time Che had set foot in Cuba. But their Revolutionary spirits were dampened by an exhausting trek through mosquito infested swamps. They were weakened by blisters and encumbered by their supplies.
00.08.49 In these swamps the rebels suffered their first setback. President Batista’s forces ambushed the poorly armed idealists. It was a bloodbath. Just 12 escaped alive. Yet the fledgling movement survived with the support of local campesinos.
00.09.07 Interviewwith Roberto Aguillar, villager
The peasants supported the revolutionaries. The peasants played an important part in the war.
00.09.19 The survivors hid from Batista’s 30,000 troops in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Their revolutionary zeal inspired the poor farmers who wanted land reform. From deep in the mountains Che sent his parents an enigmatic letter:
00.09.41 interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
I had seven and now I have five left: in “Guevarian” language he meant like cats, who are said to have seven lives. He said he had seven but he was wounded twice, so now he had five left. He also said : I hope God is Argentinean, hoping he wouldn’t be killed. For now I'm going to continue my work, meaning that he would fight on. Don't wait for regular news. Your son, 'Tete'.
00.10.29 His bond with Fidel Castro, captured the imagination of an era. Che was a committed member of the international Communist movement . A man whose almost narcissistic will would carry him on. He believed the Revolution would start in Cuba and then spread throughout the world.
00.10.50 His reputation as an invincible fighter grew, his amazing confidence attracting others who wanted to join his "peasant army" and change the course of history.
00.11.03 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
He asked us what we were going to do. We explained that we were going to fight for the independence of Cuba and he asked us what with. We showed him a little 22 gun we had. He asked us if we believed we could really overturn tyranny with our little gun. He then sent us back to our village to disarm all soldiers. We told him that there were thousands of soldiers all over the place. He said that way we would be much better armed.
00.11.33 For Che the Revolution began right there in the mountains. He ran a literacy programme, opened clinics and trained new guerillas. He even spoke to selected journalists.
00.11.45 NATSOF"Che" Guevara
We have already spent 16 months in the Sierra Maestra, journalists have come from all over the world fretting about the stories they have heard of so-called guerrilla warfare. Today I am taking advantage of the visit of a Cuban journalist to address the Cuban people, my first chance to do so. I have decided to defend these people, although I only know them through the thoughts and deeds of our leader Fidel Castro.
00.12.26 The ordinary people of the Sierra were captivated by this foreign hero. One such villager was Sara Torres; she helped give refuge to the troops and still remembers Che with affection and awe.
00.12.41 Interview with Sara Torres, villager
Che came to listen to 'Radio Rebel, he was here listening to the radio, and chatting with the troops... with Crescendo and Guerra Matos.
00.12.50 NATSOFWoman broadcasting
Radio Rebel, our brave combatants are already fighting under the command of our leader Fidel Castro. Victory is close! -
00.13.02 Interview with Sara Torres,villager
Then, Guerra Matos, asked me to cook...he said: cook him something Sara, let’s cook. So, we killed a chicken and when it was almost ready he said he didn’t want to eat, he wanted to leave early. So, I told him: No, eat, eat commander, you might not have time to during the day. So he ate, he chatted, but we didn’t say much, we didn’t like to disturb their conversation.
00.13.33 But one day, the young Sara ventured further.
00.13.38 Interview with Sara Torres, villager
I asked him: do you have children? He said, yes, I have a daughter called Hildita. Only the one? No more? He said no more. So I asked him: Is she big? And he said yes, she is getting big. Then I left, I didn't say anything else.
00.14.04 The rebels continued to tighten their grip on the Sierra. Their numbers swelled with each small victory. By avoiding direct confrontation with Batista’s troops, the army was demoralised. By July 1958 the guerrillas controlled all of the mountains.
00.14.22 This memorial honours the next offensive, as Fidel ordered Che's column to pursue the enemy down into the valleys.
00.14.29 Map
After three months of war and hardship the rebels convened at Santa Clara. Although still married, Che began an affair with a guerrilla from the rebels' allies.
00.14.40 Interview with Aleidita Guevara,Che's daughter by second wife
Her comrades of the 26th July Movement sent her to Escambray on the pretext of giving my father money. She gave my dad money which she’d hidden in her clothes. Many years later I read a letter in which dad told her that he remembered the day she arrived in Escambray, wearing trousers so tight that they tore when she rode a horse. My mother still feels embarrassed about it!
00.15.14 Aleida March became Guevara's second wife, and would bear him four children. With just 300 exhausted men, Che invaded Santa Clara just after Christmas. They took the University and the Public Works building. The astonished townsfolk came to the rebels' aid, throwing petrol and oil from the rooftops on Batista's men. Some here still remember the chaos.
00.15.38 Interview with Armando Perez, villager
We were rushing madly around the house. On the second day there was no water or electricity, so I had to dash to a well some way from my house, near the barracks. When I passed by the rebels, near a school, the bullets would fly over my head.
00.15.58 The battle reigned for two days. The turning point came when the rebels diverted a train bringing in army reinforcements from Havana. The troops inside the train surrended their massive amoury to Guevara after being pounded by rebel bombs.
00.16.14 Interview with Osmundo Gomez, villager
Those 18 officers and the re-inforcements had no choice but to surrender after an hour long barrage of gun fire and Molotov cocktails. There were 400 men and a big arsenal on the way - it had to be stopped. That happened on the 29th.
00.16.40 Victory at Santa Clara was the greatest battle of the war, immortalising Che as a revolutionary hero and sounding the death knell of the Batista regime. Hundreds of the army were killed, but the rebels lost just six men.The battle is still recounted by loudspeakers in Che Guevara square.
00.16.58 NATSOF from the speakers We will go with you, we will die like you died.
00.17.04 Fidel and Che marched into Havana after news came, on New Year's Day, 1959, that Batista had fled Cuba. They were met by jubilation. The young rebels, courageous and pure, had won. They needed to stamp their authority on the new regime and put other opponents to Batsista out of the picture. Castro was their unchallenged leader, and who could have imagined in those heady days the extremes his regime would reach?
00.17.39 Their agenda was to enact their dreams of a socialist utopia. To this end Fidel and Che spent hours engrossed in private conversation.
00.17.49 Che was given command of La Cabana where the summary trials and executions of hundreds of Batista’s allies took place. With the armed struggle over, Che's Wanderlust was back . His father tried to help him decide his destiny.
00.18.03 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
Look, I am being serious, he said, what are you going to do now? Are you going to dedicate yourself to the revolution, or are you going to dedicate yourself to medicine? Look old man - he answered - I don’t know where in the world my bones will rest. And he said that the family has always had a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
00.18.33 In the meantime, Che felt that all companies should centralise their assets here at the National Bank. The Cuban economy had to be restructured. His nickname graced the new banknotes; but he believed that the Revolution would only blossom through hard work.
00.18.50 NATSOF "Che" Guevara
With your permission I am going to read you a poem. Don’t worry, don’t worry, it is not one of mine. It’s a poem, parts of a poem about a desperate man. The man was a hard working and stupid child who turned work into a journey, a drumstick into a spade and instead of singing about the land in a jubilant song, he began to dig it.
00.20.01 Che was now ‘Minister of Industry’ and he began to nationalise private companies. He also worked on deals with Russia: oil for sugar. He was a fastidious, if eccentric, politician.
00.20.15 Interview with Angel Arcos, Cuban official
Che would enter the meetings at 8 o’clock on the dot as if he was hiding behind the door . His office was almost 60 metres away. But he was always at the door at 8 o’clock on the dot. Not one minute past 8, not one minute before 8, in a way that made us think he was behind the door waiting for the clock to strike 8. The counsel meetings lasted exactly four hours. They started at 8 and finished at 12. If at 12 o’clock he was going to say the most important thing in the world, for example: I have a formula to dismantle capitalism in three days - which would be very important, he would say: well, we’ll discuss this point during the next counsel meeting, because we are done for today.
00.21.09 Che was the living model of communal labour. He would race from factory to factory, haranguing his audience that Cuba could achieve anything through enthusiam.
00.21.19 NATSOF "Che" Guevara
Voluntary work is the genuine communist attitude towards work, in a society where the fundamental means of production are social property. This is the way men who love the cause of the proletariat behave, dedicating to the cause their free time, their time off, in order to accomplish the work of the revolution.
00.21.48 But the work of the revolution was undermining his family life.
00.21.54 He had a comfortable house, but he was always away, and began leaving his wife behind. Paranoid of priviledge, he would even reprimand her for taking the government car to market.
00.22.07 A pediatrician in Havana hospital, his second daughter Aleidita remembers just a sketchy outline.
00.22.13 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
I have very few images of him, for example, he was a tall man, compared to me, and when he used to hold my hand, he used to lift my arm. I can’t really remember his face, I know it was my father but I don’t have an image of a well defined face. But I can hear his voice. It sounds as if a man is telling me that I have to behave, that I have to help my mother because I am the oldest child. It is a bit comical because I was only four and a half years old when he was telling me these things..
00.22.56 Aleidita was born in 1960, whilst Che was in China, visiting the architect of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong. It was clear that the revolution would always come first.
00.23.08 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
My brother Camilo, when he grew up and could finally read the letters where my dad warned my mother about the problems that Camilo’s behaviour might cause, Camilo would say: How can he even describe me!
00.23.36 Camilo Guevara, Che's son by second wife
Camilo Guevara enjoys life at dazzling parties. He says he was too young to remember much of his father. Cuba has changed a lot since his death. Although Castro has survived, along with healthcare and education for all, Cuba is now slave to the tourist dollar.
0024.00 But when he was just three years old, in 1965, Camilo's father mysteriously withdrew from Cuban political life.
00.24.12 Che had wanted to make Cuba an industrialised nation overnight. Many of his policies were doomed to failure, and he felt it keenly.
00.24.22 Interview with Angel Arcos, Cuban official
A month after he stopped turning up for work, everyone at the Ministry of Industry was worried. His boss understood that he had gone because Che had given him a book called “Guerrilla War”. Manressa opened the book, and swore to himself. This is the book Che gave me. He read the dedication: to Manressa, where the roads temporarily part, with a last hand shake, Che. That is when he realised that if roads are parting it’s because they separate.. one goes one way, the other somewhere else. That’s when he realised Che had gone.
00.25.09 To bow out quietly from Cuba, Che adopted a disguise. He became Dr Ramon, doctor and interpreter. He had been on an African odyssey, meeting rebel movements with Marxist leanings throughout the continent. Guevara resolved to join the revolution in Belgian Congo, where anti-Castro pilots and South African mercenaries were already embroiled.
00.25.32 But when Che arrived with 130 men at the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, they found a totally chaotic guerrilla war.
00.25.41 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
There were cultural differences. For example it was my job to look after the logistics, everything to do with provisions, with organising food and medicine. This wasn't easy. It was difficult to get the fighters to eat together in a group.
00.26.12 Anarchy aside, the Cubans were befuddled by tribal beliefs.
00.26.16 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
When we said it was time to fight, we all had to be immunised, to receive the dawa, which was a fetish that would protect us from dying in combat.
00.26.28 Che's men did not share his vision. They were desparate to leave, but he forced them to stay.
00.26.36 The leader of the African guerrillas, the now famous Laurent Kabila made Che wait in the mountains for months. When the two finally met, Kabila soon abandoned the revolutionaries. The Africans were loathe to fight and the Cubans' morale plummeted.
00.26.52 While Che or ‘Dr Ramon’ fermented revolution in the Congo, rumours back home ran wild. He had gone mad; he was a traitor; he was even given up for dead. Finally, in a letter read out by Fidel in October 1965, Che bade Cuba farewell.
00.27.14 NATSOFFidel Castro
I hereby formally renounce all my functions in the leadership of the Party, my position as a minister, my position as a commander, my citizenship as a Cuban. I have no legal ties with Cuba. I have always been identified with the external politics of the revolution and I will always be. Wherever I am I will always feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary and I will live as such.
00.27.47 While Cuba was coming to terms with Che's departure, he, now 'Dr Tatu' was trying to salvage his Congo campaign.
00.27.56 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
Once again he became a doctor. When he reached a village he would worry about sick children and old people. And so the legend of Dr Tatu was born, a man who took medical and social care to the people and who understood life.
00.28.20 But the Cubans were surrounded by mercenaries; their failed mission was over.
00.28.26 Reading from Che’s diary In the Congo I have learnt from mistakes that I will not make again. I might repeat some and I will make new ones. I believe more than ever in guerrilla warfare, but we have failed. My responsibility is now a big one. I will never forget defeat and what I have learnt from it.
00.28.46 Before his next mission, Che returned to visit his family in Cuba, disguised as old man Ramon, a Spanish family friend. He dined with his daughters without revealing his identity.
00.28.59 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
I told him: you're not Spanish, you seem to be Argentinean. Everyone was startled... except him, who saidcalmly: why do you say that? I said...it just occurred to me.
00.29.16 As he bid Castro farewell, Che was again in disguise. This time he was Adolfo Mena Goncalez, a Uruguayan social commentator. The disguise was so convincing, that the Bolivian government gave him credentials to research the economic and social conditions of Bolivian peasants.
00.29.38 The freedom fighter chose Bolivia as the cradle for Latin American revolution - his dream was still to liberate the continent. It was in the eastern peaks that Che began his last crusade.
00.29.53 Again with an entourage of like-minded Cuban fighters the Bolivian revolution was set to begin. But in these sierras, the land-owning peasants would not support guerrilla war.
00.30.10 Interview with Humberto Vasquez, Communist activist
The peasants did not know who Che was, what socialism was or Cuba. That noble man meant nothing to them.
00.30.21 Today, Humberto Vasquez tries to make sense of the Bolivian revolution that never was. 30 years ago his brother was a guerrilla who drummed up support in their town.
00.30.32 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
His first job was to make contacts, logistical support, get arms, uniforms, boots and look for places to hide.
00.30.50 Time stands still in the south of Bolivia, the location chosen by Che for training freedom fighters. Peasants still live here in total isolation, locked into their own world, just as they were when the Cubans arrived. A journey of just 50 kilometres is a true adventure, which can take four and a half hours.
00.32.13 The mountains which had nurtured the Cuban Revolution were hostile terrain in a country where the locals were hostile. Che had gained the affections of some Bolivians around the base in Nhancahuazu but could not win over the support of the Bolivian Communist Party. Disastrous communications made their isolation complete.
00.33.33 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
I had a radio transmitter at home, hidden in the roof, from where we could contact Nhancahuazu, but it never worked. Neither did the one in Nhancahuazu, so we could never communicate, but we had a radio! We transmitted to Nhancahuazu once and we got a reply from Buenos Aires!
00.32.55 Ignoring the setbacks, they trained hard, making vigorous marches, that would weaken even the strongest men.
00.33.02 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
We were hungry, very hungry. Sometimes we would share 4 or 5 birds amongst the 40 of us. Sometimes the only food we could find was palm leaves. We would have to climb the palm trees to get them, but we didn’t have the right kit. So, we had to chop the palm tree down. We wasted more energy getting the leaves than we got from eating the damn things!
00.33.35 In March 1967, rumours of Che Guevara’s presence began to circulate in the Bolivian press. A month later, he was visited by Regis Debray, a young French intellectual who was fascinated by Cuban socialism, and by Ciro Bustos a talented Argentinean artist. As soon as they had met Che, they were captured by the Bolivian army.
00.33.58 Interview with Gary Prado,Bolivian Army Officer
We got confirmation of his presence with the capture of Regis Debray. When he was captured his argument was that he was not a member of any guerrilla army, that he was a simple journalist who had come to interview Che, that he had interviewed him and that he had the notes of the interview. That was how we got confirmation of his presence, in the month of April.
00.34.23 The military began tightening the net. Rene Barrientos, the Bolivian president claimed he could control the rebellion, but invited the Americans in to train his troops.
00.34.34 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
At the time, the CIA had two different stories. One said Che had died in Africa, the other that he was still alive. What confirms that he was alive, was the capture of Debray and Bustos. Knowing Debray, knowing what he represented, the simple fact that he was in that area of Bolivia, was confirmation of Che Guevara’s presence. That is when the CIA created a mechanism to help the Bolivian government defeat the guerrillas.
00.35.11 The villages of central Bolivia became military bases. Pucará was one of them. Che's men had successfully ambushed army units sent to capture them, and some villagers here say Che Guevara’s reputation made the army quake in its boots.
00.35.28 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
When generals and colonels came to Pucara to investigate or to look around, they would only come as far as here. Someone would say “there’s a freedom fighter” and point at a peasant with his tools on his shoulder walking around the village. The Generals would turn pale, get in their cars and turn back, not to return again. They were scared of the freedom fighters.
00.36.00 But US military aid to Bolivia was second only to its aid to Israel. The odds mounted against the handful of freedom fighters, now stalked by more than 2,000 US-trained Bolivian rangers.
00.36.14 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
First the CIA sent a special training force under the command of Major Pappi Sheldon, from Panama, to train a battalion in guerrilla war, which was something Bolivia did not have. The Bolivian Army didn’t have any kind of training or experience in these types of operations at all. They also wanted this battalion to have the capacity for spying. That was our mission. To create the eyes and the ears of the battalion, which consisted of 10 young soldiers who spoke Quetchua and Aymara, who could move through the battalion in order to spy on it.
00.36.47 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
They spoke, how can I explain, in code so that we couldn’t understand them. When I realised it was code, I knew there were CIA people everywhere.
00.37.16 Local peasants were offered vast rewards for information on the rebels. The guerillas' tenuous support in the region was weakened. They could be denounced at any moment.
00.37.27 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
They came from Abra del Picacho and reached La Higuera square. There was a house 50 metres away, it was a communications' post, and there was this young woman who answered the phones. When she gave the news to the telephone operator she said: They're here! They're here! The group of freedom fighters has reached La Higuera. They are very close, they are in the square, 50 metres from my front door.” They came inside - and she finally shut up, because Coco Perera disconnected the phone to cut off communications and avoid being given away to the army.
00.38.21 But they had already been compromised. From Pucara, the military advanced on to La Higuera. Here they killed the Bolivian Coco Perera and two more freedom fighters. The others manage to flee.
00.38.37 Although guerrillas were still at large in the mountains, Virginia Cabrita’s grandmother had to take her goats out to pasture. She stumbled across a group of rebels who took her captive.
00.38.55 Interview with Virginia Cabrita,villager
She said she was terrified when she saw the freedom fighters. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. There were people speaking lots of different languages, my grandmother was a queuitcha. They asked her if she knew Quechua, my grandmother nodded yes.
00.39.15 The rebels treated all peasants as potential informers. The whole area was swarming with government soldiers and the peasants were too scared to support the revolutionaries even if they wanted to.
00.39.28 Interview with Virginia Cabrita,villager
Inter - Were they afraid of the soldiers?VC: yesInt- why?VC: because they would ask for the freedom fighters.Int: did your grandmother talk to the soldiers?VC: no, she never went to the military, she was always looking after the goats.
00.39.50 The guerrilla army had been in action for eleven months, but had not convinced Bolivian peasants to join them. Che's diary is pessimistic.
00.40.00 Reading from diary
Inti, Aniceto and Pablito went to the house of the old woman who has a sickly daughter and another that is a bit like a dwarf. They gave her 50 pesos so that she wouldn’t talk, but without much hope that she would keep her promise.
00.40.15 Although it was dangerous, Che ended up staying near Virginia’s House, a few miles from La Higuera.
00.40.23 Isolated, ill, depleted and out-numbered the freedom fighters' options were closing fast. Che planned to take the town of Vallegrande, if only to get help for his wounded men. The commander spent the night of October 7 here in the bush.
00.40.43 But villagers still talk of the night Che and his band were spotted in the moonlight.
00.40.50 Interview with Gregorio, villager
A peasant who owned a vegetable garden was watering the vegetables when the freedom fighters arrived. He ran away so the freedom fighters slept here.
00.41.08 But the peasant dispatched his son to run and report the guerrillas' position to the army.
00.41.16 Interview with Gregorio, villager
Int: were the peasants scared of the freedom fighters?G: yes, because of what the military said.Int: what did they say?G: that their lives were vulgar, that their marriages were vulgar, that there was no respectInt: do you think it was true?G: yes.Int: were the peasants scared of the soldiers?G: yes, they were because they were intimidated by the soldiers. If anyone said a word in favour of the freedom fighters they would be accused of being a communist.
00.41.56 That dawn, Che Guevara divided the freedom fighters into small platoons to try to slip through the enemy lines, but they were caught off guard by a textbook ambush.
00.42.07 Interview with Gregorio, villager
Int: where did the fight take place?G: around hereInt: where were the military?G: over here and over thereInt: and the freedom fighters:G: down thereint: where did the freedom fighters come from?G: over there, from down below.
00.42.26 Interview with Gary Prado, Bolivian army Officer
He wanted to escape through a hole in one of the rocks. Two soldiers spotted him and another man, they saw two men climbing up and lay in wait for them. When they reached the top of the rock they were captured. I was about 15 metres away and they shouted: captain, there are two of them here - they didn’t know who he was. Che Guevara said to them: don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I am Che Guevara - We checked who he was. We quickly identified him. We had a sketch done by Bustos, which showed a scar on his hand, and another on his forehead. I saw that and I was convinced it was him.
00.43.17 Some of the guerrillas managed to escape, but Che Guevara, who was wounded in the leg, was taken to La Higuera. On the 8 October 1967, wide-eyed onlookers watched Che's body being dragged through the streets by soldiers.
00.43.34 He was thrown onto the mud floor of the schoolhouse, where the army tried to interrogate him.
00.43.42 Interview with Nena, villager
Int: did you see Che Guevara?N: I did.Int: When?Int: I saw him when they took him to the toilet.Int: after he had been wounded?N: after he had been wounded. They took him back to the school.Int: who was in the school?Int: all the military men.: captains, lieutenants, it was packed.
00.44.06 The army used an old communications' post to inform their superiors that they had “captured papa” - their code for Che, father of the freedom fighters. Captain Prado reported the prisoner wounded, but received no orders.
00.44.19 Interview with Gary Prado, Bolivian army officer
During the night of the 8 and 9 October,1967 a meeting took place in La Paz between the President of the Republic, the Commandaner-in-chief of the army and the Chief-of-Staff Generals Barrientos, Ovandos and Torres. These three men took the view that it was better to execute Che Guevara and they transmitted this order in the morning on the 9th to Vallegrande and from Vallegrande to La Higuera.
00.44.56 Che had spent the night in the school at La Higuera, now a clinic. The orders for his execution arrived on the morning he was visited by a Bolvian officer and the Cuban CIA agent who had been tracking him.
00.45.10 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
We were over there, I was here, Colonel Zenteno was over there, and he started talking to him but got no response. We left. Later on, when I came back he was here on the floor, his feet tied and his hands tied behind his back, and that’s when I told him: Che Guevara, I came to talk to you. He looked at me and said: No one is going to interrogate me. I told him: Commander, I didn’t come to interrogate you. I admire you, you were a Head of State in Cuba, you are in this situation, because you believe in your ideals. I came to talk to you.Int: What did you talk about?F: We talked about his reasons for coming to Bolivia. When I asked him about his stay in Africa, he told me: You know I can’t tell you about that. He also wouldn’t say how he got into Bolivia. But we discussed philosophy and the Cuban economy
00.45.57 Other versions have it that this conversation never took place, or that the meeting was just an exchange of insults. That day, the CIA agent commandeered the Bolivian army camera and was photographed next to the famous prisoner. Che's belongings were taken to the communications' post, where the agent fulfilled his mission.
00.46.21 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
We carried a very heavy table through this door and put it here in the middle of the room, so that we could have good light. I used a German camera, a 35mm Minox, to photograph his personal diary and all his documents.
00.46.34 The soldiers drew lots for the task, and Che Guevara was executed by a sergeant of the Bolivian army.
00.46.41 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
I believe that whether we like it or not, the government's decision was the most rational possible one at the time. In my heart I don’t say it was the right one, but if I analyse the historical facts, it was the only rational decision that the army could have made. If they had detained Che in Nhancahuazu, he wouldn’t have last more than a couple of weeks. After that, there would have been open revolution in Bolivia that the government wouldn’t be able to stop. The universities, never mind foreign movements, Chilean, Argentinean, Brazilian, would have come to fight for the release of this prisoner. It would have been total chaos. There was no jail in Bolivia that could hold him for two weeks, that's what I believe.
00.47.27 30 years on, the CIA agent feels some compassion.
00.47.32 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
He was a lonely man, destroyed, in ruins, it was really sad to see the way he was. But he was a man who deserved respect, a man who died with dignity for what he believed, even if he was wrong.
00.47.47 5 freedom fighters had survived the onslaught by the army, oblivious to the fate of their commander.
00.47.53 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
We found out about Che’s death’s on the10th from a radio announcement. We were standing just in front of the school in La Higuera. We were hidden in the vegetation and listening to a little radio. The first accounts said that Che had been taken prisoner, was wounded and had been operated on in Santa Cruz, the capital of the region. Afterwards we heard the news that it wasn’t Che but one of his lieutenants. We thought about who it could be. We came to the conclusion that it could only be Pachungo. It couldn't have been anyone else. And then we heard about Che’s death. They started giving details: the two watches he wore, his own and Tuma’s, and his jacket... all of these details proved to us that it really was Che.
00.49.03 Che's body was taken to Vallegrande, to be cleaned up and put on display at the hospital.
00.49.09 Interview with Susana, nurse
I was on duty at the hospital. The doctor told us to undress Che and see where the wounds were. We took his clothes off and we washed his whole body with a hose pipe. On his left- hand side, right in his heart, there was a bullet. I think that was the one that killed him. He had another in his arm, but that was old and another in his ankle.
00.49.44 The army wanted the world to witness that Che Guevara, communist hero, had finally been vanquished.
00.49.51 Interview with Susana, nurse
Int: what shocked you the most?S: His eyes, because they stayed open and seemed to follow us. It felt like he was looking at all of us. We moved one way and he would look at us, we moved the other way, and he would look at us. Everyone said he looked like Christ.
00.50.11 The next day, Che Guevara’s body disappeared. For decades the Bolivian army refused to reveal where it had been buried. Only recently was it unearthed and returned to Cuba.
00.50.28 9 days after his death, Fidel Castro summoned the people to Revolution Square in remembrance of the man who had helped bring him to power.
00.50.41 NATSOFFidel Castro
Revolutionary Comrades. It was one day in July or August 1955 that we met Che. Over night, just as he told us in his stories, he was to become a passenger aboard Granma.
00.51.27 Castro wanted a fitting image of Che to grace Revolution square.
00.51.35 His death came on the eve of 1968, when youth across the world would openly revolt. His photo was taken by Alberto Korda 7 years earlier, and its revolutionary spirit captured the heart of a generation.
00.52.02 Interview with Alberto Korda, photographer In an almost casual moment, while I was running around taking photographs left, right and centre, Che Guevara shows up looking like that, with that expression on his face and I take two photographs: one with the camera horizontal, one with the camera vertical, and then he was off. It was a question of 20 or 30 seconds.
00.52.46 "The decisive moment in a man's life is when he confronts death" Guevara had once said. In death, Che the icon was born. A man who fought for his beliefs until he could fight no more.
CREDITS
Reporter: Candida Pinto
Camera: Jose Maria Cyrne
Editor: Aristides Martins
Graphics: Agostinho Ribeiro
Post-Production Sound: João Ganho
Narration: João Paulo Guerra
Characterization: Leonor Costa Pereira
Studio Lighting: Guto Silveira
Assistant Producer: Miguel Santa Marta
Production Secretary: Isabel Mendonça
Translation: Mizé Anastacio
A SIC Production
English version: JOURNEYMAN PICTURES
Che Guevara:
A Guerrilla to the End
January 1999
A 54 minute documentary
00.03.55 Music.
Man lighting a cigarette
Cuba's Fidel Castro has been in power for 40 years - his is one of the last communist bastions on earth. But one man has done more for Communism's image than even Castro himself: An Argentine killed by Bolivian rangers in 1967. His memory still enthralls and inspires revolutionaries from South America to Africa. Ernesto 'Che' Guevara: a guerrilla to the end.
00.04.26 Writing: Guerrilla to the end
00.04.37 Letter
“Dear folks, I am doing well here, I have lost another two lives so I still have five to go. I’ve still got the same job, new ones are few and far between, and that’s how they’ll always be. But have faith that God is Argentinean. A big hug, Tete”
00.05.01 Image of man
This simple letter from a son to his parents reached them only after they learnt of his death. A modest man whose quest for social justice would take him to Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and Africa, Che Guevara became the icon of a generation dreaming of change. But to his family, he was just 'Tete'.
00.05.22 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
Tete was the nickname that he was given when he was a baby. He was called our Tete. That was something only his father and mother knew. So when we read this letter we knew he was still alive.
00.05.43 Born in 1928 to an aristocratic, land-owning family in Buenos Aires, life was good for the young Che Guevara, despite severe asthma which would plague him throughout life. Che grew up in a hotbed of political discourse. His mother Celia was the most profound intellectual inspiration in his life, until he met Castro in 1955.
00.06.07 Celia was a radical socialist and feminist who hosted many meetings of the Argentine women’s movement. She taught him to read and write, instilling in him a lifelong love of books and learning. He practiced by writing to his family and boasts at seven to his Aunt:
00.06.24 Letter
“Dear Beatriz, I have a surprise for you. I learnt to swim on your birthday. Kisses from “Ernestito”
00.06.37 Che became politicized young, following the Spanish civil war as a boy, and later criticizing Argentina's racist right. After starting medical school he travelled Latin America on his motorbike. He found a continent locked in poverty, under the thumb of the United States, the CIA and American business. He resolved to join Castro's struggle for ’liberation’ from the Cuban dictator General Batista. Guevara joined the Revolutionaries training in Mexico in 1956, and his new comrades began to call him 'Che' or 'friend' in Argentinean. He was first arrested in Mexico.
00.07.19 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister He wrote a very funny letter in which he said: I'm writing from my new home at Miguel Schulta - which was the prison - he said, you must be a bit surprised so I'll explain. But his family already knew what was going on. This was their way of life.
00.07.45 But Che's family had no idea the path the young man's life was taking. He had read Marx and Lenin and impressed Castro with his 'revolutionary development'. In turn he had been fired by Castro's passion for freeing Cuba. Although he had married and produced a daughter, Hildita, Revolution was in his blood.
00.08.10 One night in November 1956, 82 guerrillas boarded a small pleasure boat 'Granma'. Their mission: to oust Batista and end US domination of Cuba.
00.08.23 On December 2nd they ran aground in rough seas. It was the first time Che had set foot in Cuba. But their Revolutionary spirits were dampened by an exhausting trek through mosquito infested swamps. They were weakened by blisters and encumbered by their supplies.
00.08.49 In these swamps the rebels suffered their first setback. President Batista’s forces ambushed the poorly armed idealists. It was a bloodbath. Just 12 escaped alive. Yet the fledgling movement survived with the support of local campesinos.
00.09.07 Interviewwith Roberto Aguillar, villager
The peasants supported the revolutionaries. The peasants played an important part in the war.
00.09.19 The survivors hid from Batista’s 30,000 troops in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Their revolutionary zeal inspired the poor farmers who wanted land reform. From deep in the mountains Che sent his parents an enigmatic letter:
00.09.41 interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
I had seven and now I have five left: in “Guevarian” language he meant like cats, who are said to have seven lives. He said he had seven but he was wounded twice, so now he had five left. He also said : I hope God is Argentinean, hoping he wouldn’t be killed. For now I'm going to continue my work, meaning that he would fight on. Don't wait for regular news. Your son, 'Tete'.
00.10.29 His bond with Fidel Castro, captured the imagination of an era. Che was a committed member of the international Communist movement . A man whose almost narcissistic will would carry him on. He believed the Revolution would start in Cuba and then spread throughout the world.
00.10.50 His reputation as an invincible fighter grew, his amazing confidence attracting others who wanted to join his "peasant army" and change the course of history.
00.11.03 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
He asked us what we were going to do. We explained that we were going to fight for the independence of Cuba and he asked us what with. We showed him a little 22 gun we had. He asked us if we believed we could really overturn tyranny with our little gun. He then sent us back to our village to disarm all soldiers. We told him that there were thousands of soldiers all over the place. He said that way we would be much better armed.
00.11.33 For Che the Revolution began right there in the mountains. He ran a literacy programme, opened clinics and trained new guerillas. He even spoke to selected journalists.
00.11.45 NATSOF"Che" Guevara
We have already spent 16 months in the Sierra Maestra, journalists have come from all over the world fretting about the stories they have heard of so-called guerrilla warfare. Today I am taking advantage of the visit of a Cuban journalist to address the Cuban people, my first chance to do so. I have decided to defend these people, although I only know them through the thoughts and deeds of our leader Fidel Castro.
00.12.26 The ordinary people of the Sierra were captivated by this foreign hero. One such villager was Sara Torres; she helped give refuge to the troops and still remembers Che with affection and awe.
00.12.41 Interview with Sara Torres, villager
Che came to listen to 'Radio Rebel, he was here listening to the radio, and chatting with the troops... with Crescendo and Guerra Matos.
00.12.50 NATSOFWoman broadcasting
Radio Rebel, our brave combatants are already fighting under the command of our leader Fidel Castro. Victory is close! -
00.13.02 Interview with Sara Torres,villager
Then, Guerra Matos, asked me to cook...he said: cook him something Sara, let’s cook. So, we killed a chicken and when it was almost ready he said he didn’t want to eat, he wanted to leave early. So, I told him: No, eat, eat commander, you might not have time to during the day. So he ate, he chatted, but we didn’t say much, we didn’t like to disturb their conversation.
00.13.33 But one day, the young Sara ventured further.
00.13.38 Interview with Sara Torres, villager
I asked him: do you have children? He said, yes, I have a daughter called Hildita. Only the one? No more? He said no more. So I asked him: Is she big? And he said yes, she is getting big. Then I left, I didn't say anything else.
00.14.04 The rebels continued to tighten their grip on the Sierra. Their numbers swelled with each small victory. By avoiding direct confrontation with Batista’s troops, the army was demoralised. By July 1958 the guerrillas controlled all of the mountains.
00.14.22 This memorial honours the next offensive, as Fidel ordered Che's column to pursue the enemy down into the valleys.
00.14.29 Map
After three months of war and hardship the rebels convened at Santa Clara. Although still married, Che began an affair with a guerrilla from the rebels' allies.
00.14.40 Interview with Aleidita Guevara,Che's daughter by second wife
Her comrades of the 26th July Movement sent her to Escambray on the pretext of giving my father money. She gave my dad money which she’d hidden in her clothes. Many years later I read a letter in which dad told her that he remembered the day she arrived in Escambray, wearing trousers so tight that they tore when she rode a horse. My mother still feels embarrassed about it!
00.15.14 Aleida March became Guevara's second wife, and would bear him four children. With just 300 exhausted men, Che invaded Santa Clara just after Christmas. They took the University and the Public Works building. The astonished townsfolk came to the rebels' aid, throwing petrol and oil from the rooftops on Batista's men. Some here still remember the chaos.
00.15.38 Interview with Armando Perez, villager
We were rushing madly around the house. On the second day there was no water or electricity, so I had to dash to a well some way from my house, near the barracks. When I passed by the rebels, near a school, the bullets would fly over my head.
00.15.58 The battle reigned for two days. The turning point came when the rebels diverted a train bringing in army reinforcements from Havana. The troops inside the train surrended their massive amoury to Guevara after being pounded by rebel bombs.
00.16.14 Interview with Osmundo Gomez, villager
Those 18 officers and the re-inforcements had no choice but to surrender after an hour long barrage of gun fire and Molotov cocktails. There were 400 men and a big arsenal on the way - it had to be stopped. That happened on the 29th.
00.16.40 Victory at Santa Clara was the greatest battle of the war, immortalising Che as a revolutionary hero and sounding the death knell of the Batista regime. Hundreds of the army were killed, but the rebels lost just six men.The battle is still recounted by loudspeakers in Che Guevara square.
00.16.58 NATSOF from the speakers We will go with you, we will die like you died.
00.17.04 Fidel and Che marched into Havana after news came, on New Year's Day, 1959, that Batista had fled Cuba. They were met by jubilation. The young rebels, courageous and pure, had won. They needed to stamp their authority on the new regime and put other opponents to Batsista out of the picture. Castro was their unchallenged leader, and who could have imagined in those heady days the extremes his regime would reach?
00.17.39 Their agenda was to enact their dreams of a socialist utopia. To this end Fidel and Che spent hours engrossed in private conversation.
00.17.49 Che was given command of La Cabana where the summary trials and executions of hundreds of Batista’s allies took place. With the armed struggle over, Che's Wanderlust was back . His father tried to help him decide his destiny.
00.18.03 Interview with Ana Maria Guevara,Che's Sister
Look, I am being serious, he said, what are you going to do now? Are you going to dedicate yourself to the revolution, or are you going to dedicate yourself to medicine? Look old man - he answered - I don’t know where in the world my bones will rest. And he said that the family has always had a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
00.18.33 In the meantime, Che felt that all companies should centralise their assets here at the National Bank. The Cuban economy had to be restructured. His nickname graced the new banknotes; but he believed that the Revolution would only blossom through hard work.
00.18.50 NATSOF "Che" Guevara
With your permission I am going to read you a poem. Don’t worry, don’t worry, it is not one of mine. It’s a poem, parts of a poem about a desperate man. The man was a hard working and stupid child who turned work into a journey, a drumstick into a spade and instead of singing about the land in a jubilant song, he began to dig it.
00.20.01 Che was now ‘Minister of Industry’ and he began to nationalise private companies. He also worked on deals with Russia: oil for sugar. He was a fastidious, if eccentric, politician.
00.20.15 Interview with Angel Arcos, Cuban official
Che would enter the meetings at 8 o’clock on the dot as if he was hiding behind the door . His office was almost 60 metres away. But he was always at the door at 8 o’clock on the dot. Not one minute past 8, not one minute before 8, in a way that made us think he was behind the door waiting for the clock to strike 8. The counsel meetings lasted exactly four hours. They started at 8 and finished at 12. If at 12 o’clock he was going to say the most important thing in the world, for example: I have a formula to dismantle capitalism in three days - which would be very important, he would say: well, we’ll discuss this point during the next counsel meeting, because we are done for today.
00.21.09 Che was the living model of communal labour. He would race from factory to factory, haranguing his audience that Cuba could achieve anything through enthusiam.
00.21.19 NATSOF "Che" Guevara
Voluntary work is the genuine communist attitude towards work, in a society where the fundamental means of production are social property. This is the way men who love the cause of the proletariat behave, dedicating to the cause their free time, their time off, in order to accomplish the work of the revolution.
00.21.48 But the work of the revolution was undermining his family life.
00.21.54 He had a comfortable house, but he was always away, and began leaving his wife behind. Paranoid of priviledge, he would even reprimand her for taking the government car to market.
00.22.07 A pediatrician in Havana hospital, his second daughter Aleidita remembers just a sketchy outline.
00.22.13 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
I have very few images of him, for example, he was a tall man, compared to me, and when he used to hold my hand, he used to lift my arm. I can’t really remember his face, I know it was my father but I don’t have an image of a well defined face. But I can hear his voice. It sounds as if a man is telling me that I have to behave, that I have to help my mother because I am the oldest child. It is a bit comical because I was only four and a half years old when he was telling me these things..
00.22.56 Aleidita was born in 1960, whilst Che was in China, visiting the architect of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong. It was clear that the revolution would always come first.
00.23.08 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
My brother Camilo, when he grew up and could finally read the letters where my dad warned my mother about the problems that Camilo’s behaviour might cause, Camilo would say: How can he even describe me!
00.23.36 Camilo Guevara, Che's son by second wife
Camilo Guevara enjoys life at dazzling parties. He says he was too young to remember much of his father. Cuba has changed a lot since his death. Although Castro has survived, along with healthcare and education for all, Cuba is now slave to the tourist dollar.
0024.00 But when he was just three years old, in 1965, Camilo's father mysteriously withdrew from Cuban political life.
00.24.12 Che had wanted to make Cuba an industrialised nation overnight. Many of his policies were doomed to failure, and he felt it keenly.
00.24.22 Interview with Angel Arcos, Cuban official
A month after he stopped turning up for work, everyone at the Ministry of Industry was worried. His boss understood that he had gone because Che had given him a book called “Guerrilla War”. Manressa opened the book, and swore to himself. This is the book Che gave me. He read the dedication: to Manressa, where the roads temporarily part, with a last hand shake, Che. That is when he realised that if roads are parting it’s because they separate.. one goes one way, the other somewhere else. That’s when he realised Che had gone.
00.25.09 To bow out quietly from Cuba, Che adopted a disguise. He became Dr Ramon, doctor and interpreter. He had been on an African odyssey, meeting rebel movements with Marxist leanings throughout the continent. Guevara resolved to join the revolution in Belgian Congo, where anti-Castro pilots and South African mercenaries were already embroiled.
00.25.32 But when Che arrived with 130 men at the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, they found a totally chaotic guerrilla war.
00.25.41 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
There were cultural differences. For example it was my job to look after the logistics, everything to do with provisions, with organising food and medicine. This wasn't easy. It was difficult to get the fighters to eat together in a group.
00.26.12 Anarchy aside, the Cubans were befuddled by tribal beliefs.
00.26.16 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
When we said it was time to fight, we all had to be immunised, to receive the dawa, which was a fetish that would protect us from dying in combat.
00.26.28 Che's men did not share his vision. They were desparate to leave, but he forced them to stay.
00.26.36 The leader of the African guerrillas, the now famous Laurent Kabila made Che wait in the mountains for months. When the two finally met, Kabila soon abandoned the revolutionaries. The Africans were loathe to fight and the Cubans' morale plummeted.
00.26.52 While Che or ‘Dr Ramon’ fermented revolution in the Congo, rumours back home ran wild. He had gone mad; he was a traitor; he was even given up for dead. Finally, in a letter read out by Fidel in October 1965, Che bade Cuba farewell.
00.27.14 NATSOFFidel Castro
I hereby formally renounce all my functions in the leadership of the Party, my position as a minister, my position as a commander, my citizenship as a Cuban. I have no legal ties with Cuba. I have always been identified with the external politics of the revolution and I will always be. Wherever I am I will always feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary and I will live as such.
00.27.47 While Cuba was coming to terms with Che's departure, he, now 'Dr Tatu' was trying to salvage his Congo campaign.
00.27.56 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
Once again he became a doctor. When he reached a village he would worry about sick children and old people. And so the legend of Dr Tatu was born, a man who took medical and social care to the people and who understood life.
00.28.20 But the Cubans were surrounded by mercenaries; their failed mission was over.
00.28.26 Reading from Che’s diary In the Congo I have learnt from mistakes that I will not make again. I might repeat some and I will make new ones. I believe more than ever in guerrilla warfare, but we have failed. My responsibility is now a big one. I will never forget defeat and what I have learnt from it.
00.28.46 Before his next mission, Che returned to visit his family in Cuba, disguised as old man Ramon, a Spanish family friend. He dined with his daughters without revealing his identity.
00.28.59 Interview with Aleidita Guevara, Che's daughter by second wife
I told him: you're not Spanish, you seem to be Argentinean. Everyone was startled... except him, who saidcalmly: why do you say that? I said...it just occurred to me.
00.29.16 As he bid Castro farewell, Che was again in disguise. This time he was Adolfo Mena Goncalez, a Uruguayan social commentator. The disguise was so convincing, that the Bolivian government gave him credentials to research the economic and social conditions of Bolivian peasants.
00.29.38 The freedom fighter chose Bolivia as the cradle for Latin American revolution - his dream was still to liberate the continent. It was in the eastern peaks that Che began his last crusade.
00.29.53 Again with an entourage of like-minded Cuban fighters the Bolivian revolution was set to begin. But in these sierras, the land-owning peasants would not support guerrilla war.
00.30.10 Interview with Humberto Vasquez, Communist activist
The peasants did not know who Che was, what socialism was or Cuba. That noble man meant nothing to them.
00.30.21 Today, Humberto Vasquez tries to make sense of the Bolivian revolution that never was. 30 years ago his brother was a guerrilla who drummed up support in their town.
00.30.32 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
His first job was to make contacts, logistical support, get arms, uniforms, boots and look for places to hide.
00.30.50 Time stands still in the south of Bolivia, the location chosen by Che for training freedom fighters. Peasants still live here in total isolation, locked into their own world, just as they were when the Cubans arrived. A journey of just 50 kilometres is a true adventure, which can take four and a half hours.
00.32.13 The mountains which had nurtured the Cuban Revolution were hostile terrain in a country where the locals were hostile. Che had gained the affections of some Bolivians around the base in Nhancahuazu but could not win over the support of the Bolivian Communist Party. Disastrous communications made their isolation complete.
00.33.33 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
I had a radio transmitter at home, hidden in the roof, from where we could contact Nhancahuazu, but it never worked. Neither did the one in Nhancahuazu, so we could never communicate, but we had a radio! We transmitted to Nhancahuazu once and we got a reply from Buenos Aires!
00.32.55 Ignoring the setbacks, they trained hard, making vigorous marches, that would weaken even the strongest men.
00.33.02 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
We were hungry, very hungry. Sometimes we would share 4 or 5 birds amongst the 40 of us. Sometimes the only food we could find was palm leaves. We would have to climb the palm trees to get them, but we didn’t have the right kit. So, we had to chop the palm tree down. We wasted more energy getting the leaves than we got from eating the damn things!
00.33.35 In March 1967, rumours of Che Guevara’s presence began to circulate in the Bolivian press. A month later, he was visited by Regis Debray, a young French intellectual who was fascinated by Cuban socialism, and by Ciro Bustos a talented Argentinean artist. As soon as they had met Che, they were captured by the Bolivian army.
00.33.58 Interview with Gary Prado,Bolivian Army Officer
We got confirmation of his presence with the capture of Regis Debray. When he was captured his argument was that he was not a member of any guerrilla army, that he was a simple journalist who had come to interview Che, that he had interviewed him and that he had the notes of the interview. That was how we got confirmation of his presence, in the month of April.
00.34.23 The military began tightening the net. Rene Barrientos, the Bolivian president claimed he could control the rebellion, but invited the Americans in to train his troops.
00.34.34 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
At the time, the CIA had two different stories. One said Che had died in Africa, the other that he was still alive. What confirms that he was alive, was the capture of Debray and Bustos. Knowing Debray, knowing what he represented, the simple fact that he was in that area of Bolivia, was confirmation of Che Guevara’s presence. That is when the CIA created a mechanism to help the Bolivian government defeat the guerrillas.
00.35.11 The villages of central Bolivia became military bases. Pucará was one of them. Che's men had successfully ambushed army units sent to capture them, and some villagers here say Che Guevara’s reputation made the army quake in its boots.
00.35.28 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
When generals and colonels came to Pucara to investigate or to look around, they would only come as far as here. Someone would say “there’s a freedom fighter” and point at a peasant with his tools on his shoulder walking around the village. The Generals would turn pale, get in their cars and turn back, not to return again. They were scared of the freedom fighters.
00.36.00 But US military aid to Bolivia was second only to its aid to Israel. The odds mounted against the handful of freedom fighters, now stalked by more than 2,000 US-trained Bolivian rangers.
00.36.14 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
First the CIA sent a special training force under the command of Major Pappi Sheldon, from Panama, to train a battalion in guerrilla war, which was something Bolivia did not have. The Bolivian Army didn’t have any kind of training or experience in these types of operations at all. They also wanted this battalion to have the capacity for spying. That was our mission. To create the eyes and the ears of the battalion, which consisted of 10 young soldiers who spoke Quetchua and Aymara, who could move through the battalion in order to spy on it.
00.36.47 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
They spoke, how can I explain, in code so that we couldn’t understand them. When I realised it was code, I knew there were CIA people everywhere.
00.37.16 Local peasants were offered vast rewards for information on the rebels. The guerillas' tenuous support in the region was weakened. They could be denounced at any moment.
00.37.27 Interview with Pedro Montana, villager
They came from Abra del Picacho and reached La Higuera square. There was a house 50 metres away, it was a communications' post, and there was this young woman who answered the phones. When she gave the news to the telephone operator she said: They're here! They're here! The group of freedom fighters has reached La Higuera. They are very close, they are in the square, 50 metres from my front door.” They came inside - and she finally shut up, because Coco Perera disconnected the phone to cut off communications and avoid being given away to the army.
00.38.21 But they had already been compromised. From Pucara, the military advanced on to La Higuera. Here they killed the Bolivian Coco Perera and two more freedom fighters. The others manage to flee.
00.38.37 Although guerrillas were still at large in the mountains, Virginia Cabrita’s grandmother had to take her goats out to pasture. She stumbled across a group of rebels who took her captive.
00.38.55 Interview with Virginia Cabrita,villager
She said she was terrified when she saw the freedom fighters. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. There were people speaking lots of different languages, my grandmother was a queuitcha. They asked her if she knew Quechua, my grandmother nodded yes.
00.39.15 The rebels treated all peasants as potential informers. The whole area was swarming with government soldiers and the peasants were too scared to support the revolutionaries even if they wanted to.
00.39.28 Interview with Virginia Cabrita,villager
Inter - Were they afraid of the soldiers?VC: yesInt- why?VC: because they would ask for the freedom fighters.Int: did your grandmother talk to the soldiers?VC: no, she never went to the military, she was always looking after the goats.
00.39.50 The guerrilla army had been in action for eleven months, but had not convinced Bolivian peasants to join them. Che's diary is pessimistic.
00.40.00 Reading from diary
Inti, Aniceto and Pablito went to the house of the old woman who has a sickly daughter and another that is a bit like a dwarf. They gave her 50 pesos so that she wouldn’t talk, but without much hope that she would keep her promise.
00.40.15 Although it was dangerous, Che ended up staying near Virginia’s House, a few miles from La Higuera.
00.40.23 Isolated, ill, depleted and out-numbered the freedom fighters' options were closing fast. Che planned to take the town of Vallegrande, if only to get help for his wounded men. The commander spent the night of October 7 here in the bush.
00.40.43 But villagers still talk of the night Che and his band were spotted in the moonlight.
00.40.50 Interview with Gregorio, villager
A peasant who owned a vegetable garden was watering the vegetables when the freedom fighters arrived. He ran away so the freedom fighters slept here.
00.41.08 But the peasant dispatched his son to run and report the guerrillas' position to the army.
00.41.16 Interview with Gregorio, villager
Int: were the peasants scared of the freedom fighters?G: yes, because of what the military said.Int: what did they say?G: that their lives were vulgar, that their marriages were vulgar, that there was no respectInt: do you think it was true?G: yes.Int: were the peasants scared of the soldiers?G: yes, they were because they were intimidated by the soldiers. If anyone said a word in favour of the freedom fighters they would be accused of being a communist.
00.41.56 That dawn, Che Guevara divided the freedom fighters into small platoons to try to slip through the enemy lines, but they were caught off guard by a textbook ambush.
00.42.07 Interview with Gregorio, villager
Int: where did the fight take place?G: around hereInt: where were the military?G: over here and over thereInt: and the freedom fighters:G: down thereint: where did the freedom fighters come from?G: over there, from down below.
00.42.26 Interview with Gary Prado, Bolivian army Officer
He wanted to escape through a hole in one of the rocks. Two soldiers spotted him and another man, they saw two men climbing up and lay in wait for them. When they reached the top of the rock they were captured. I was about 15 metres away and they shouted: captain, there are two of them here - they didn’t know who he was. Che Guevara said to them: don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I am Che Guevara - We checked who he was. We quickly identified him. We had a sketch done by Bustos, which showed a scar on his hand, and another on his forehead. I saw that and I was convinced it was him.
00.43.17 Some of the guerrillas managed to escape, but Che Guevara, who was wounded in the leg, was taken to La Higuera. On the 8 October 1967, wide-eyed onlookers watched Che's body being dragged through the streets by soldiers.
00.43.34 He was thrown onto the mud floor of the schoolhouse, where the army tried to interrogate him.
00.43.42 Interview with Nena, villager
Int: did you see Che Guevara?N: I did.Int: When?Int: I saw him when they took him to the toilet.Int: after he had been wounded?N: after he had been wounded. They took him back to the school.Int: who was in the school?Int: all the military men.: captains, lieutenants, it was packed.
00.44.06 The army used an old communications' post to inform their superiors that they had “captured papa” - their code for Che, father of the freedom fighters. Captain Prado reported the prisoner wounded, but received no orders.
00.44.19 Interview with Gary Prado, Bolivian army officer
During the night of the 8 and 9 October,1967 a meeting took place in La Paz between the President of the Republic, the Commandaner-in-chief of the army and the Chief-of-Staff Generals Barrientos, Ovandos and Torres. These three men took the view that it was better to execute Che Guevara and they transmitted this order in the morning on the 9th to Vallegrande and from Vallegrande to La Higuera.
00.44.56 Che had spent the night in the school at La Higuera, now a clinic. The orders for his execution arrived on the morning he was visited by a Bolvian officer and the Cuban CIA agent who had been tracking him.
00.45.10 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
We were over there, I was here, Colonel Zenteno was over there, and he started talking to him but got no response. We left. Later on, when I came back he was here on the floor, his feet tied and his hands tied behind his back, and that’s when I told him: Che Guevara, I came to talk to you. He looked at me and said: No one is going to interrogate me. I told him: Commander, I didn’t come to interrogate you. I admire you, you were a Head of State in Cuba, you are in this situation, because you believe in your ideals. I came to talk to you.Int: What did you talk about?F: We talked about his reasons for coming to Bolivia. When I asked him about his stay in Africa, he told me: You know I can’t tell you about that. He also wouldn’t say how he got into Bolivia. But we discussed philosophy and the Cuban economy
00.45.57 Other versions have it that this conversation never took place, or that the meeting was just an exchange of insults. That day, the CIA agent commandeered the Bolivian army camera and was photographed next to the famous prisoner. Che's belongings were taken to the communications' post, where the agent fulfilled his mission.
00.46.21 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
We carried a very heavy table through this door and put it here in the middle of the room, so that we could have good light. I used a German camera, a 35mm Minox, to photograph his personal diary and all his documents.
00.46.34 The soldiers drew lots for the task, and Che Guevara was executed by a sergeant of the Bolivian army.
00.46.41 Interview with Humberto Vasquez,Communist activist
I believe that whether we like it or not, the government's decision was the most rational possible one at the time. In my heart I don’t say it was the right one, but if I analyse the historical facts, it was the only rational decision that the army could have made. If they had detained Che in Nhancahuazu, he wouldn’t have last more than a couple of weeks. After that, there would have been open revolution in Bolivia that the government wouldn’t be able to stop. The universities, never mind foreign movements, Chilean, Argentinean, Brazilian, would have come to fight for the release of this prisoner. It would have been total chaos. There was no jail in Bolivia that could hold him for two weeks, that's what I believe.
00.47.27 30 years on, the CIA agent feels some compassion.
00.47.32 Interview with Felix Rodriguez, Cuban CIA agent
He was a lonely man, destroyed, in ruins, it was really sad to see the way he was. But he was a man who deserved respect, a man who died with dignity for what he believed, even if he was wrong.
00.47.47 5 freedom fighters had survived the onslaught by the army, oblivious to the fate of their commander.
00.47.53 Interview with General Harry Villegas,Cuban army, also known as "Pombo"
We found out about Che’s death’s on the10th from a radio announcement. We were standing just in front of the school in La Higuera. We were hidden in the vegetation and listening to a little radio. The first accounts said that Che had been taken prisoner, was wounded and had been operated on in Santa Cruz, the capital of the region. Afterwards we heard the news that it wasn’t Che but one of his lieutenants. We thought about who it could be. We came to the conclusion that it could only be Pachungo. It couldn't have been anyone else. And then we heard about Che’s death. They started giving details: the two watches he wore, his own and Tuma’s, and his jacket... all of these details proved to us that it really was Che.
00.49.03 Che's body was taken to Vallegrande, to be cleaned up and put on display at the hospital.
00.49.09 Interview with Susana, nurse
I was on duty at the hospital. The doctor told us to undress Che and see where the wounds were. We took his clothes off and we washed his whole body with a hose pipe. On his left- hand side, right in his heart, there was a bullet. I think that was the one that killed him. He had another in his arm, but that was old and another in his ankle.
00.49.44 The army wanted the world to witness that Che Guevara, communist hero, had finally been vanquished.
00.49.51 Interview with Susana, nurse
Int: what shocked you the most?S: His eyes, because they stayed open and seemed to follow us. It felt like he was looking at all of us. We moved one way and he would look at us, we moved the other way, and he would look at us. Everyone said he looked like Christ.
00.50.11 The next day, Che Guevara’s body disappeared. For decades the Bolivian army refused to reveal where it had been buried. Only recently was it unearthed and returned to Cuba.
00.50.28 9 days after his death, Fidel Castro summoned the people to Revolution Square in remembrance of the man who had helped bring him to power.
00.50.41 NATSOFFidel Castro
Revolutionary Comrades. It was one day in July or August 1955 that we met Che. Over night, just as he told us in his stories, he was to become a passenger aboard Granma.
00.51.27 Castro wanted a fitting image of Che to grace Revolution square.
00.51.35 His death came on the eve of 1968, when youth across the world would openly revolt. His photo was taken by Alberto Korda 7 years earlier, and its revolutionary spirit captured the heart of a generation.
00.52.02 Interview with Alberto Korda, photographer In an almost casual moment, while I was running around taking photographs left, right and centre, Che Guevara shows up looking like that, with that expression on his face and I take two photographs: one with the camera horizontal, one with the camera vertical, and then he was off. It was a question of 20 or 30 seconds.
00.52.46 "The decisive moment in a man's life is when he confronts death" Guevara had once said. In death, Che the icon was born. A man who fought for his beliefs until he could fight no more.
CREDITS
Reporter: Candida Pinto
Camera: Jose Maria Cyrne
Editor: Aristides Martins
Graphics: Agostinho Ribeiro
Post-Production Sound: João Ganho
Narration: João Paulo Guerra
Characterization: Leonor Costa Pereira
Studio Lighting: Guto Silveira
Assistant Producer: Miguel Santa Marta
Production Secretary: Isabel Mendonça
Translation: Mizé Anastacio
A SIC Production
English version: JOURNEYMAN PICTURES