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Vallegrande, Bolivia
2014.02.25. 10:10
Vallegrande (Bolivia) is the town where Che Guevara and his guerrilla fighters were buried in secret - only to be found thirty years later.
The full name of the town is Jesús y Montes Claros de los Caballeros del Valle Grande, and it belongs to Santa Cruz, one of the richest and most important parts of Bolivia.
After the joint Bolivian and North-American forces (with the CIA) captured and murdered Che and some of his guerrillas in La Higuera (only five members of the guerrilla group survived, managed to escape and reached Chile), Che's dead body was wrapped into a blanket, tied to the skid of a helicopter and carried to Vallegrande.
The body was spread in the laundry room in the backyard of the hospital Nuestra Señora de Malta, it was washed, then films and photographs were taken of the Christ-like figure.
Today the laundry room is unused and it is decorated with thousands of graffitis, made by the visitors who paid homage to the heroic guerrilla leader.
After the photos were taken, the body disappeared. The official version said that it was cremated and the ashes were scattered from a plane over the jungle. However, thirty years later it turned out to be a lie.
The bodies of Che and his murdered guerrillas were buried under a runway of an old airport in the outskirts of Vallegrande. The remains were found in 1997 after a retired Bolivian officer, Mario Vargas Salinas, who had taken part in Che's capture and murder, told the truth in 1995. He spoke to the American journalist, Jon Lee Anderson, who was collecting information about Che for his biography.
An extensive searching started by Cuban, Argentinian and Italian anthropologists, historians and geophysicists who examined the land within a circle of ten kilometres. They found several graves, and even Tania's (Tamara Bunke Bider) grave, two kilometres from the runway.
On 28th June 1997 seven graves were identified: Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, the Cubans René Martínez Tamayo (Arturo), Alberto Fernández Montes de Oca (Pacho) and Orlando Pantoja Tamayo (Antonio), the Bolivians Simeón Cuba (Willy) and Aniceto Reynaga (Aniceto), and the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang (El Chino).
Today a mausoleum stands on the place of the excavations. Eight slabstones show the place where the guerrillas and their commander were buried and found.
[Gallery with 13 photos]
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AJÁNLOM AZ OLDALT
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