Where is che guevara body

This, then, was to be Che Guevara's fate: a slab of meat tied to a helicopter, carried from the battlefield in the jungle to a morgue in Vallegrande, laid out in front of the press, and-- to top it all--identified and inspected by a refugee gusano from Cuba, whose pleasure and satisfaction it was to check personally that his most hated enemy, next to Fidel Castro, was dead.

As long as they were busy filling the body with formalin, it was rather difficult to see who it really was. The head was thrown back, the long hair was dangling and almost touching the floor.

The stench of the formalin was almost impossible to stomach. Suddenly, one of the soldiers grabbed the body by its hair and yanked it into a sitting position. There was no doubt about it. It was Che, much slimmer than he used to be in the old photographs, smiling at Punta del Este, cutting cane in Cuba. But that seemed to be a normal consequence of half a year in the Bolivian jungle. He didn't look emaciated, as one had been given to believe by Bolivian army reports that Che, known as "Ramon" among the Bolivian guerrillas, was a very sick man, suffering from asthma and rheumatism, and finding it impossible to walk.

I recalled a picture that had been hanging in every newsstand in La Paz during the last month. It was originally from Paris-Match and showed Che delightfully stretched out on a sofa, like some kind of male model for a female edition of Playboy. That picture was supposedly taken shortly before his disappearance from Cuba in Crowds had stood around that picture in La Paz, reading eagerly every word about the mysterious Number One Revolutionary of Latin America.

And now here, in the improvised morgue which had been set up at Vallegrande, the picture had its dreadful counterpart. They were washing the body. The soldiers were trying to dress the body. They got the trousers on, but when they tried to put on the jacket, it turned out that the arms were already getting stiff. And so they had to give up their attempt. General Ovando, chief of the Bolivian armed forces, was inspecting the ceremony in person.

One of the radio reporters, representing a station in Santa Cruz, talked into his tape recorder: "This is Vallegrande. The leader of the Castro communist invasion of our fatherland has fallen here, thanks to the effort of the Bolivian armed forces, commanded by the glorious General Ovando.

How had Che died? He had been captured Sunday night, the army said; he was mortally wounded and had died early Monday morning. Impossible, the doctors said. Che died from wounds in the heart and both lungs, around noon Monday, five or six hours before he was brought to Vallegrande. What conclusion must one draw? If the army officials had stuck to one story from the beginning, they would have fared better. But while Colonel Zenteno, chief of the Eighth Division in Santa Cruz, who was directly responsible for the killing of Che, maintained Che had died immediately, officials higher up talked freely of what Che had said and how he had acted after his capture.

I flew to Vallegrande in a military transport plane from Santa Cruz, together with Admiral Ugarteche, commander-in-chief of the Bolivian navy, who said: "I have been told that Che's last words were: 'I am Che.

Don't kill me. I have failed. It's very often like that. In battle, you don't feel fear, but afterwards you become a coward. The crowd outside the hospital had broken through the gates and were now streaming upwards toward the morgue. The soldiers kept them at a distance, but when finally the body was brought out on a stretcher for the benefit of the journalists, men, women, little girls came forward and the soldiers carrying the stretcher dropped it.

For a short while, I thought the crowd was going to tear the body apart. Then the soldiers once again gained control and the body was brought back to the morgue. Prado and tells him to immediately transfer Che and any other prisoners to La Higuera. Tired signifies captured or wounded. Stretched out on a blanket, Che is carried by four soldiers to La Higuera, seven kilometers away.

Sarabia is forced to walk behind with his hands tied against his back. Just after dark the group arrives in La Higuera and both Che and Sarabia are put into the one-room schoolhouse. Later that night, five more guerrillas are brought in. Official army dispatches falsely report that Che is killed in the clash in southeastern Bolivia, and other official reports confirm the killing of Che and state that the Bolivian army has his body.

However, the army high command does not confirm this report. The Bolivian unit engaged in the operation was the one that had been trained by the U. He quietly observes the scene in the schoolhouse, and records what he sees, finding the situation "gruesome" with Che lying in dirt, his arms tied behind his back and his feet bound together, next to the bodies of his friends. He looks "like a piece of trash" with matted hair, torn clothes, and wearing only pieces of leather on his feet for shoes.

Here was the man who had assassinated many of my countrymen. And nevertheless, when I saw him, the way he looked I felt really sorry for him. The possibility of prosecuting him is ruled out because a trial would focus world attention on him and could generate sympathetic propaganda for Che and for Cuba.

It is concluded that Che must be executed immediately, but it is agreed upon that the official story will be that he died from wounds received in battle. Five hundred is the Bolivian code for Che and six hundred is the order to kill him. The CIA and the U. Che understands and says, "It is better like this I never should have been captured alive. According to one source, the top ranking officers in La Higuera instruct the noncommissioned officers to carry out the order and straws are drawn to determine who will execute Che.

Several soldiers, also wanting to shoot Che, enter the room and shoot him. Bolivian time. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man. Guevara replies that he only wishes to "die with a full stomach.

Huacka enters another small house, where "Willy" was being held, and shoots him. Finally, Guevara tells him: "Know this now, you are killing a man. Pulling a Bolivian army cap over his face, he is not noticed by anyone. Che's body is flown to Vallegrande by helicopter and later fingerprinted and embalmed. Bowdler sends a note to Walt Rostow saying that they do not know if Che Guevara was "among the casualties of the October 8 engagement. By October 9, they thought two guerrilla were wounded and possibly one of them is Che.

The document states that "on October 9 at p. Ernesto Guevara Lynch, approximately 40 years of age, the cause of death being multiple bullet wounds in the thorax and extremities.

Preservative was applied to the body. This means that Che lived for twenty-two hours after the battle in Quebrada del Yuro, which contradicts Colonel Zenteno's story. Colonel Zenteno changes his story to support General Ovando's.

James, General Ovando states that Che admitted his identity and the failure of his guerrilla campaign before dying of his wounds. Ernesto Guevara, the father of Che, denies the death of his son, stating that there is no evidence to prove the killing. In the Latin American context, it will have a strong impact in discouraging would -be guerrillas. However, General Ovando tells him that the body has been cremated.

Demonstrations are organized against a U. Embassy and other similar targets. Henderson, the U. Embassy agent in La Paz, comments that "it will be widely noted that neither the death certificate nor the autopsy report state a time of death. Another error described in this cable is Che's over-confidence in the Bolivian Communist Party, which was relatively new, inexperienced, lacking strong leadership and was internally divided into Trotskyite and Pro-Chinese factions.

Finally, the cable states that the victory of the Bolivian army should not be credited to their actions, but to the errors of Castroism. Castro proclaims that Che's life-long struggle against imperialism and his ideals will be the inspiration for future generations of revolutionaries.

His life was a "glorious page of history" because of his extraordinary military accomplishments, and his unequaled combination of virtues which made him an "artist in guerrilla warfare. Hughes, writes a memorandum to Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. Hughes outlines two significant outcomes of Che Guevara's death that will affect Fidel Castro's future political strategies.

One is that "Guevara will be eulogized as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death," particularly among future generations of Latin American youth. Some Latin American leftists "will be able to argue that any insurgency must be indigenous and that only local parties know when local conditions are right for revolution. JULY 1, In an interview with biographer Jon Lee Anderson, Bolivian General Mario Vargas Salinas reveals that "he had been a part of a nocturnal burial detail, that Che's body and those of several of his comrades were buried in a mass grave near the dirt airstrip outside the little mountain town of Vallegrande in Central Bolivia.

JULY 5, Che Guevara biographer, Jon Lee Anderson, reports for the New York Times that although the remains have not been exhumed and definitely identified, two experts are " percent sure" that they have discovered Che's remains in Vallegrande.

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