New York, 8 October 2022. In the narrow Quebrada del Yuro the smell of gunpowder can still be felt. There, behind a rock that keeps the marks of many gunshots, Commander Ernesto Che Guevara fought his last combat in Bolivia and the first of the Heroic Guerrilla in his immortal example.
It was October 8, 1967 when 17 Cuban, Bolivian and Peruvian combatants, -the remaining members of the National Liberation Army that had begun the struggle for the true emancipation of the Bolivian people in November of the year before - defended the strategy conceived by Che in his political project for Latin America, and sought to reorganize themselves after suffering heavy casualties.
They moved without guides through the arid mountains near La Higuera, with the purpose of looking for more favorable areas to begin a period of recovery, establish contact with the city, where the urban apparatus had also suffered hard blows, incorporate new members to the guerrilla and continue the struggle. But the Quebrada would become a trap, as it became very difficult to get out of it due to the roughness of the place, without vegetation or water, to which added the physical condition of the guerrillas due to the lack of food, diseases and the fatigue of the long walks, trying to evade the enemy that was chasing them.
The guerrillas were unaware that 3,000 troops of the Bolivian army had taken the high positions and that they were practically surrounded. When they met the first army patrols, the unequal combat began, and Che ordered to withdraw fighting, and go to the agreed meeting point in case of an eventuality.
According to the survivors, Che then decided to divide the group into three flanks: right, center and left. In one, the most experienced men, to cover the area with greater possibilities of escape; the other, in a side canyon for the same purpose, but with less intensity in the enemy fire; and the center, headed by Che, with the objective of covering the sick combatants, so that they could leave the encirclement and advance to safe places, which showcases the humanism that always characterized him.
The confidence placed by Che in the most experienced fighters was correct, because they were the ones who managed to break the siege and become the only survivors of the guerrilla. The group of the sick were able to evade the soldiers and escape from the Quebrada, and were savagely killed later while they were hidden, waiting for the right moment to go to a safer place.
In a nearby position were the Cubans Orlando Pantoja Tamayo (Olo), René Martínez Tamayo and Alberto Fernández Montes de Oca, who fell under the hail of army fire. Che, wounded in one leg, confronts the enemy advance to protect the retreat of his comrades.
He sends the Bolivian Aniceto Reinaga to check other positions, and this is captured. The Bolivian Simón “Willy” Cubas tries to get Che out of the Quebrada, who was already surrounded, with his rifle disabled by a bullet and with a wound in his leg. But he is captured together with the Peruvian Juan Pablo “El Chino” Chang, and the three are taken to the little board school of La Higuera, where they were cowardly murdered the following day.
"The decision (...) to assassinate Che, the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang and the Bolivians Simeón Cubas and Aniceto Reinaga was taken in Washington, and was imposed on (President) General René Barrientos," explained researchers Froilán González and Adys Cupull.
González recalled that radio stations broadcast the news of Commander Guevara's death in the morning of October 9, when in fact the crime was perpetrated at 13:10 hours in the afternoon of that day by a sergeant who had to get drunk to shoot him from the chest down, as ordered by his superiors. The wounded guerrilla got up from his chair and ordered him: “Shoot, there is a man here!
The once unknown hamlet is now visited all the time by people from different parts of the world, who climb these mountains to pay homage to the Heroic Guerrilla and his comrades, and the local people lay flowers to the man they call San Ernesto de La Higuera.
Source: Granma