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.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
RSS