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Chapter 37

MORE LATIN AMERICA,
TO THE DEATH OF CHE GUEVARA
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In 1960, Latin America's twenty countries had a population of nearly 200 million, up from 62 million in 1900. Some of its people -- largely Indians -- were subsistence farmers not participating in the money economy. Indians living outside the Spanish or Portuguese speaking communities in Latin America numbered around 20 million.

Of those Latin Americans in the money economy, the average income was around 12 percent of what people earned in the United States. The highest average was in Venezuela, at 39 percent. The lowest was in Haiti, at 3.4 percent.

Life expectancy at mid-century in Latin America was around forty-four years, compared to sixty-six for the United States and Canada. Good food and medical care were not available to many Latin Americans, and many were in dire want, including people in Colombia, Peru and elsewhere who were living by and from garbage dumps.

Many Latin Americans had substantial wealth, and, between 1935 and 1950, Latin America's economy had been growing at 4.5 percent per year -- measured as Gross Domestic Product. Given the increase in population, Latin America's economy was growing at 2.5 percent (per capita) -- a modest advance. Latin's America's leaders were eager for faster growth, and in the late forties they looked with envy at the U.S. effort with the Marshall Plan to help Europe recover economically. Rather than complain about U.S. economic penetration, as some would in the coming decades, they complained that the United States was ignoring their part of the world. The U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, responded by promising them more economic assistance in the form of loans, for such things as hydroelectric and irrigation projects and the building of transportation infrastructures.

The seeking of help from the United States continued into the 1950s. Investments by wealthy Latin Americans in their nation's economy was on the rise, but some Latin American governments considered this and their state's supply of money inadequate. Early in the century the British had led in investing in Latin America -- at a bargain rate -- the over-all return on British investments amounting to less than five percent per year. In the 1950s the United States became the leading source of foreign investment in Latin America. U.S. companies extended some operations into Latin America, and Latin American governments were requiring U.S. companies to have a certain percentage of local people as their employees and to pay taxes that amounted to more than 50 percent of the company's net profits. United Fruit and most U.S. oil companies were among those paying such taxes: 66 percent of their net profits.

By 1962, however, per capita economic growth had declined to zero. And in the 1960s people were pondering why Latin America, with its vast natural resources, was so much poorer than the more advanced industrialized countries. Since the Cuban revolution, those who blamed Latin America's poverty on exploitation by foreign interests -- in a word, imperialism -- were more vocal. A small minority was urging revolution while others were moving to advance trade. In the 1960s, roads were being built and improved, and the hauling of goods by truck within and between countries was increasing dramatically. At a meeting in Montevideo in 1960 a move had been made to cut tariffs -- which had been inhibiting trade -- and by 1966, trade among the nine nations whose representatives had met in Montevideo had increased 95 percent.

Trade between Latin America and Communist nations was also on the rise. One fourth of this trade was between Argentina and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had become the largest buyer of Uruguay's wool, and it was buying copper from Chile. China was buying fertilizer from Chile. Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia were building ships and railway equipment for Latin American nations. And the Soviet Union and Cuba were trading partners.

During the 1960s, Latin America's average per capita economic growth rate was at 2.8 percent per year. There were complaints that Latin American agriculture was oriented too much for sales abroad rather than food for the people of Latin America -- sales that benefited Latin America's rich, seen as in league with the foreign capitalists and imperialists. The foremost problem for Latin America was, indeed, people not having enough food to eat. But the production of food being consumed in Latin America was increasing -- not by moving onto land that had been used for export crops but by higher yields on existing lands. This was mainly in the production of rice and beans -- two of Latin America's major foods. The smaller, moderate sized farms growing these foods were adopting advanced farming practices.

Latin Americans were buying machinery and consumer goods from abroad -- 40 percent of it from the United States. And Latin America was benefiting from demand for its products: coffee, timber, tin, beef, sugar, copper, nitrates, oil and other minerals. But trouble loomed, and there was to be no great Great Leap Forward economically, in Cuba or elsewhere. Latin America's population was growing from nearly 200 million in 1960, to reach 484 million in 2000, and other problems that Latin America had been living with continued -- different in different countries, each with its own characteristics and imperfect management.
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.BRAZIL

Getulio Vargas, who had been president of Brazil since 1930, was deposed in a bloodless coup in October 1945, by the military, which had previously supported him. He did not give up politics and was elected to Brazil's senate in 1946. The new president, General Gaspar Dutra, tried to control inflation. President Dutra advanced highway construction, and he advanced hydroelectric power. He denied foreign oil companies permission to develop Brazil's oil resources, and he outlawed Brazil's Communist Party.

Vargas returned to the presidency in 1951. He had plans for industrializing Brazil and spent a lot of money on government projects. Inflation increased along with the prices for food. On the international market, Brazil was asking too much for its coffee, which almost ended purchases in the United States.

Vargas increased dislike for himself among conservatives by granting a minimum wage for unskilled workers. In August 1954, an Air Force officer was killed in an attempted assassination of a newspaper editor hostile to Vargas. This was followed by military officers asking Vargas to resign, and, hours later, Vargas, at the age of seventy-one, committed suicide.

An election for the presidency was held in October 1955, and the man who took office in January 1956 was a former province governor, Juscelino Kubitschek. Kubitschek also pushed for industrialization, and he supported programs meant to benefit common people. In 1958 he joined other Latin Americans in another appeal to the U.S. for something like a Marshall Plan for Latin America -- appeals received with some sympathy by the Eisenhower administration.

Kubitschek expropriated some property owned by U.S. citizens, but he presented himself as a strong ally of the United States. He had an ambitious five-year economic development plan, and he acquired loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the development of a new capital in the interior, to be called Brasilia. Kubitschek launched public works programs and borrowed money to construct buildings, highways and hydroelectric projects. World coffee prices were falling in the mid to late fifties, and Kubitschek's deficit spending was creating an inflationary spiral, with the national debt reaching almost $4 billion. But under Kubitschek's presidency, industrial production doubled.

On Apr. 21, 1960, Brasilia became the nation's official capital and was a sign of a commitment to more development of Brazil's interior. Kubitschek was not allowed to succeed himself and, in 1960, Jnio Quadros was elected president by the greatest popular margin in Brazil's history.

Quadros believed that if the United States could trade with the Soviet Union, so could Brazil. He began negotiations with Communist bloc nations. This displeased the United States. Wealthy Brazilian businessmen were unhappy with Quadros' tax plan. Profits from newly created industries or from industries of special benefit to the public would be taxed at 10 percent. Other companies would be taxed at 30 percent, or taxed 50 percent on profits from money invested abroad. Quadros angered conservatives too by greeting Cuba's Minister of Industry, Che Guevara, and giving him a medal, while Guevara was passing through Brazil on his way home to Cuba.

After only eight months as president, the military forced Quadros from office. Later, Quadros was to blame various foreigners for their participation in opposition against his presidency, including the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, John Moors Cabot and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Douglas Dillon.

Following Quadros as president was Brazil's vice-president, Joo Goulart -- a millionaire landowner. Goulart advocated mild land reform and mild restrictions on the amount of profit that could be taken out of the country. He extended the vote to illiterates, and he extended to Brazilian communists the right to participate in the political life of their nation.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara, complained of Brazil's neutrality in the Cold War. American officials complained about some members in Goulart's cabinet, and Attorney-General Robert Kennedy met with Goulart and spoke of his uneasiness about Goulart allowing Communists to hold positions in government agencies. The United States was pursuing what it called the Alliance for Progress, which was supposed to support reform as well as economic advance, but the U.S. was holding back on loans to Brazil.

Wealthy Brazilian landowners and industrialists were also unhappy with Goulart, and in 1964, with some sympathy from the U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson, Brazil's military overthrew Goulart. Goulart fled to Uruguay. Then the U.S. gave to the new military regime in Brazil all the aid that it had denied to Goulart's government.

The new regime in Brazil curbed civil liberties and suppressed opposition from its opponents. The military regime adopted moderate versions of some of the reforms sought by Goulart. It fought inflation with wage controls and improved tax collecting and other measures. And the new regime laid the ground for future elections for the country's president and vice president -- not selection of these executives by popular vote but by Brazil's Congress.

Brazil, meanwhile, had more than doubled its population since 1930, which reached 70 million in 1960. Since 1940 it had doubled its number of industrial workers, to more than 25 percent of its population. Its urban areas were growing, but not without slums. Inflation continued unabated, fed in part by the need for imports for factories, imports for transportation and the need to pay off foreign loans.

But Brazil was growing most of its own food -- beans, manioc and maize -- and was advancing agriculturally. Brazil was the world's fifth largest producer of cotton -- its second largest export, after coffee. It was also exporting cacao beans -- from which chocolate is made. And its cattle industry was thriving. Brazil was Latin America's largest nation. It still had a frontier, and it was becoming an economic power.
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THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Through the 1930s, '40's and '50s, the Dominican Republic was ruled by the former cattle rustler and now dictator, Rafael Lenidas Trujillo Molina -- better known in the United States as simply Trujillo. He owned twenty homes, numerous businesses and one-fifth of the his nation's agricultural land. He surrounded himself with murderers who kept the public intimidated. He promoted himself to his subjects as the Son of God, Savior of Mankind, Generalissimo and Father of the Fatherland. And he ignored the tourist industry, because he did not want a lot of Americans snooping around.

With his enormous wealth, Trujillo supported a lobby effort in Washington D.C., and he had a friend as Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Harold D. Coole of North Carolina, who supported Trujillo's interests in the growing of sugarcane.

The Dominican Republic had never had a plantation economy. That, with black slave labor, had been on the western side of the island, in Haiti. Most common folk in the Dominican Republic were subsistence farmers, and there had been mixing between the races. But Trujillo wanted his fellow Dominicans to think of themselves as white, in contrast to Haiti, which was predominately black. In 1937 Trujillo had whipped up anti-Haitian fears and had massacred thousands of blacks. Under his leadership history had been rewritten, describing the Haitians as villains and the Dominicans as white. Mixed Dominicans were defined as Indians (the Indians, however, having been annihilated long before.). And Trujillo purged the use of the African hand drum from merengue bands and he banned voodoo ceremonies.

In 1959, Trujillo was blaming Fidel Castro for a rising tide of discontent within the Dominican Republic. In 1960, Venezuela produced evidence that agents of Trujillo had tried to assassinate its president -- while Trujillo was playing host to Venezuela's former dictator, Prez Jimnez. Venezuela appealed to the Organization of American States. An economic embargo was suggested, and Trujillo clamped down harder on opposition within his country.

Trujillo met his end in May 1961. He was assassinated by young army officers in his private army who, it is said, were unhappy about delays in being promoted.note The assassins caught Trujillo in his car on a lonely road while on his way to meet one of his many mistresses. Nominal power shifted to Trujillo's vice president, Joaqun Balaguer, while real power remained with military men, and while Trujillo's sons maneuvered for position. Common people rallied and rioted, demanding democracy. Two of Trujillo's sons left the island on October 22 and returned on November 15 in an attempt to seize power.

The Kennedy administration intervened. Here was an opportunity to stand up for democracy -- six months after the Bay of Pigs invasion and two months after the Berlin Wall had gone up. United States warships with 4000 Marines appeared just outside the three-mile limit. A jet fighter flew overhead, and all members of the Trujillo family fled the country, to live thereafter on savings from Swiss banks.

The republic prepared itself for elections, and, in an atmosphere of freedom, political parties sprouted like mushrooms. Only the republic's small Communist Party was outlawed, in deference to the United States. In the elections that year, the pro-Castro party did poorly. The winner, with 62 percent of the vote, was Juan Bosch, who belonged to the Dominican Revolutionary Party, or PRD -- described by some as Social Democrats. He had been a writer and an academic and had spent years in exile as an activist opposed to the Trujillo regime.

Juan Bosch was an anti-Communist reformer, as was common among Social Democrats. He began a land redistribution program and encouraged strengthening the labor movement. Business men did not much like Bosch. Nor did leading members of the Catholic Church. The republic's new constitution provided for the separation of church and state. Divorces were now legal, and religious schools were obliged to be open for state inspection. Landowners were displeased with Bosch's land program. And conservatives disliked the freedom of speech enjoyed by admirers of Castro and others. They were in panic, believing that Bosch was about to turn their country into another Cuba. The U.S. ambassador, Bartlow Marin, accused Bosch of being soft on "Castro Communists." Also, Bosch's reorganization of the military displeased high-ranking military officers, who believed that he was establishing his own rival military power.

Bosch did not bend with the pressures from conservatives, and on September 3, 1963, in a bloodless coup, the military overthrew the democracy, driving Juan Bosch into exile again -- to Puerto Rico. A civilian government was hastily created, while power remained with military men.

For two years the Dominican Republic was in economic and political turmoil. In April, 1965, a group of military officers rebelled and led an attempt to restore Bosch to the presidency. The fighting spread to civilians, and, after four days, the rebels appeared to be gaining the upper hand. Alarmed by populist rhetoric, conservatives again saw a Castro-like revolution as imminent. The U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson, did not want to be seen as failing to contain Castroism. He believed that he could not win a re-election he if permitted a second Cuba. He was feeling threatened by developments in Vietnam, and he wanted to send a message to Hanoi that the U.S. was strong and willing to use its strength. Under the guise of defending U.S. citizens, President Johnson sent 42,000 Marines to the Domincan Republic, Johnson describing his move as an effort to stop a Communist rebellion. Latin members of the Organization of American States sided with Johnson and provided legitimacy of sorts for his move by creating an Inter-American Peace Force, of which the U.S. force was a part. Bosch was denied his return to power, and in 1966 new elections were held in which 300 of Bosch's supporters were killed. The new president was the former vice-president under Trujillo, Joaqun Balaguer, who was believed to have become a moderate.
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CHE GUEVARA, FOREMOST LATIN AMERICAN ANTI-IMPERIALIST
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In the first half of the 1960s, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was the foremost figure in Latin America advocating revolution -- moreso than Fidel Castro. It was he who traveled around Latin America and the world. In 1960 he went to China, North Korea and the Soviet Union. In 1961 he spoke for revolution at the conference for the Organization of American States.

Guevara had taken up theory, drawing from and applying it to experiences in the Sierra Maestras, where he, Fidel Castro and others had started their overthrow of the Batista regime. At hand was Marxism, and in October 1960 he spoke of adding to Marx experiences from the Cuban revolution -- with matters unforeseen by Marx -- while maintaining what Guevara called Marx's science. As Castro's Minister of Industry he lectured workers about the need to work for more than material well being. He called on Cuba's workers to sacrifice for socialism. He rounded up idlers -- people hanging on street corners or in movie houses -- for labor brigades. Socialist revolution, he said, was under attack, and sacrifices and a dictatorship of the workers was necessary to push through to eventual victory. Che Guevara called himself a Marxist-Leninist. He used the words contradiction and objective a lot, as some Marxists do, as in his phrase "the objective and historically inexorable reality of the Latin American revolution."

Guevara's interpretation of Latin America's troubles was standard Marxist generality and clich. It was drawn in part, at least, from what had been the extensive economic penetration of Cuba by the United States, which Guevara applied to the whole of Latin America. Speaking to a UN conference on trade, on March 25, he said:

This penetration takes various forms: loans granted on onerous terms; investments that place a given country under the power of the investors; almost total technological subordination of the dependent country to the developed country; control of a country's foreign trade by the big international monopolies; and in extreme cases, the use of force as an economic power to reinforce the other forms of exploitation.
Latin American nations were, of course, able to sign trade agreements and do business with whomever they pleased, and Guevara was pleased that Cuba had signed trade agreements with the Soviet Union, breaking, as he saw it, the U.S. domination of Cuba's economy. The Soviet Union, he said, offered Cuba a 2.5 percent interest rate on its loans, "the lowest in the history of international trade relations."
Guevara acquired the Soviet and Maoist line on the Cold War. On March 26, 1964, he proclaimed that the Cold War "was conceived in the West." Looking back to the Korean War he sided with the Communist forces against the "imperialists." He saw Ho Chi Minh as struggling against imperialism. He denounced "imperialist" support of Israel. He announced his solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico, whom he described as in conflict with U.S. oppression. And he spoke of the capitalist countries struggling "unceasingly among themselves to divide up the world."

At the United Nations on December 11, 1964 he said that "Western Civilization disguises behind its shadowy faade a picture of hyenas and jackals." And in this speech he contradicted the Soviet Union's view of peaceful co-existence. He said:

As Marxists, we have to maintain that peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed.
It is said that the Soviet Union's prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, disliked Guevara, and probably disliked him more in early 1965 when Guevara got a better reception in China than he did. Guevara was closer to Mao than to the Soviet Union's position on the Cold War, and Cuba was looking for trade with China. But in February, Cuba entered into another agreement with the Soviet Union, for a 12 percent increase in trade and for credits to cover Cuba's deficit spending.

Guevara returned to Cuba in mid March. The turmoil over Bosch's return to the Dominican Republic and the U.S. intervention there in April was disturbing to Castro and to Guevara. Castro complained that those who suggested that Cuba should intervene on the side of the Left in the Dominican Republic against the United States were unrealistic, that such an intervention had no possibility of success. Guevara may have favored intervention. He left Cuba that year, and in a letter to his children he wrote that he was "a man who acted on his beliefs and has certainly been loyal to his convictions. " He told them,

Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature. Remember that it is the revolution that is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

Above all , always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary."

papa'
In a friendly letter to Castro, dated October 3, 1965, he wrote that he intended "to fight against imperialism wherever it may be." Soon he would be calling on people to make two or three more Vietnams for the United States. He went first to Africa and fought in the Congo on the side of the Leftist government there. He returned to Cuba, and optimistic about creating revolution, in October, 1966, he went to Bolivia. It was the duty of a revolutionary, he had said, to make revolution.
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BOLIVIA, REVOLUTION AND THE DEATH OF CHE GUEVARA

In mountainous and landlocked Bolivia, seventy-five percent of the population was Indian. Sixty percent of the Indians spoke only their native language (Aymara). And most Indians lived outside the money economy by subsistence farming. Many Indians worked at mining tin. Some Indians worked on estates, and some Indian women provided landlords living in cities with domestic help.

Before the end of World War II, Bolivia's government was dominated by owners of the country's tin companies. After the war came a slump in the international price of tin. University students, workers and businessmen revolted against the hard times and the government. The head of the government, Major Gualberto Villarroel, was hanged from a lamp post in 1946, and leaders of his party, the MNR (Movement of National Revolution) went into exile.

After 1946, the MNR reformed itself under the leadership of Victor Paz Estenssoro, and in 1951, while still in exile in Argentina, Estenssoro was elected President of Bolivia. The election was annulled and the government turned over to General Hugo Ballivian. Then, in April 1952, students, liberal intellectuals and labor leaders combined in a well-organized and bloody revolt against the Ballivian government. Against a German trained army with tanks and cannon, the rebels won, and they gave the presidency to Estenssoro.

Estenssoro introduced universal adult suffrage, carried out a sweeping land reform, promoted rural education and nationalized the country's largest tin mines. His government sought and won the support of the United States, including financial support. The U.S. was looking for reformers in Latin America as an alternative to Communist revolutionaries, and Estenssoro told them he would refuse to take orders from Moscow. The tin mines had not been owned by U.S. citizens, but the U.S. was interested in economic principles and won from the Bolivians a promise to compensate the previous owners of the mines. And a new petroleum code was created that allowed U.S. operators to pursue their interest in Bolivian oil.

In the presidential elections of 1956, power passed to Estenssoro's vice president, Hernan Siles Zuazo. In the years that followed, differences developed between those who wanted moderate reform and those wanting more radical change. The tin mines remained low in productivity. Miners were opposed the introduction of machinery that would replace men, and they resorted to violence to protect themselves from government directives. Worker-management increased the salaries of the work force by fifty-percent and did little against featherbedding, all of which made it harder for Bolivia to compete in selling its tin abroad.

Bolivia suffered also from a decline in agricultural production, which contributed to the country's economic deterioration. Under the governments of Estensorro and Zuazo, Indians had finally become citizens. They were free to move where they wished, and many had left the land they had been working and had gone to the cities, where they had became unemployed. Many small farmers, moreover, were unable to produce for the market economy. Poor transport facilities hampered the growth of agriculture, and the government's attempt to create agricultural communities failed. Farmers sent to farm the new lands in Cochabamba destroyed tractors and eventually deserted by the thousands and returned to the highlands. Food for the cities decreased and Bolivia was forced to buy more food from abroad.

The economy was hurt also by government spending on social programs. Imports were exceeding exports. An imbalanced budget resulted in inflation. Bolivia's Peso fell from 60 to the dollar in 1952 to 12,000 in 1956. This inflation hurt Bolivia's middle class, which was now supporting opposition to the government.

Rather than exploiting Bolivia, by 1957 the U.S. was subsidizing 30 percent of the Bolivian government's central budget. The amount of aid that the U.S. was sending to Bolivia relative to the size of its population was greater than the amount of aid it was sending to any other nation. Advised by the United States government and the International Monetary Fund, the Zuazo regime tried putting its budget in order by freezing of wages and ending subsidization of miners' stores.

The Zuazo regime was overwhelmed by opposition, from the country's middle class, from tin miners and labor in general, and hostility also from farmers. In an effort to quell the unrest, Zuazo decided to rebuild the armed forces, and for this he received help from the U.S. in the form of training, technical assistance and more money.

The Barrientos Regime and Che Guevara

In 1964, the military drove Zuazo from power, and taking power in his place was the vice-president: General Ren Barrientos. It was to a Bolivia under the rule of Barrientos, in late October, 1966, that Che Guevara went, disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. He went to a remote canyon south of the city of Santa Cruz, where he put on his guerrilla clothes and joined sixteen men from Cuba and about thirty revolutionaries from elsewhere in Latin America.

Guevara hoped to win over rural farmers, as Castro had in the Sierra Maestras. From them he hoped for food and shelter. He expected volunteers from among the local people to join his army and eventually to be able to march on the capital, La Paz.

Guevara had seen young men from peasant families that he described in his diary as hating their boss, but he won not a single recruit. Members of Bolivia's Communist Party visited him, and they went back to La Paz disgusted by what they believed was his unrealistic tactics.

The Indians around Guevara spoke little Spanish, and he was unable to communicate with them. It was he and his band of men that local people saw as intruders -- not the Yankee imperialists they had never seen nor heard about. Guevara wrote in his diary that "the inhabitants of this region have heads as impenetrable as rocks." He wrote:

The peasant base is not developing, although it seems that by means of systematic terror we will obtain the neutrality of most of them.
He was not about to give up. "Support," he wrote, "will come later." Coming first was an overwhelming government force -- while Guevara and his men were suffering from a variety of problems from living in the wild. An Indian peasant woman had revealed Guevara's whereabouts to the Bolivian police. Guevara and three other guerrillas were captured and taken to a small school house in a village called La Higuera. The next day, October 9, a helicopter arrived carrying colonel Joaqun Zenteno Anaya and a United States CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez. Rodriguez photographed each page of the diary and other documents that had been found on Guevara, and he interviewed Guevara.

The three other guerrillas were executed by soldiers, who were under orders other than from Rodriguez. Colonel Anaya received a radio message ordering Guevara executed. According to Rodriguez, the United States government wanted to "keep Guevara alive under any circumstances." and a U.S. airplane was on standby to take him to Panama for interrogation. President Barrientos is suspected of having ordered Guevara's execution. Sensing that it was coming, Guevara told Rodriguez, "It is better like this... I never should have been captured alive."

Rodriguez asked Guevara if he had any messages for his family. Guevara was still optimistic about revolution. He told Rodriguez;

Tell Fidel that he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America. And tell my wife to remarry and to try to be happy.
According to Rodriguez, he then embraced Guevara. "It was a tremendously emotional moment for me, " he was to say. "He [Guevara] was facing his death with courage and grace." Rodriguez left. A Bolivian sergeant who had lost friends in the fight with the guerrillas volunteered to do the execution, with instructions to shoot from the neck down. Guevara writhed in pain, died, and photos of him were taken and distributed worldwide.image
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Copyright 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.

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Note:
. In 1975, A commitee led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho investigated the CIA and suggested CIA involvement, but the committee did not find Trujillos death the result of CIA actions. It is also said that Trujillo had become an embarrassment to the U.S. and that the assassins had had the clandestine support of U.S. authorities. RETURN