On the Che Trail

After over a decade of interest in and study of the complex figure that is Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (aka. ¨El Che¨), I finally had the opportunity to make the pilgrimage to the place where, on October 8, 1967, he was assassinated by a Bolivian soldier on orders from the CIA.

Eva and I left at the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning, accompanied by her friend Miguel (who conveniently is a taxi driver) and Miguel´s young son, Daniel. The six-hour ride from Samaipata to La Higuera is unpaved--dusty, bumpy, and full of gorgeous mountain views. Along the route, the terrain changes quickly from the lush green of the Samaipata area, to gigantic high altitude desert cacti, to scrub brush and scraggly trees in the higher mountain areas.

Driving into La Higuera, I was struck by a couple of differences between the place I´ve imagined for so long, and the reality of the place itself. First of all, it is literally at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere. Secondly, the mountains surrounding it are not just rolling hills where being a guerrilla soldier would be as simple as pitching a tent every night--this is a real cordillera, with high altitudes, daily extremes of temperature, and highly inhospitable terrain. If our car had broken down, I can imagine the difficulties of surviving a few days there, let alone almost a year--and with the army and CIA hot on our trail.

Che´s final battle was fought in an area called the Quebrada del Churo (also spelled Yuro), which means ¨circular ravine¨. We did not have a chance to hike into this area because we had to get back to Vallegrande before dark, but looking down into the ravine from the road, one gets a sense of the desperation of those last days. With the army closing in from all sides, Che´s troops became trapped in the canyon. Its circular shape meant that there was no way to escape undetected, and those that weren´t massacred were taken prisoner and executed shortly thereafter (except for the few members of the vanguard that managed to hide in a cave and escape over the mountains once the Bolivian soliders stopped combing the area for survivors).

Che was captured, along with several of his men, and transported to the schoolhouse at La Higuera, where he was held captive until the next day. The CIA, learning of his capture, ordered the Bolivian army to execute him immediately. According to witnesses, none of the soliders wanted to be the one to shoot him. Eventually, a young soldier who had been drinking earlier that morning stepped forward to volunteer. And thus the legendary man, who not only liberated Cuba from the oppressive Bautista dictatorship, but also went on to be an internationally esteemed intellectual who, among other honors, was invited to address the United Nations, was shot dead on the dirt floor of a one-room schoolhouse in the backwaters of Bolivia without so much as a trial.

The schoolhouse itself has been extensively renovated since, which is perhaps why it doesn´t seem to have any energy at all from the events that took place there. The posters on the walls tell the story of Che´s campaign in Bolivia, and there are a handful photographs on the walls and cheaply printed t-shirts for sale. It is a rather pathetic monument to one of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century, and one of the most inspirational human beings of our time. The Bolivian government forbade even the mention of Che´s name for almost 30 years after his death, and still doesn´t provide any monetary support for the upkeep of the various Che monuments--most of them are paid for by private Cuban funds.

After visiting La Higuera, we drove halfway back to Samaipata and stayed overnight in Vallegrande. On the way there, we saw one of the most epic sunsets I have ever seen. It´s hard to describe, but the setting sun reflected across the valley on to some clouds that were hanging below the tops of the surrounding mountains, so the result was otherworldly--floating pink and purple clouds.

The next morning, we visited the Che sites in Vallegrande. Several hours after his assassination, Che was transported to Vallegrande and his body was laid on the concrete washing platform of the hospital laundry room. This is where the famous (some say Christ-like) photograph of his body was taken that announced his death. Perhaps it was the grey skies, or maybe the light drizzle, but the laundry room was much more somber than the schoolhouse--more than one of us shed a few tears. As Eva put it, ¨this is where you get the sense that something died.¨ And indeed, although the man was murdered in the La Higuera schoolhouse, the legend died when the flashbulbs went off and the image of the felled guerrilla soldier was transmitted around the world by the Associated Press.

Shielding ourselves from the rain under a scraggly tree, the four of us stood there in front of the concrete structure in silence, reading the scrawled messages written on its walls by pilgrims to the site. A small patch of grass has been planted in front that spells out ¨Che Vive¨ (Che lives). Miguel broke the silence by commenting, almost wistfully, ¨People say that if he had lived, life would be very different for us Bolivians now. They say that he wanted everyone to be equal.¨ The sad fact of life for two-thirds of Bolivians is that they still live in conditions that are just as deplorable as those they suffered in the 1960s, when Che Guevara decided to take up their cause. Classism and racism are rampant against the indigenous population, many of whom do not even have running water or electricity in their homes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Bolivia

After visiting the hospital laundry room, we went to the small cultural center in the main plaza of Vallegrande, which has a slightly more impressive exhibition than that of La Higuera. We then hired a local guide named Carlos to take us to the airport area, where the remains of 19 of the guerrilla fighters were unearthed between 1997 and 1999--12 in one location, and 7 in another. Carlos was an excellent guide, and if you ever come to Vallegrande, I would highly recommend asking for him. He was knowledgeable and enthusiastic and gave a lot of correct information--which is quite unusual in a place where tourism is undeveloped and there are a fair amount of unscrupulous guides who simply make the information up.

After Che was executed, his hands were cut off and sent to Fidel Castro in Cuba, to prove that he had been killed. Because the CIA and the Bolivian government didn´t want his burial site to become a place of pilgrimage, his body was taken, along with those of six of his comrades, and hidden in an undisclosed location. In 1997, a group of Cuban scientists finally uncovered his remains in a desolate spot between the cemetery and the airport on the outskirts of Vallegrande. His body was taken to Cuba to be reburied, and a group of Cubans that fought alongside Che in the Cuban Revolution then donated the funds to build a nice mausoleum in the spot where his body was discovered in Vallegrande. The highlight of the mausoleum is the collection of photographs on display that chronicle Che´s life. A number of these are less popular images that I had never seen before.

Leaving the site and heading back to the plaza, Carlos told us that his parents had lived in the highland village of Alto Seco (literally translated: ¨high and dry¨) during the guerrilla war, and that Che, who had a medical degree from Argentina and visited patients in the rural areas of Bolivia, helped his mother´s friend who was having complications with her pregnancy. It seems that everyone here has their family Che story, and he is still held in reverence by many people. Miguel´s brother Rolando has a large collection of Che paraphrenalia that he proudly showed me, including an original photograph and pirated copies of the two recent Benicio del Toro movies that I did the translation for (you can´t even get a copy of the second one in the States yet!).

Che is a complicated figure. There are people who consider him to be a bloodthirsty ego-maniac, and there are those who literally worship him as a liberator and make offerings to his image on an altar in their home (a common practice in the Vallegrande area, for example). Having studied the man extensively, my opinion is that he genuinely believed the ideals he espoused. He was a remarkable human being but, ultimately, only human. And so often when our heroes turn out to be mere mortals, we crucify them for their human foibles.

For more information on him, I recommend Jon Anderson´s biography, as well as a reading of Che´s own Bolivian Diary, which has been published in English as well as in Spanish.