The former Bolivian soldier who claimed to have shot dead Marxist revolutionary hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara died on Thursday aged 80, his relatives said.
Mario Teran Salazar shot dead Argentine-born Guevara on Oct. 9, 1967, in Bolivia’s eastern Santa Cruz Province at the height of the Cold War.
“He died. He was ill and nothing could be done,” Gary Prado, a former Bolivian soldier who helped capture Guevara in the jungle region 54 years ago said.
Photo: AFP
“The family and comrades from the armed forces told me because he was being treated in the military hospital” in the eastern city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
The hospital declined to comment on Teran’s death due to “medical confidentiality.”
Guevara was captured on Oct. 8, 1967, by the Bolivian army with help of two Cuban-American CIA agents.
Guevara was leading a small band of guerrillas fighting against the army.
An injured Guevara was brought to an abandoned school in the village of La Higuera where he spent the night. The next day he was riddled with bullets by Teran, with the approval of then-Bolivian president Rene Barrientos, a fervent anti-communist.
“That was the worst moment of my life. At that moment Che looked big, huge, enormous. His eyes were shining intensely,” Teran later said.
“I felt that he was on top of me and when he fixed my gaze I felt dizzy. I thought that with a single quick movement Che could disarm me,” he said.
“‘Be calm,’ he told me, ‘and aim well. You are going to kill a man.’ So I stepped back towards the doorway, closed my eyes and fired,” he said.
Guevara, who was just 39, became a legend as his inert body with open eyes was displayed like a trophy in the neighboring town of Vallegrande, a moment immortalized by Agence France-Presse photographer Marc Hutten.
After 30 years of army service, Teran retired into anonymity.
He even went so far as to deny that he killed Guevara.
Born in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara studied medicine and then traveled throughout Latin America.
He met the Cuban brothers Fidel and Raul Castro in Mexico and joined their revolutionary army that took power in Cuba in 1959, ousting US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS