The Bolivian Diary Read Free

elected honorary chair.
    August 4, 1967 A deserter leads the Bolivian Army to the guerrilla’s main supply cache. Documents discovered there lead to the arrest of key urban contacts.
    August 31, 1967 Joaquín’s detachment, which includes Tania, is ambushed and annihilated while crossing the Río Grande at Puerto Mauricio (Vado del Yeso).
    September 14, 1967 Loyola Guzmán is arrested along with hundreds of others suspected of collaborating with the guerrilla movement.
    September 22, 1967 The guerrillas occupy the town of Alto Seco.
    September 26, 1967 The guerrilla unit falls into a Bolivian Army ambush at Quebrada del Batán, near La Higuera.
    October 8, 1967 The remaining 17 guerrillas are trapped by army troops and conduct a desperate battle in the Quebrada del Yuro (El Yuro ravine). Che Guevara is seriously wounded and captured.
    October 9, 1967 Che Guevara and two other captured guerrillas (Willy and Chino) are murdered by Bolivian soldiers following instructions from the Bolivian government and Washington. The remains of Che Guevara and the other guerrillas are secretly buried in Bolivia.
    October 14, 1967 Survivors of the battle of Quebrada del Yuro are ambushed at the fork of the Mizque and Río Grande rivers.
    October 15, 1967 In a television appearance Fidel Castro confirms news of Che Guevara’s death and declares three days of official mourning in Cuba. October 8 is designated the Day of the Heroic Guerrilla.
    October 18, 1967 Fidel Castro delivers a memorial speech for Che Guevara in Havana’s Revolution Plaza before an audience of almost one million people.
    February 22, 1968 Three Cuban survivors (Pombo, Urbano, and Benigno) cross the Bolivian border into Chile, after traveling across the Andes on foot. They succeed in making it back to Cuba. Two Bolivians (Inti and Darío) stay in Bolivia and later reorganize the ELN.
    Mid-March 1968 Microfilm of the pages of Che’s Bolivian diaries arrives in Cuba.
    July 1968 Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary is published in Cuba and distributed free of charge to the Cuban people. It is simultaneously published in many countries to counter the CIA campaign to discredit the revolutionary movement in Latin America. With an introduction by Fidel Castro, it becomes an instant international bestseller.
    July 1997 Che Guevara’s remains are finally located and returned to Cuba and buried along with the bodies of other guerrilla fighters found in Bolivia in a new memorial built in Santa Clara.

MAP OF BOLIVIA
    SHOWING THE ZONE OF GUERRILLA OPERATIONS

    ZONE OF GUERRILLA OPERATIONS

PREFACE
    Camilo Guevara
    Santa Cruz, Bolivia
    1967
    Almost a year of intense warfare has transpired. Recently, due to a betrayal, Joaquin’s group has fallen victim to an ambush in Vado del Yeso [Puerto Mauricio], and the encirclement of Che’s troops tightens. They have decided to abandon the area in search of more suitable terrain, where they can more effectively develop the conditions to consolidate the guerrilla movement. It is the afternoon and soldiers are advancing; combat is imminent.
    On the last page of the red diary, confiscated by the Bolivian military, is an entry dated October 7, 1967. It is barely possible to decipher the author’s difficult handwriting: “The 11-month anniversary of our establishment as a guerrilla force passed in a bucolic mood, with no complications ...” These words in no way read as an epilogue to the heroic saga described in the diary, as there is not the slightest tone of discouragement, pessimism, or defeatism; on the contrary, these words appear to be a beginning, a prologue.
    ***
    October 8—A wounded prisoner is transferred to the tumble-down school at La Higuera, absorbed in his pain and almost unable to breathe. He can barely walk upright; he fights with the weight, accumulating over the past few months, which conspires against his shoulders. He has been weakened by calamity and illness, by the death