Details surrounding the death of Che Guevara have once again come into the public spotlight thanks to Hollywood producers who contacted former CIA operative, Cuban Gustavo Villoldo.
CIA operative Villoldo was active in Bolivia in 1967, the same year Che Guevara was executed. The former secret agent met with the film producers in Miami, where Che Guevara is portrayed by Benicio del Toro and directed by Steven Soderbergh. He did not come empty-handed. He provided the producers with photographs, telegrams, newspaper articles preserved from that year, and even fingerprints taken from the dead hands of the revolutionary. In short, he showed them a file that proved the collaboration of Bolivian operatives with CIA spies, whose task was to eliminate Che.
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He recounted to the producers how he took possession of Che Guevara’s body, who was captured and shot in Bolivia.
Namely, the Bolivians wanted to cut off the head of the deceased as conclusive proof that he was indeed dead, which Villoldo prevented by suggesting they make a mask of his face to serve as a “trophy.” However, Che Guevara’s body was still dismembered; his arms were cut off and preserved as proof that the revolutionary was indeed dead.
Villoldo then organized a burial at a secluded location, which he revealed only in 1997 when Che Guevara’s body was exhumed, near an airstrip in the Bolivian town of Villegrande.
In addition, Villoldo preserved several strands of hair, which he stored in a plain white envelope.
“I kept several strands of his hair because that bearded and shaggy man, who came down from the mountain, was a symbol of the Cuban revolution,” Villoldo said, as reported by The Nation.
Just five days after the execution of Che Guevara, a CIA document marked as classified was presented to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. In it, CIA Director Richard Helms informs the President that: “…Ernesto Che Guevara did not succumb to wounds sustained in clashes with the Bolivian army, but was captured and executed at 1:15 PM, by a burst of fire from an M-2 automatic rifle…”.
The White House was also provided with an explanation that the Bolivian government decided to conceal the details of the execution, claiming that the revolutionary’s body was cremated to avoid sending it back to his native Argentina or to Cuba.
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The body was sought by Che Guevara’s brother, Roberto, and a senator from Chile, Salvador Allende, at the request of Fidel Castro.
“The Bolivians do not want an independent autopsy of the body that would prove they executed Che Guevara, whose body they do not want to hand over to any communist authority,” states that, until recently, classified CIA document.
In the document, CIA operatives welcomed the execution of Che Guevara, as the death of the most popular guerrilla in Latin America prevented Fidel Castro’s efforts to exploit Bolivia and the existing Communist Party there for further spreading the “revolution.”
According to a memorandum accompanying the CIA report, which was drafted and submitted to President Johnson by his assistant, Walt Rostow, the American administration interpreted Che Guevara’s death as follows:
“The death of Guevara has the following implications: it supports the trend of the disappearance of yet another aggressive and romantic revolutionary, such as Sukarno, Nkrumah, Ben Bella. This will discourage all others who wished to become guerrillas. It proves the justification of ‘preventive medicine’ for countries threatened by nascent uprisings. Namely, Che Guevara was cornered and shot by members of the Bolivian Second Ranger Battalion, trained by Green Berets,” wrote Rostow.
