Cuba remembered 55th anniversary of Che Guevara’s fall in combat

The commemorative act for the 55th anniversary of the fall in combat of the Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was presided over by the president of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The solemnity occurred at the memorial where his remains rest in the city of Santa Clara, some 280 kilometers east of the island’s capital.

“Fifty-five years ago, by mandate of the empire, they assassinated him in a small school in La Higuera [central Bolivia].

“It was a futile attempt to extinguish the rebellion. His assassins only managed to multiply his mobilizing example infinitely,” the Cuban leader said on his Twitter account.

In the remembrance activity, where around 5,000 people gathered in the vicinity of the sculpture complex that keeps the challenges of Che Guevara and his guerrilla comrades who had fallen in the jungle of Bolivia in 1967, high-ranking leaders of the State and the Government, political and popular organizations, and students were present.

FALLEN IN COMBAT

On October 8, 1967, while commanding a guerrilla group in Bolivia, joint forces of the Bolivian Army and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States located his location, annihilated his companions, captured him, and executed him in a rural school in La Higuera, about 800 kilometers southeast of La Paz, capital of this Andean nation.

Two years earlier, in 1965, ‘Che’ Guevara resigned from his public posts in Cuba and initially headed a guerrilla group in the Congo, in central Africa, as part of the independence struggles of that African nation.

Still, he returned secretly to Cuba, from where he left shortly afterward at the head of another group of followers to Bolivia, where he opened a guerrilla front.

DOCTOR AND GUERILLA FIGHTER

Born on June 14, 1928, in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara studied medicine in his native country. After graduating, he began a journey to several Latin American countries, where he radicalized his leftist thinking.

In 1955 he met in Mexico the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016), whom he accompanied until the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959, of which he was one of its most important leaders.

After the Cuban revolutionary triumph in 1959, ‘Che’ Guevara, as he was popularly known in Cuba, held important military and government positions, including Minister of Industry and president of the National Bank, functions he resigned in 1965 to begin his guerrilla epic that culminated with his death in 1967, at the age of 39.

CAPTURE AND ASSASSINATION

The CIA officer Felix Rodriguez Mendigutía, of Cuban origin, who was advising the Bolivian Army in the special operations to locate the guerrilla group, was in charge of Che’s capture and subsequent assassination.

Following orders from his superiors, Bolivian sergeant Mario Terán was the one who executed the famous guerrilla, who was 39 years old at the time of his death.

“I know he is coming to kill me. Shoot, you are going to kill a man,” said Che to his executioner before he fired the gun.

After his assassination, the Bolivian military cut off his hands as evidence of the fact.

Three decades later, in 1997, his mortal remains and those of his comrades fallen in combat were located by experts from the Cuban Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, identified and transferred to Cuba, where they rest in a memorial erected in his memory that has so far been visited by more than 5.2 million Cubans and foreigners.

With information from Sputnik