Thirty years before on oct 8 1967 gunfire echo

ed by using a steepravine from the Andes Mountains in southern Bolivia. The guerrilla music group led

by Ernesto Che Guevara a chief lieutenant in the Sierra Maestra, author

of a publication on guerilla tactics, one-time president of Cubas National Bank

sometime later it was Minister of Industries below Castro, and who renounced his Cuban

citizenship make off to devote his services for the revolutionary trigger

in other gets was pinned down and surrounded by U. S. -trained Bolivian

Army Rangers. Just one year before, Guevara and a group of bordures had

privately traveled coming from Cuba to Bolivia to launch a guerrilla warfare, hoping to

topple Bolivias pro-U. S. military government. Guevara had gone up into the

mountain range with regarding 50 proponents. Within several weeks they were uncovered by

Bolivian troops and an intense search started. Planning to escape the

government makes, Guevara divided his followers into two groups, and was

by no means able to reunite them. His diary documents that, simply by late August, his

group was worn out, demoralized and down to twenty-two men. In August 23 the other

group was ambushed and wiped out traversing a lake. On September 26

Bolivian army units ambushed Ches remaining pushes near the isolated

mountain huts of La Higuera. The guerrillas discovered no way out of your

encirclement. Many died in the shooting. Guevara himself was wounded in

the lower-leg. He and two various other fighters were captured about October almost 8 and taken to

an old one-room schoolhouse in La Higuera. The next day, August 9, a

helicopter travelled in a gentleman called Felix Ramos who have wore the uniform of any

Bolivian officer. Ramos had taken charge of the prisoner. Two hours after, Che

Guevara and both other guerrillas were performed.

The weapons and products of the criminals were American-made. The

Bolivian officer who have took Guevara prisoner have been trained by Fort Bragg

for a U. S. college for military services coups, murder and counterinsurgency. And the person

in charge with the scene, Captain Ramos, was obviously a veteran CIA field agent

Felix Rodriguez. For years, the U. S i9000. government acquired armed the Bolivian

armed forces and sprinkled it using their paid agents. As soon as Guevaras new

facción force was discovered, Washington sent fresh teams of CIA and Green

Berets killers into Bolivia which includes Rodriguez and his fellow Cuban-

American agent, Gustavo Villoldo to assist the capture of Guevara and

destruction of his facción band. U. S. transportation planes showed up loaded

with an increase of arms, a radio station equipment, and napalm. Rodriguez, who was

masking as a Bolivian army captain, had previously led a CIA fatality

squad in Vietnam (later, this same Felix Rodriguez can be personally

hired by George Bush Sr. to be the key CIA surgical at El Salvadors

Ilopango Air Force bottom during the 1980s, where Rodriguez oversaw the CIAs

well known cocaine-for-arms atmosphere flights). Rodriguez and Villoldo became part

of a CIA task pressure in Republic of bolivia that included the case officer for the

operation, John, another Cuban American, Mario Osiris Riveron, and two

agents responsible for communications in Santa Albúmina.

Rodriguez surfaced as the most important member of the group. After having a

lengthy interrogative of one captured guerrilla, he was instrumental in

focusing the efforts of the 2nd Ranger Battalion on the Villagrande place

where he believed Guevaras rebels were operating. Although this individual apparently

was under CIA instructions to accomplish everything conceivable to keep him alive

it absolutely was Rodriguez who transmitted the order to execute Guevara from your

Bolivian Excessive Command to the soldiers in La Higueras he as well directed

all of them not to shoot Guevara in the face so that his execution injuries would

appear like they were received in battle and individually informed Che that

he would be killed. It was Rodriguez who pocketed Che Guevaras wristwatch

like a souvenir (which he often proudly showed to reporters during the

resulting years) and flew Guevaras body for the nearby armed forces base in

Vallegrande. At the beginning October 11, after removing Guevaras hands as

proof, the criminals dumped his body within an unmarked serious near

Vallegrandes airstrip wherever it was certainly not discovered until June 1997.

Publicly, the Bolivian government insisted his body had been burned.

By simply killing Che Guevara fantastic fellow guerrillas, the frontrunners of the

Us intended to send a bloody message to folks of South

America as well as the world. As a White Home memorandum intended for President Johnson

put it, The death of Guevara provides three significant implications. The

first was that it designated the completing of one other of the intense

romantic revolutionaries, such as Sukarno, Nkrumah, and Ben Belissima and

strong this craze. Second, inside the Latin American context, it could have

a very good impact in discouraging home-owners guerrillas. Finally, it revealed the

soundness of our precautionary medicine help countries facing

incipient insurgency it was the Bolivian next Ranger Battalion, trained

by U. S. Green Berets from Summer to September of 1967 that cornered him and

got him. Another analysis, an interpretive report intended for the Secretary of

Express Dean Rusk that was written by Thomas Hughes, the Latin America

specialist with the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research

summarizes the importance from the defeat from the foremost tactician of the

Cuban revolutionary technique. Hughes forecasts that Guevara will be

eulogized as the model revolutionary who attained a brave death. The

circumstances of his failure in Bolivia, however , will certainly strengthen the

position of peaceful series communist party groups in the hemisphere.

Castro, he states, will be controlled by we told you so critique from older

leftist functions, but his spell on the more youthful elements in the

hemisphere will not be damaged. This evaluation, however , does not

incorporate evidence of the difference between Castro and Guevara on the

potential customers for innovation in Latina America or the Soviet pressure on Tanque to

lessen support intended for insurgent motions in the hemisphere.

The United States participation in Republic of bolivia dates back to World War II

when tin coming from Bolivia was vital to the Allied battle effort. Following your

Bolivian government of Director Enrique Penaranda declared war on the Axis

powers in April of 1943, a group of dissident army officers lead by Colonel

Gaulberto Villaroel and supported by the MNR Nationalist Innovative

Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario), the Argentine

government, and German real estate agents in Mejores Aires, staged a successful percussion

deposing Penaranda on Dec 21, 43 and putting in Villaroel while

president. Initially, the United States declined to recognize Villaroels

regime, although later naturally it when ever Villaroel guaranteed to work with the

Allies. With the fall of mineral prices, pumpiing, and unemployment at

the final of the war, Bolivia suffered severe financial hardship, which usually helped

cause a popular revolt against the authorities at La Paz in July 17-21

1946. The army do nothing to examine rebellious military, workers, and

students, Villaroel was grabbed and hanged from a lamppost ahead of the

presidential building. A eventual liberal authorities was installed and

identified by the United States and Argentina.

Although outlawed in Bolivia in 1946, the MNR continued to have various

thousands of Bolivian adherents who also demanded area reform, control of the

abundant tin-mining market, and rights. In the Bolivian presidential

elections of 51, the MNR won a plurality triumph with its prospect

Victor Paz Estenssoro, president and head of the MNR and former professor

of economics, who was in exile in Spain. The government said

Estenssoro did not have the necessary majority as well as the president should be

chosen by the congress. To be able to prevent the MNR from coming to power

Bolivias outgoing chief executive resigned and turned the federal government over to a

10-man armed service junta, whose rule was an invective to many. Upon April 8-11

1952, a well known revolt occurred in La Serenidad, Bolivias administrative

capital, and elsewhere, the MNR, supported by armed personnel, civilians, and

peasants and the national law enforcement officials, overthrew the military zirkel and remembered

Paz Estenssoro from exile to take the presidency. Since president this individual did what

he said he would perform: nationalized the tin-mining sector, raised miners

wages, liquidated the vast holdings of powerful landholders, and

given away acres to landless Indians. Universal suffrage was awarded, but

Paz Estenssoro was ruthless to his personal foes, many of whom this individual

imprisoned. In one of Latina Americas major revolutions, Bolivia had

suddenly broken loose from the restaurants of serfdom, and its persons

especially the Indians, had obtained civil and political rights which

following governments would need to recognize.

Historian Herbert T. Klein records that a counterinsurgency policy to

combat inside subversion started to be a major concept of the United States teaching

for the Bolivian military. In 1963 Argentine-trained Bolivian officers

set up the Center of Instruction intended for Special Soldiers (Centro para

Instruccin afin de Tropas Especiales CITE) within the Seventh Split in

Cochabamba. In addition , by the end of 1963 Bolivia experienced more participants from

the us Army Unique Warfare University at Ft Bragg, North

Carolina, than any other Latin American nation. A total of 659 Bolivian

officers received training on the School in the Americas in 1962- 63, and

20 of the 3 senior Bolivian officers joined or went to the school during

1963-64. United states of america military aid increased from US$100, 1000 in 1958 to

US$3. 2 million in 1964. This help, which included weapons and training

outside Republic of bolivia, enabled Silencio Estenssoro to excercise the armed service more

extensively than MNR leaders originally had meant. According to Klein

Serenidad Estenssoro constantly justified rearming the armed forces to the Usa

States as a means of stopping communist subversion.

In 03 1967, Republic of bolivia became a first-rate target of Cuban-supported

sabotage, agitation, destabilization when Ernesto Guevara wonderful tiny Countrywide Liberation Military

(Ejrcito para Liberacin Nacional ELN) released their above mentioned

guerrilla marketing campaign. Despite the increased Us training, Bolivias

army still consisted mainly of untrained Indian conscripts and had fewer

than two, 000 soldiers ready for fight. Therefore , while the army kept the 40-

man guerrilla group found in a southwestern area of the region, an 800-

man Placer force started training in counterinsurgency methods. With

counterinsurgency teachers from the United states of america Southern Control

headquarters in Panama, the army established a Ranger School in Santa Jones

Department. Simply by late September 1967, three well-trained and well-equipped

Bolivian Ranger battalions were ready for action. The armys increased

capabilities and its particular decisive eliminate of the popular Cuban partida

leader increased its prestige. The fact that Barrientos vice president

Luis Adolfo Siles Salines, a traditional civilian, had to request

authorization from the military high order to assume his requirement after

Barrientos death in April 69 indicated how powerful the army had become

as an institution.

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