Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Festivals & Events
The weekly feria (market) is held every Sunday. Around February 23 the town marks its
anniversary with various sporting and cultural events.
FOLK
Che Guevara Festival
Since the bodies of Che and several of his comrades were recovered from the airport in
1997, the town has celebrated an annual Che Guevara festival in October, featuring folk
art and cultural activities.
HASTA SIEMPRE, COMANDANTE
As you travel around Bolivia, the iconic image of Che - the revolutionary with a popularity status reached only by
rock stars, and remembered in Cuban songs such as 'Hasta siempre, Comandante' (Forever with You, Command-
er) - will be staring at you from various walls, paintings, posters and carvings. Bolivia is where Che went to his
death and where his image is being fervently resurrected.
Fresh from revolutionary success in Cuba (and frustrating failure in the Congo), Ernesto 'Che' Guevara de la
Serna was in search of a new project when he heard about the oppression of the working classes by dictator René
Barrientos Ortuño's military government in Bolivia. Strategically located at the heart of South America, Bolivia
seemed like the perfect place from which to launch the socialist revolution on the continent. Though Fidel Castro
had required him to sign a letter of resignation upon leaving Cuba, thereby publically distancing the Cuban gov-
ernment from Guevara's activities, the two remained in close contact throughout the Bolivian escapade.
Che's Bolivian base was established in 1966 at the farm Ñancahuazú, 250km southwest of Santa Cruz. Initially
his co-revolutionaries had no idea who he was, and only when his trademark beard began to grow back (he had
shaved it off to arrive incognito in Bolivia) did they realize that they were in the presence of a living legend. Che
hoped to convince the campesinos (subsistence farmers) that they were oppressed, and to inspire them to social re-
bellion, but was surprised to be met only with suspicion. In fact a cunning move by Ortuño to grant campesinos
rights to their land had guaranteed their support and all but doomed Che's revolution to failure before it had even
begun.
Bolivian Diary was written by Che during the final months of his life. Originally planned as a first-hand docu-
mentation of the revolution, it reads as a somewhat leisurely adventure. Despite occasional minor setbacks Che
considered things to be moving along nicely and in his last entry on October 7, 1967, 11 months after his arrival in
Bolivia, he writes that the plan was proceeding 'without complications.'
The following day he was captured near La Higuera by CIA-trained Bolivian troops under the command of
Capitán Gary Prado Salmón, receiving bullet wounds to the legs, neck and shoulder. He was taken to a school-
room in La Higuera and, just after noon on October 9, he was executed in a flurry of bullets fired by Sergeant
Mario Terán, who had asked for the job following the death of several of his close friends in gun fights with the
guerillas. Once the deed was done the assassins were said to be perturbed by the open eyes and peaceful smile on
the dead revolutionary's face.
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