October 8: 38 years since the fall of Che
Campaign News | Saturday, 8 October 2005
Hope of the World's Millions
By Cira Rodriguez Cesar
Havana, Oct 8 (Prensa Latina) October 8 marks 38 years since the fall in combat of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, the legendary guerilla of America and unforgettable Commander Che of Cubans.
The cowardice of those unreasoning beings, who confront the people with violence and disrespect, mowed down one of the greatest liberators the world has ever known.
Physician and combatant extraordinaire, he is a legend for many, a saint in the Bolivian mountains and the paradigm for revolutionary and rebel fighter, whose ideas live on indefatigably after his death.
When he was murdered in Bolivia, the criminal masterminds claimed they had destroyed him, but history has proven them wrong, because Che continually renews the hopes of millions of men and women today.
On October 8, 1967 he was hunted and captured in Yuro ravine in La Higuera. The next day they killed him with machine gun fire and then "killed him again" with a pistol shot.
So the revolutionary world lost this man's exceptional ideas, intelligence and military qualities.
A man of action, profound thought, visionary intelligence, and wide culture, is how he is described by leaders, writers, farmers and workers, men and women of the people.
Today, when the world weighs the worth of ideas of justice against the lies of dominance and supremacy, his values prevail and multiply among the women and men who demand a better world.
His death put an end to a valiant and principled man, but he has become a grand symbol that friends and enemies alike cannot forget; one can see his face on a soccer shirt, on protest signs of Bolivian coca farmers, at the World Social Forum and in demonstrations against the war in Iraq.
The US intelligence services and the Bolivian Army could not imagine in 1967 that the Argentine-Cuban Ernest Guevara de la Serna would come to symbolize critical thinking, struggle and dignity for a great part of humanity.
His progressive militancy began when he was young; he participated with the Latin American opposition and in 1953 was in Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Guatemala where he discovered the misery caused by pillaging the people.
Later in Mexico, he joined with Fidel Castro and the rest of the expeditionary force on the yacht Granma, to begin the end of the guerilla fight launched in 1956, which culminated in the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
From that moment Commander Che Guevara held various positions and represented Cuba in international forums, where he directly denounced the ploys of the US government and its Latin American lackeys.
His revolutionary restlessness caused him to leave Cuba to march in other lands, convinced that only armed insurrection was effective against the imperialist power.
In 1966 he went to Bolivia to initiate a revolution that he hoped would extend even beyond the continent, because of the country's strategic position it was to be a center of operations and extend its influence to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay.
On the 8th of October the following year, the days and projects of the liberator ended, buried secretly in a common ditch in Valle Grande, and found 30 years later by Cuban and Argentine experts.
In mid-1997 Che Guevara's remains were found, exhumed and brought to Cuba where they were placed in a sepulcher with all honors, together with his guerilla companions.
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