Thousands of Cubans and foreigners have been flocking to a mausoleum in central Cuba to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s death. For 10 years, the Cuban government has been telling the world that the body inside the mausoleum is that of the famous guerrilla.
It’s a lie designed to bamboozle the population into worshiping the Argentine-born revolutionary as if he were a saint–and the Cuban Revolution as if it were a religion. A brilliant investigation by French journalist Bertrand de la Grange, recently published in Spain’s El Pais newspaper, demolishes the official version.
In 1995, Bolivian Gen. Mario Vargas, who had fought Che’s guerrillas in the 1960s, revealed that the revolutionary’s body was buried a few meters from the airport runway in Vallegrande, a town close to La Higuera, the village in eastern Bolivia where Guevara was killed on Oct. 9, 1967. (Guevara had been executed after the Bolivian president ordered the soldiers who ambushed and captured him to get rid of him.) Cuba sent a forensic, diplomatic and legal team to Vallegrande. On June 28, 1997, they claimed to have found the body, which was brought to Cuba a few weeks before the 30th anniversary of the guerrilla’s death.
Numerous facts belie the Cuban claim.
more from TNR here.