"Soviet Russia" is an independent people's newspaper. Che Guevara's fatal love

I want to dedicate this article to a girl whose name was Aide-Tamara Bunke Bider, better known under the pseudonym Tanya the Partisan. Little is known in our country about the brave revolutionary who acted together with Che Guevara in Bolivia, so I would like to correct this situation and introduce readers to the biography of a girl who faithfully served the sacred ideals of goodness and justice.

Aide-Tamara (Tanya) Bunke Bider was born on November 19, 1937 in Argentina in the family of German communists Erich and Naida Bunke, who moved to Argentina in 1935 due to the Nazis coming to power in Germany.
Tanya graduated in Argentina high school. She was a versatile girl, was interested in music (played the piano, guitar and accordion), sports, politics, did ballet, and subsequently mastered the Spanish, German and Russian languages ​​perfectly (her mother had Russian roots).
WITH early childhood Tanya was immersed in the ups and downs of the political struggle, because her parents actively participated in the underground work of the Argentine communists, and later she herself became an ardent communist.
In 1952, the Bunke family returned to the capital of the GDR, Berlin, where Tanya entered the university and successfully graduated.
On November 16, 1964, Tanya, with false documents in the name of Laura Gutierrez Bauer, an Argentine of German descent, arrives in the Bolivian capital La Paz to intensify the local rebel movement. Using her sociability and German origin (there were many Germanophiles in the Bolivian leadership), she makes the necessary contacts in the Bolivian government and military circles, even once meets with Bolivian President Barrientos, visits remote areas of Bolivia, and works at a radio station in the city of Santa Cruz. During preparatory work, Tanya enjoys the support of Cuban intelligence services, constantly keeping in touch with Havana.
On November 7, 1966, Che Guevara arrives at the rebel camp located near the Nyancahuazu Canyon. From this point on, intensive preparations began for the rebel offensive, which was planned for September 1967. But one of the rebels, an oil company employee named Vargas, turned out to be a traitor, revealing to the police the location of the rebel camp. The planned offensive could be forgotten, and already on March 23, 1967, the rebels had to engage in battle with government troops. As a result of the discovery of the detachment's location, all communication with Bolivian cities was interrupted and the partisans had to go into the jungle. At this moment, our heroine decides to stay with Che’s detachment, since now she had no opportunity to legally return to La Paz. Increasingly, guerrillas clash with government troops, losing people. When only 50 fighters remained in the detachment, Che Guevara decides to divide the detachment into two parts: the vanguard led by Che himself, the rearguard (the remaining 13 people) under the command of the Cuban hero of the Sierra Maestre Joaquin (real name - Vilo Acuña Nunez). Tanya was also in Joaquin’s squad.
From the very beginning of its existence, Joaquin's detachment was subjected to constant intense attacks by government forces. As a result of the fiercest fighting, Joaquin's squad loses one after another best fighters, the morale of the remaining partisans is steadily falling, the enemy ring around the detachment is becoming narrower and narrower every day.
On August 31, 1967, in the Camiri region, Joaquin’s detachment took its last battle. His location was revealed by one of the local peasants named Onorato Rojas. Because of this betrayal, the detachment was ambushed and, after a stubborn battle, the entire detachment was destroyed, including Tanya. The corpse of the partisan, under the personal supervision of Bolivian President Barrientos, was taken to an unknown direction.
For Che Guevara, Tanya was not just an ordinary partisan, she was one of the most amazing women the commandant knew. In his heart he admired her education, courage, and dedication to her work. She was not afraid to die for the cause that she considered her life's work. She easily carried out the tasks assigned to her and fought shoulder to shoulder with the Bolivian partisans. For her short life(Tanya did not live to see her 30th birthday by almost 2.5 months), she had so many adventures that people who have lived 80 years often do not have. She will remain in our memory forever, because true heroes are not forgotten.
Che dedicated one of his poems (as is known, the comandante wrote poetry) to Tanya (translation from Spanish by V.A. Alekseev):
Leave a memory behind,
A bouquet of flowers doomed to fade
My name will be nothing, right?
“Nothing” means that life is without a trace,
So let the songs, a bouquet of flowers,
If there is no sprout left on the ground...

The ambitious Che fought not only against social injustice, but also with himself

45 years ago, the famous revolutionary Che Guevara died in the Bolivian town of La Higuera. “Tell Fidel - my failure does not mean that the revolution is over, it will win somewhere else. Tell Aleyda (wife) to quickly forget me, get married, be happy and give her children an education. Let the soldiers aim properly,” these are the last words of the legendary commander. Today, Cuba once again celebrates the Day of the Heroic Guerrilla.

In ancient times, the Guevara Creole family (Creoles are descendants of Spaniards born in Latin America) was not one of the worst in Argentina. Che's father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, considered himself an Argentine in the eleventh generation. However, on the branches family tree The Guevaras are sitting and obvious "Chapetones" (Pyrenees who arrived in New World on the eve of the War of Independence): Viceroy of New Spain and Viceroy of Peru. The latter is famous for the fact that his troops were defeated by the Creoles at the Battle of Ayacucho on December 9, 1824.

Ernesto's mother, Dona Celia de la Serna y de la Llosa, worshiped new ideas and despised money. She got behind the wheel of a car before the women of her circle, became the owner of a checkbook and declared her right to participate in conversations about politics. All this in Argentina in the 20s was the prerogative of men. It cannot be said that Guevara’s parents lived amicably. Frequent family quarrels Sometimes they ended with the temperamental Doña Celia pulling out a pistol, which she always kept with her, and pointing it at her unfortunate husband. Celia suffered from asthma. This hereditary disease of her family was passed on to Ernesto. Ernesto suffered from asthma attacks all his life. As a child, they rolled on him three to four times a day. And he was forced to constantly keep his inhaler at hand. But this thing only relieved mild attacks. Serious cases required injections of adrenaline. Guevara always spoke kindly about his mother, but with traditional Argentine unceremoniousness. “The old lady walks around surrounded by a crowd of intellectuals, so they can all become lesbians,” Che said ironically in a conversation with his friend Ilda.

Ernesto learned to read early - at the age of four. The house had a good library, which, however, was dominated by bohemian disorder. IN student years he became interested in the writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. However, there is nothing particularly significant about this hobby. In those years, any Latin American student considered it obligatory to familiarize himself with the works of the founder of scientific communism and the founder of psychoanalysis. It is unlikely that thinking about the Marxist formula “commodity - money - commodity” would deprive Ernesto of sleep.

The ruler of his thoughts during his student days (Guevara studied at the Faculty of Medicine) was the guru of existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre. And under the influence of Pablo Neruda’s “Universal Song”, Guevara’s consciousness acquired a peculiar radical poetic cast. The anti-bourgeois attitude was close to Ernesto - poverty was known to him from childhood, in parental home disinterestedness was considered almost synonymous with decency. The Universal Canticle offered a clear and unambiguous explanation of Latin America's troubles: "For Wall Street has ordered that the boar's snouts of the puppets sink their tusks into the unhealed wounds of the people." During the Bolivian campaign, shortly before his death, Che read Leon Trotsky’s book “The Betrayed Revolution.” The Commander was tormented by the question: why do revolutions degenerate? Shortly before the Bolivian campaign, Che came to the thought: “After the revolution, it is not the revolutionaries who do the work. It is done by technocrats and bureaucrats. And they are counter-revolutionaries.”

Shortly before the Bolivian campaign, Che came to the thought: “After the revolution, it is not the revolutionaries who do the work. It is done by technocrats and bureaucrats. And they are counter-revolutionaries.” In the photo: Che meets with Nikita Khrushchev

At first, Ernesto was trapped by love for cousin Carmen, whose father fought in Spain on the Republican side. Then there was the aristocrat Maria del Carmen Ferreira. But these novels were just for warming up. In Guatemala, Ernesto met the Peruvian Ilda Guedea. This girl was in Guatemala as a political exile. An economist by training, Ilda received a good salary in Guatemala, which allowed her to rent an apartment in the very center of Guatemala City. One fine day, Guevara and his Argentine friend showed up there and asked her to help them settle in a new place. Ilda, without much enthusiasm, agreed to take care of the newcomers: she did not like the arrogance of the Argentines. Ernesto seemed very arrogant to her: of a fragile build, this young man somehow strangely stuck out his chest and spoke abruptly, with commanding intonations that were completely inconsistent with his position as a petitioner. Later she found out that Ernesto does not like to ask anyone for anything, and, in addition, just on the day of his arrival he had an asthma attack... Having asked Ernesto what forced him to leave Argentina, she heard in response: “Nobody cares about me.” drives I myself run in the direction where I’m shooting.” The passage seemed funny to Ilda, but unworthy of the intellectual that Guevara pretended to be.

Once Guevara asked Ilda to borrow 50 dollars: he had nothing to pay for his rent. The girl had no money at that time, and she gave him a gold chain and ring. “I don’t wear them at all, you can pawn them.” Ilda's gesture touched Ernesto. After the Americans overthrew the progressive Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, Che left Guatemala for Mexico City. Ilda, a political emigrant without a passport, could not follow him. “Laughing, he told me that one day we would meet in Mexico City and get married. Of course, I didn’t believe him...” Nevertheless, everything happened as Ernesto said. Ilda managed to get out to Mexico. True, Guevara greeted her rather coolly and offered to remain friends. And yet, Ernesto married Ilda when she became pregnant by him. On February 15, 1956, Ilda gave birth to Guevara’s daughter. However family idyll didn't last long. Having met Fidel Castro, Guevara rushed to Cuba. On the island, he fell in love with the partisan Aleida March, who, after marrying him, bore him four children: two boys and two girls.

Tanya Bunke - Che Guevara called her “Fleeting Star”

Name last girlfriend What is covered in legends. Her name was Aide Tamara Bunke. Tamara’s father is a German who emigrated to Argentina during the Nazi years, and her mother is Russian. The girl spoke Spanish, German and Russian completely fluently. She met the legendary Comandante in December 1960 in Berlin, during his tour of socialist countries. Tamara dreamed of studying in Cuba and complained to him about the bureaucratic obstacles that were put in her way. Che promised to arrange her fate. Tamara was 23 years old at the time, Guevara was 32. Apparently, it was then that Tamara was recruited by the East German security service Stasi. In Cuba, she worked as a translator for the Ministry of Education. Tamara wore the uniform of a people's militia fighter and participated in community cleanups, which her eminent friend treated fervently, as if it were a divine service. Tanya (nickname Bunke) took part in Guevara’s last campaign - to Bolivia. There she died on August 31. She was shot by a commando while she was wading a river. The bullet hit her in the chest, and the body was carried away by the current. Tanya's body was caught only a week later. Che, who called Tanya “Fleeting Star,” refused to believe in his friend’s death. In his famous “Bolivian Diary” he left a note: “Radio La Cruz del Sur announces the discovery of the corpse of Tanya the guerrilla on the banks of the Rio Grande. The testimony does not leave a true impression.” The famous Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso, who knew Che and Bunke closely, said after the tragic end of the Bolivian campaign: “I think that Tamara did with her life what she intended to do.” Che himself died on the fortieth day after Tanya’s death. And in honor of his last girlfriend, the minor planet 2283 Bunke, discovered in 1974 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravleva, is named.

Che's partisan everyday life. Cuba. Congo. Bolivia. Ambitious, he fought not only against social injustice, but also with himself. When the Cuban rebels, following the example of Fidel, grew thick beards, Che was very upset that he did not have a real beard. And there is not enough vegetation on the chest: such hairless ones are called “lampinho” in Cuba. “Look, Negro,” Che said with offense to his friend Almeida, “I have little hair on my body, but here are two scars, on my neck and on my chest. Isn’t this a masculine sign?” Later, more male marks appeared on Guevara’s body. The last are five bullet holes that Bolivian lieutenant Mario Terana put into him. This happened on October 9, 1967. Che's body was tied to a helicopter ski and taken to the town of Vallagrande, where it was washed and displayed in the laundry of the Hospital of Our Lady of Malta. Long-haired, thin, he lay like Christ taken down from the cross. Today this laundry has become a shrine. Its walls are painted with inscriptions in honor of Che, and local residents revere him as a holy martyr.

Che's body was washed and displayed in the laundry room of the Hospital of Our Lady of Malta. Long-haired, thin, he lay like Christ taken down from the cross. Today this laundry has become a shrine. Locals revere Che as a martyr saint

They say that the wounded, unarmed Che shouted to the Bolivian soldiers surrounding him: “I am Che Guevara. And I lost!” Che's Bolivian campaign ended in complete failure. But did Che lose? When you see thousands of youth demonstrations under flags with his image, you willy-nilly doubt it. When I was in Cuba, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with Che's children. They were asked what they thought about using their father's image. Aleida Guevara responded: “I have nothing against young people wearing a T-shirt with my father’s image on them to protest. Let the image of Che be in their hearts. But rage begins to rage within me when I see that the image of Che is used in advertising in order to more successfully sell goods. This is a mockery of the memory of our father." Che was too charming and was successfully photographed. It's not his fault. The main thing is that it has become a myth, which for 45 years has been inspiring people to fight injustice.

Tamara Bunke was born on November 19, 1937 in Argentina, in the family of German communists Eric Bunke and Nadia Bieder, who fled Germany in 1935. In Argentina, Tanya's parents participated in the underground struggle, and in 1952 the family returned to Germany - to the GDR. After graduating from school in Argentina with honors, Tanya entered the GDR, first at the Leipzig Pedagogical Institute, and then at the Berlin University. Humboldt, Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. Tamara is a bright person, fluent in Spanish, German and Russian (her mother is from Russia), a wonderful singer who can play the piano, guitar, accordion, an athlete and a ballerina.

Ernesto Che Guevara first appeared in her life in December 1960, when she was only 23. During a tour of socialist countries, Che visited Latin American students in Leipzig studying in the GDR. Tanya was his translator. On May 12, 1961, Tanya arrives in Havana, works here in the Ministry of Education, and studies at the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Havana. In March 1963, in Cuba they offered her to become an underground partisan in one of the countries Latin America, where there is a hotbed of anti-imperialist revolution. Over the next year, Tamara, now the partisan "Tanya", studies secret writing, radio communications, and the rules of conspiracy.

In April 1964, she was sent to Western Europe for an as yet undeciphered “underground work.” On November 16, 1964, with false documents in the name of Laura Gutierrez Bauer, an Argentine of German descent (now she is “Argentine, daughter of an Argentine businessman and a German anti-fascist, amateur ethnographer”), Tanya arrives in La Paz. Here she gives private lessons German language, whose activities contribute to contacts with many important dignitaries, such as the head of the information department of the presidential service, Gonzalo Lopez Muñoz, or the Bolivian President Rene Barrientos personally. Acquaintances made it possible to travel around the country, climbing into its most remote corners, fulfilling Che Guevara’s instructions to select the location of the central base of the future center of the liberation war. The result of the trips was the purchase in June 1966 of the Calamina ranch in the valley of the Nyancahuazu River in the southeast of the country by partisan Roberto Peredo (Coco). She explains her trips to remote areas by her interest in Indian folk songs (and after Tanya’s death, it turns out that she really collected a unique collection of Indian folklore). Tanya begins working on the radio in Santa Cruz and will later use this work for radio communication with Che’s detachment.

She gets a job as the host of the radio program “Advice for Unrequited Lovers,” thanks to which Tanya’s encrypted reports could be broadcast freely.

Starting from January 1, 1966, Tanya received Cuban officers - the core of the future guerilla, and provided them with a temporary place of residence. Then the Uruguayan businessman Ramon Benitez Fernandez, who actually turned out to be Che, entered Bolivia. On November 7, Che arrived at the Calamine ranch. He expected that Calamina would become the most important link in the partisan chain of Latin America, which would stretch from Peru to Argentina.

On December 31, Tanya arrived in Calamina, accompanying the first secretary of the Communist Party of Bolivia, Mario Monje (Estanislao). The next day, Che sends her to Argentina in search of followers of the Masetti partisan detachment. With Tanya, he conveys New Year's wishes to his father, Don Ernesto, which, among other things, says about her: “I entrusted my wishes to a fleeting star who met me on the way by the will of the Magic King.”

On March 5, 1967, the Fleeting Star “in a tunic, in trousers and with a machine gun” returns to Calamina, accompanying the Argentinean Ciro Roberto Bustos (Pelado), the Bolivian Moises Guevara with a detachment of about 20 people, the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang Navarro (Chino) and a French correspondent Regis Debray (Danton). Unfortunately, two of Moisés Guevara's volunteers deserted the squad and gave the authorities in Camiri all the information about him, including a description of the beautiful terrorist. During the raid, troops found a jeep left here by Tanya with her notebook.

Che was forced to close the base camp and go to the mountains. On April 16, Che left Tanya in a detachment of 17 fighters under the command of Vitalio Acuña (Joaquin) and ordered them to wait for him for three days, but he was no longer destined to meet the Fleeting Star. To destroy Joaquin, a plan was developed for Operation Cynthia, named after Barientos' daughter.

Death

On August 31, nine fighters, led by Joaquin, crossed the ford in an Indian chain around five in the evening without prior reconnaissance. “A thin blonde in a light green blouse and soldier’s camouflage trousers, with a duffel bag and a machine gun on her shoulders” was third. She was in the rapids when a bullet hit her in the chest.

Che learned about her death on September 7, leaving an entry in his diary: “Radio La Cruz del Sur announces the discovery of the corpse of Tanya the partisan on the banks of the Rio Grande. The testimony does not leave a true impression.” He will find his own death on October 9, marking the fortieth day since the death of the Fleeting Star.

Tanya’s body was found a week later, three kilometers from the battle site. President Barrientos arrived at the site of the discovery by helicopter. Tanya was tied to the skid of a helicopter and transported to Valle Grande. Barrientos attended the funeral ceremony.

Memory

• The minor planet 2283 Bunke, discovered in 1974 by a Soviet astronomer, was named in honor of Tamara Bunke

Ernesto Guevara de La Serna Lynch (May 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), better known as Che Guevara or simply Che. A man of amazing destiny. Biography of Che Guevara - heroism and tragedy

Especially for the site “Secrets of the World”. When using the material, an active link to the site is required.

1928Ernesto Guevara was born in Rosario (Argentina). He was the eldest of five children in a Basque and Irish family. In short, Che Guevara’s blood was initially an explosive mixture. In addition, mother and father adhered to leftist views. His father, a staunch Republican supporter civil war in Spain, often hosted many war veterans at his home. Subsequently, characterizing his son, his father said: “the blood of Irish rebels flowed in my son’s veins!”

Guevara family. Ernesto is on the left.

Guevara's house contained more than 3,000 books and, among others, William Faulkner, Andre Gide, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, Anatole France, H. G. Wells, works by Jawaharlal Nehru, Camus, Lenin, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels .

His favorite subjects at school were philosophy, mathematics, political science and sociology.

In 1948, Guevara entered the university in Buenos Aires, the medical department.

But in 1951, 22-year-old Guevara took a year off and decided to travel around South America(Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador) on a motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado.

During the trip, Guevara wrote notes that were later published by the New York Times as "The Motorcycle Diaries" and became a bestseller. In 2004, a film of the same name was made based on Che Guevara's diary.

By the end of the trip, Guevara came up with the idea of ​​uniting the peoples of Latin America into the country of “Latino”. Subsequently, this idea became the core of his revolutionary activities.

Upon returning to Argentina, Guevara completed his studies and received his Doctor of Medicine degree, and in June 1953 he became officially known as "Doctor Ernesto Guevara".

However, during a trip to Latin America, he decided to devote himself not to medicine, but to politics and armed struggle. Having seen enough of poverty and misery, Che Guevara firmly decided to “help these people.”

In 1955 in In Mexico he marries Peruvian Marxist Ilda Gadeaand struck up friendships with revolutionary-minded Cuban emigrants.

Ernesto Guevara and Ilda Gadea.

In the summer of 1955, Che Guevara met Raul Castro, who subsequently introduced him to his older brother Fidel Castro, the leader of a revolutionary group whose goal was to overthrow the Batista dictatorship in Cuba.

Mexico. Fidel Castro and Guevara's room.

Initially, Che Guevara planned to become a medic in Castro's battle group. However, during military exercises with members of the movement, he was called “the best guerrilla.” After this, Guevara decided to exchange the suitcase with medicines for a machine gun.

The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was to attack Cuba from Mexico.Eighty-two revolutionaries agreed to land in Cuba. Second on the list is Ernesto Guevara.

The Castro brothers buy an old yacht for 12 thousand dollars. She is called “Granma” (Old Lady).

The group departed for Cuba on November 25, 1956. Seven days later, under fire from government troops, the guerrillas land on Los Colorados beach. In this battle, Fidel loses half of his squad. Many were killed, some were shot in captivity.

Those who survived go to the Sierra Maestra mountains. Now here main base partisan

Che Guevara at a partisan base.

An underground radio station begins operating in the mountains. The voice of Ernesto Guevara is constantly heard from the speakers. The fighters call him “Comandante Che” for the interjection che, characteristic of Argentines, borrowed by Guevara from the Guarani Indians, which translates as “friend, buddy.”

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestro mountains.

In 1958, Che met Cuban revolutionary Aleida March.

In February, the revolutionary government declared Guevara a "Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in defeating the dictatorship.

At the end of January 1959 Che Guevara's wife Hilda Gadea comes to Cuba. Guevara told her that he loved another woman and they agreed to divorce.

June 12, 1959 FidelCastro sends Guevara on a three-month tour of 14 countries in Africa and Asia. This allowed Castro to briefly distance himself from Che and his radical Marxism.

Che Guevara in India.

Che spent 12 days in Japan (July 15-27), he took part in negotiations aimed at expanding economic relations with this country.

During the visit, Guevara secretly visited the city of Hiroshima, where the US military blew up atomic bomb. Guevara was shocked after visiting a hospital where atomic bomb survivors were treated.

September 1959. Upon returning to Cuba, Castro appointed Guevara head of the industrialization department, and on October 7, 1959, president of the National Bank of Cuba.

Even as a minister, Guevara works several hours a week in factories and farms.

March 4, 1960 In the port of Havana, the French cargo ship La Coubre with ammunition on board explodes while unloading.

At the time of the explosion, Che Guevara was at a meeting in the building National Institute agrarian reform (INRA). Hearing the explosion, he drove to the scene and spent several hours pulling wounded workers and sailors from the wreckage.

Cuban authorities said the explosion was a sabotage.

The exact casualties from the explosions remain unclear. According to some reports, at least 75 people were killed and about 200 were injured.

It was at the memorial service for the victims of the explosion that photographer Alberto Korda made the most famous photo Che Guevara.

March 1960.

Simone de Beauvoir, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara. Cuba, March 1960. Guevara speaks fluent French.

November 1960. Guevara meets Mao Zedong in China at an official ceremony at the government palace.

On October 30, 1960, a Cuban government mission headed by Ernesto Guevara arrived in Moscow.

October 1962. Guevara played a key role in bringing Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles to Cuba. This fact became the cause of the missile crisis in October 1962. The world was on the brink of nuclear war.

A US patrol aircraft escorts a Soviet cargo ship during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Guevara almost took Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to remove missiles from Cuba as betrayal. On November 5, Che Guevara told Anastas Mikoyan that the USSR, with its “erroneous” step, in his opinion, “destroyed Cuba.”Maoist China did not fail to extract propaganda dividends from what was happening. Employees of the Chinese Embassy in Havana staged “walks among the masses”, during which they accused the USSR of opportunism. After these events, Guevara became more skeptical of the Soviet Union and leaned towards Maoism.

In December 1964 Che Guevara went to New York as head of the Cuban delegation. There he spoke at the United Nations. In an impassioned speech, Guevara criticized the failure of the United Nations to confront the "brutal policies of apartheid" in South Africa and condemned the United States' policies towards its black population.

He later learned that there had been two unsuccessful attempts on his life by Cuban exiles. So Cuban Molly Gonzalez tried to break through the cordon with hunting knife. Another attempt on Guevara's life was Guillermo Novo. A man was arrested near the United Nations headquarters with a bazooka.

Guevara subsequently commented on both incidents: “It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun.”

December 17, 1964. Guevara went to Paris. It was the start of a three-month tour that took him to China, Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Dahomey, Congo-Brazzaville and Tanzania, with stops in Ireland and Czechoslovakia.

February 24, 1965 atIn Algeria, at an economic seminar on Afro-Asian solidarity, Guevara gave a fiery speech. This was his last public appearance on the international stage. In his speech, Guevara criticized the international policy of the USSR and called for the creation of an international communist bloc.

He also ardently supported the struggle of the communists Northern Vietnam and called the nations of others developing countries take up arms and rise up to fight imperialism, as the Vietnamese did.

March 14, 1964 Guevara returns to Cuba and realizes that Fidel's attitude towards him has changed. The Castros are increasingly wary of Guevara's popularity and consider him a potential threat to his policies. What worries Fidel Castro more is that Guevara has become a radical Maoist. This does not suit Fidel, because... Cuba's economy is increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union.

From the first days Cuban Revolution Guevara was considered by many to be a supporter of the Maoist strategy for the development of Latin America and adhered to a plan for the rapid industrialization of Cuba, which repeated the Chinese "Great Leap Forward".

In 1965 Guevara falls out public life and then disappears completely. His whereabouts have long been a great mystery. Che Guevara's departure from the political arena and his subsequent disappearance was explained by the failure of the Cuban industrialization plan, of which he was the author, and serious disagreements with the pragmatic Castro in relation to both economics and ideology.

Under pressure from the international community regarding Guevara's fate, Castro said that he would tell where Che Guevara was whenever he wanted. However, the pressure on Castro continues unabated and on October 3 he will release an undated letter allegedly written to him by Guevara several months ago. In it, Guevara reaffirmed his solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, but declared his intention to leave Cuba to fight for the revolutionary cause abroad. In addition, he resigned from all his government and party positions, and also renounced his honorary Cuban citizenship.

Guevara's movements are kept secret for the next two years.

1965 37-year-old Guevara goes to the Congo and takes part in the guerrilla war. Guevara's goal is to export the revolution. Guevara believes that Africa is the weak link of imperialism and therefore has enormous revolutionary potential. Upon learning of the plan for the war in the Congo, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, with whom Che was friends, called it “unreasonable” and doomed to failure. But despite this warning, Guevara led an operation to support the Congolese Marxists.

Guevara and 12 of his Cuban friends arrived in the Congo on April 24, 1965. Soon after, about a hundred more Afro-Cubans joined the unit.

For some time, the detachment collaborated with the local guerrilla leader Laurent Désiré Kabila.

Laurent Desiree Kabila. 1964

However, disappointed in the discipline of Kabila’s troops, Guevara called him “a man for an hour” and left the Congo...

In his diary, he cited the incompetence of local leaders as the main reason for the failure of the uprising.

1966 Guevara lived illegally in Prague for six months. He was treated in a sanatorium for malaria, which he contracted in the Congo. During this time, he wrote Congolese memoirs, summarizing the entire experience of military operations and outlined plans for two more books on philosophy and economics.

Then he made himself new false documents in the name of Adolfo Mena Gonzalez and left for South America.

October 3, 1966. Bolivia, La Paz. In the sixties it was the only metropolis in Bolivia. It was easy to get lost in its tangled quarters.

On October 3, 1966, Mexican businessman Adolfo Mena Gonzalez arrived here. A man of indeterminate age, wearing glasses, with large bald patches, he did not stand out in any way among the traders who flew in daily from Sao Paulo. A suite was booked for the businessman at the Copacabana Hotel. It was Ernesto Che Guevara. Authentic photographs document how Che changes his appearance from start to finish. He came here illegally to start his last war. Here he is last time in my life I slept in comfort, on a bed with a sheet and a blanket.

Che Guevara took a selfie using a mirror in his hotel room.

On the morning of November 4, 1966 and Guevara arrived at the Copacabana Hotel in a Toyota jeep that belonged to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolivia.

Che was traveling to the Rio Grande River area. There, on an abandoned ranch, a base was already ready for him. The ranch belonged to Che Guevara's close friend, whom he called by her Russian name Tanya.

Tanya acquired a ranch in Bolivia, which became a partisan base, on Guevara’s instructions. Her real name was Tamara Bunke, but Ernesto kept it a secret. Tanya was a Cuban intelligence agent in Bolivia, a Stasi agent, and at the same time the mistress of the current President of Bolivia.

Guevara met Tamara in East Berlin, where he came as Cuba's ambassador on special assignments. Tamara Bunke is an ideal candidate to constantly accompany such a guest. She speaks five languages, is incredibly charming and open. Guevara is delighted with his translator. Tamara Bunke arrived in Bolivia in November 1964 under the name of Laura Gutierrez, an ethnographer from Argentina.

Guevara decided to call his partisan group the “National Liberation Army.” On New Year's Eve 1966, Tanya and Secretary General Communist Party of Bolivia Mario Monje.

Monje and Guevara.

Soon Monkhe left the camp, but Tanya remained. Now the guerrilla group consisted of 16 Cubans, 26 Bolivians, Peruvians and Argentines. With a total of 47 militants, Tanya was the only woman in the squad.

1967 From time to time, reports appear in the world press that Guevara is waging a guerrilla war in Bolivia. On May 1 in Havana, the acting Minister of the Armed Forces, Major Juan Almeida, announced that Guevara had "raised the banner of revolution somewhere in Latin America."

June July . Guevara's detachment wages continuous battles with detachments of the Bolivian regular army. Many of his comrades died. About 2,000 government soldiers were mobilized to fight the partisans.

Government soldiers are moving towards the partisan area.

August 1, 1967 at Two CIA agents arrived in La Paz. Cuban-American Gustavo Villoldo and Felix Rodriguez. Their task is to organize the hunt for Che Guevara.

Major Robert Shelton arrived from the United States to train Bolivian soldiers.

August 14, 1967. The army captured one of the rebel camps, where, among other things, the soldiers found many photographs of partisans carelessly left behind by Tamara Bunke.

One of the photographs of those who fell into the hands of Bolivian soldiers. In the photo are fighters from Guevara's squad: Urbano, Miguel Marcos, Chang (El Chino), Pacho and Coco.

August 20, 1967. The military learned that Guevara was in Bolivia after they captured the French socialist writer Regis Debreu, nicknamed Danton, in the conflict zone. Shortly before this, Debreu arrived to record an interview with the partisan leader and decided to remain in the detachment. He was transported to the jungle by Bolivian communists. After a month of partisan life, Debra could not stand it. And he asked Guevara to let him go. Together with Debre, the artist Ciro Roberto Bustos, nicknamed Carlos, decided to leave.Guevara made the decision to let his people go. It was almost suicide. After all, Che knew that if Debra fell into the hands of the soldiers, he would not withstand even the first interrogation. And yet, for some reason, Guevara allows them to leave.

Soon Debra and Bustos fell into the clutches of the Bolivian security service. Under torture, Debray and Bustos told everything they knew about Guevara's squad.

Debra and Bustos after their arrest.

The head of the special operation to capture Debre and Bustos, Gary Prado, later recalled: “When we caught Regis Debre, it was from him that we learned that the detachment was led by Che Guevara. From the deserters whom we caught in previous months, we knew that there were foreigners and Cubans in the detachment, but the deserters knew nothing about Che. Now we have received confirmation that the detachment is commanded by Guevara.”
In fairness, it should be noted that it is not only Bolivians who are interrogated in Debre prison. American interrogation experts are squeezing testimony out of him. Even Colombian President Barrientos is present during the interrogations. He then allows the prisoner to have a press conference at which Debray described the plight of the detachment.

According to Debray, the guerrillas suffer from malnutrition, lack of water and lack of shoes. Among other things, there are only 6 blankets in a detachment of 22 people... Debray also said that Guevara and other fighters' arms and legs were swelling and covered with ulcers. But despite the unit's plight, Debray said Guevara was optimistic about the future of Latin America and noted that Guevara "resigned to die. And that he believes his death will be a renaissance of sorts. That Guevara perceives death “as a new rebirth” and “a ritual of renewal of the revolution.”

Unlike Debray, Prado squeezed much more information out of the second prisoner. After all, he had in his hands Ciro Bustos, a professional artist. At the request of the military, he painted portraits of all the partisans. In the end, both Debray and Bustos received sentences of 30 years in prison, but were released after 3 years.

Having received Debra's interrogation materials, Washington transferred fifteen instructors to Bolivia from Vietnam. They began to train Captain Prado's soldiers in anti-guerrilla warfare tactics. The CIA also sent agents to the combat area.

31st August 67 . Che always counted on the help of local peasants. They will provide food and hide it from the soldiers on occasion. More than anyone else, Che trusted Onorato Rojas, the most reliable supplier of provisions. Sometimes Guevara, remembering his medical practice, examined his children.

One day, in the village where Onorato lived, a man named Mario Vargas Salinas, captain of the Bolivian special forces, appeared. He offered Rojas three thousand dollars for information about Che's detachment. Roxas agreed. And he said that one of these days the detachment was going to cross the Rio Grande.

Two years after Onorato's betrayal, Rojas was shot in the face in the street. The killer was never found.

August 3, 1967. Realizing that they were being hunted, Guevara divided his forces into two groups. One was commanded by himself, the other by Juan Acuña Nunez or “Joaquin.” The groups dispersed, never to meet again.

August 31, 1967. Juan Nunez's group was the first to be ambushed. Tamara Bunke was also in this group. When the guerrillas began to ford the river, the commander of a detachment of government troops, Captain Mario Vargas, gave the order to shoot.

Mario Vargas Salinas, a retired general, recalls: “The capture of Che Guevara was our task, but it was a surprise for us that the detachment was divided, and Guevara was not in the group, but was led by a Cuban army officer, Joaquin. The group began to wade across the river, without even making sure that everything around was clear. When the partisans reached the middle of the river, the soldiers opened fire and destroyed the group in five minutes. One of the bodies was carried downstream. It was a woman. We had no idea that there was a woman in the group. We didn't know about it."

The commander of the capture group was clearly lying in his memories. Tamara Bunke's corpse was pulled out of the river a few days later. The photo shows that Tamara not only has her hair cut, but both breasts have been cut out...

Che outlived “Agent Tanya” by exactly forty days. He never believed in her death.

Ernesto Che Guevara, from the Bolivian Diary: “September 7. Radio “La Cruz del Sur” announces that the body of Tanya the partisan has been found on the banks of the Rio Grande, the message does not seem truthful. And on September 8, the radio reported that President Barrientos was present at the burial of the remains of the partisan Tanya, who was buried in a Christian manner.”

President Barrientos (center, wearing a tie).

President Barrientos himself personally flew in to identify the body. He was not interested in Che Guevara, but in an unknown partisan. The president knew the dead woman as Laura Gutierrez, Guevara called her Tamara Bunke, and his associates called her Tanya. Three years before her death, she moved to Bolivia and began preparing for guerrilla warfare. In order to legalize herself, she found the most reliable way - she became the president’s mistress...

October 7, 1967. A month after Tanya died breaking out of encirclement, Guevara made a similar attempt. At that time he had seventeen people left. This detachment was finished on October 8th.

The rebels were surrounded in the gorge of the Yura River (Yuro). The capture operation was commanded by the same captain Gary Prado. Four partisans were killed on the spot. The rest tried to break through the encirclement. Only four succeeded.

Guevara, was wounded in the leg and captured, along with two comrades.

When they opened aimed fire at Guevara, he shouted: “Don’t shoot. I'm Che Guevara. I’m worth more alive than dead.” For a long time the soldiers could not believe that this hungry ragamuffin had fought against them.

Che Guevara was interrogated and taken to a school in a mountain village called La Higuera. Che Guevara and his wounded comrades Chino and Willy were locked in the school. Chino was dying, the soldiers finished him off. Last Man One of the civilians who spoke to Che was a schoolteacher named Julia Cortes. Captain Prado ordered her to take food to Guevara.

The school where Che Guevara was shot.

The next day, the commander of the Eighth Division, Colonel (later General) Joaquin Centeno Anaya, CIA agent Felix Rodriguez and the head of military intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Andres Selic Sean, arrived in the village by helicopter. They had in their hands an order from President Barrientos, which contained only two numbers - 500 and 600. They meant “Gevara” to be “shot.”

On October 9, 1967 at 13.30 the order was carried out. The sentence was carried out by Sergeant Mario Teran. Che Guevara was executed in a school in La Higuera on the personal orders of the President of Bolivia.

Sergeant Mario Teran. The man who shot Che Guevara.

A year and a half later, on April 27, 1969, Bolivian President Barrientos died in a plane crash in the Bolivian Sierra. It was sabotage, but the perpetrators remained unfound. Barrientos was first on the death list among those responsible for the death of Che Guevara.

The commander of the operation to defeat Che Guevara's detachment is Captain Gary Prado.

ACCORDING TO Gary Prado: “We went pursue the rest of the partisans andWe returned to La Higuera already in the afternoon. When we got to the village, we found that Che had already been shot. Non-commissioned officer Mario Teran killed the Comandante with the first shot, but the soldiers were ordered to fire several more shots at Che's dead body. They were going to put it on display for journalists. It was necessary to present the matter as if Che Guevara had died in battle.

Photo of Che Guevara immediately after the execution. The photo was recently released to the public. For a long time it was kept in a private archive.

Andres Selic in the center, in uniform. Celebrating the successful completion of the operation. Four years later, Andres Selic, who beat Che Guevara before his death, was himself tortured to death by torture in a prison cell. He was accused of terrorism, of preparing an assassination attempt on the next Bolivian dictator, General Banzer. This was the fifth death. And five years later, Joaquin Centeno, the same colonel who commanded the execution, was shot dead in Paris.

But Mario Teran, who shot Guevara, is still alive to this day. But what he got was probably worse than death. Misfortunes haunt him to this day. Soon after the execution he went crazy. In 1969, Mario Teran tried to commit suicide. He jumped from the window of a high-rise building in the city of Santa Cruz, but survived. After that, he was kept in a closed mental hospital for several years. When Teran came out of there, he became blind.

After Guevara was shot, CIA agent Rodriguez took away several of the Comandante's personal belongings, including Che Guevara's watch, which he continued to wear many years later and loved to show to journalists. Today, some of these things, including Che Guevara's flashlight, can be seen on display at the CIA.

Che Guevara shortly before his execution. CIA agent Felix Rodriguez is on the left.

Rodriguez managed to take out many photographs and documents, including Guevara’s locks.

October 10, 1967. IN The military tied Guevara's body to the skids of the helicopter on which Centeno Anaya arrived and transported him to the town of Vallegrande. It was there, in the laundry room of a local hospital, that photographs of Che Guevara lying like Christ were taken.

The famous photo was taken by photographer Freddy Alberto. Che's body was placed on the table for washing clothes. This was the only privilege given to the commandant. The bodies of the remaining partisans were dumped on the floor.

Bolivian Freddy Alborta made a series in October 1967 latest pictures fiery revolutionary. The photographs were taken after the Comandante's death. Photographs of Guevara's body, stretched out on a table in the laundry room of a hospital in one of the remote Bolivian villages, made the rounds of newspapers around the world and made the photographer famous. . But despite the stunning fame of these photographs, Alborta himself received only $75 for them.

Posthumous photographs of Che Guevara.

Thus ended Che Guevara's attempt to stir up a Marxist rebellion in Bolivia. Guevara was captured and killed several times in the chest. The photograph shows several officers standing around the killed revolutionary, pointing out bullet wounds. On the other he lies tied to a stretcher...

At night, on the orders of the Bolivian Interior Minister (and part-time CIA agent) Antonio Arguedas, the hands of Che's corpse were cut off and preserved in formaldehyde.

The minister was going to send the hands to Washington as proof of Che's death. But then I changed my mind. And he sent them to Cuba, along with a photocopy of Ernesto's diary.

On February 24, 2000, a grenade exploded in the hands of Antonio Arguedas. For some reason he carried her home. This is the official version of the death of the former minister and CIA agent. Investigators could not find anything to suggest it was a homicide.

On October 15, 1967, Castro admitted that Guevara was dead and declared three days of mourning throughout the island.

October 11, 1967. After a military doctor amputated Che Guevara's arms, his body and the bodies of his comrades (Chino and Chang) were handed over to several Bolivian officers. They loaded the corpses into a truck and took them away in an unknown direction. All the bodies were secretly dumped into a trench at the nearby Valle Grande airport.

Since then, the location of Guevara's burial site has remained a state secret in Bolivia. Few knew the secret of the unknown grave. Moreover, they all remained stubbornly silent for thirty years, dying one after another.

The long silence was finally broken in November 1995. Former Bolivian officer and now General Mario Vargas Salinas said that he took part in secret burial on the night of October 11, 1967. According to him, the commander and his comrades were buried in a hole dug by a bulldozer at the edge of the landing strip.

Following the revelations of Vargas Salinas, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada personally initiated the creation of a commission to search for the bodies. After several weeks of excavations at the airport, the remains of several guerrillas were found, but not of Guevara.

Cleaning the bones of Che Guevara.

However, the commission continued the search. On Castro's orders, a group of Cuban forensic experts and historians arrived to help them. On July 1, 1997, they scanned the ground with ground penetrating radar and discovered several “anomalies.” This is how Bolivian and Cuban experts found the burial site.

We found a mass grave. All the bodies were thrown into the pit at the same time,” one of the Argentine experts, Alejandro Inchauregu, commented on the find. - Moreover, three bodies were lying on top of each other. One skeleton had no arms.

In addition to the missing hands, another detail strengthened the researchers' belief that the remains belonged to Che Guevara: there were traces of plaster in the pocket of the jacket that the skeleton was wearing without hands. It was known that on the same evening that Guevara's arms were amputated, his death mask was also removed. So traces of gypsum could be remnants of this process.

Archaeologists are unearthing the remains of Che Guevara.

October 17, 1997. The remains of Che Guevara and six of his comrades were transported to Havana and then buried with military honors in a specially built mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara (Cuba).

1998 The bullet-riddled body of partisan Laura Gutierrez Bauer, better known as “Tanya,” was found in a burial place near the city of Valle Grande.

Guevara remains Cuba's beloved national hero. His image adorns the 3 peso bill.

In Guevara's homeland in Argentina, a 12-meter bronze statue of the Comandante was erected in 2008.

Guevara is considered a saint by many Bolivian peasants under the name "San Ernesto".

His face has become the most replicated image in the world. It is printed on T-shirts, hats, posters and swimsuits. Ironically, he made a huge contribution to the consumer culture that he despised immensely.

Especially for the site “Secrets of the World”. When using the material, an active link to the site required.

It is 80 years since the birth of Tamara Bunke, an outstanding German intelligence officer, comrade-in-arms of Che Guevara, better known under the pseudonym “Tanya” in honor of the legendary Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Tamara Bunke was born on November 19, 1937 in Buenos Aires, where her parents fled from Germany to escape Nazi persecution. Her older brother Olaf, whom I met, was born in Germany in 1935 and became a famous mathematician, a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR - he still lives in Berlin today. Father Erich Bunke came from a German working family, was a physical education teacher, and his mother Nadya Bider was born in Odessa and also worked as a teacher. In 1936, already in exile, my parents joined the Argentine Communist Party and became co-founders of the “Other Germany” group. In 1952, the Bunke family returned to Germany and settled in the city of Stalinstadt (present-day Eisenhüttenstadt), where a large metallurgical plant them. I.V. Stalin.
After graduating from school in 1956, Tamara worked as a pioneer leader in one of the Berlin schools. She spoke Spanish, German and Russian, sang well, played piano, guitar and accordion, and practiced shooting and ballet. In 1958, she was enrolled in the Faculty of Romance at the University of Berlin. Humboldt. Since 1960, she has been listed as an agent of the Main Intelligence Directorate (Hauptverwaltung A) of the GDR MGB under number 430/60. Lieutenant Colonel Gunther Mannel was responsible for the South American direction there. According to a certificate from the GDR MGB dated 1962, Tamara Bunke was planned to work first in Argentina and then in the USA.
Tamara was often used as a translator, and when Che Guevara visited Leipzig, where students from Latin America were studying, in December 1960, she accompanied him on this trip. Her famous fellow countryman, the leader of the recent Cuban Revolution, who was considered a hero throughout the world, made an indelible impression on 23-year-old Tamara.
By this time, she had already submitted an application asking to be deprived of her German citizenship and to be allowed to travel to Argentina to continue fighting for the cause of the working class there. On December 12, 1960, the Central Committee of the SED approved her petition, but until the end of the month she continues to work as a translator with the delegation of the National Ballet of Cuba led by its director Alicia Alonso - who, by the way, still heads it at 96 years old. With the help of Alicia, Tamara received an official invitation from the State Cuban Institute of Friendship of Peoples (ICAP) and in May 1961 received a seat on the plane that flew with the delegation of the National Ballet of Cuba to their homeland from Prague. She was probably lucky, because two weeks earlier Lieutenant Colonel Mannel had fled to the West, having betrayed his agents to the Western intelligence services - she could have been barred from leaving.

In Cuba, Tamara studied journalism at the University of Havana and worked as a translator, and in 1962 she joined the revolutionary people's militia and has been wearing a uniform ever since. Planning his raid into Bolivia, Comandante Che Guevara chooses her as an assistant. She was supposed to infiltrate the ruling Bolivian circles and provide support for the partisans. In May 1963, Tamara, now under the pseudonym “Tanya,” joined the Cuban foreign intelligence service Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) and for a year underwent military and special training, studied secret writing, radio communications, and the rules of secrecy. With one of her Cuban instructors, Ulises Estrada, who would later write a book about her, “Tanya. With Che Guevara in the Bolivian underground,” she began an affair. Another of her instructors was Dariel Alarcon Ramirez, known under the pseudonym “Benigno,” who participated with Che Guevara in the Cuban Revolution and was with him in the Congo. Subsequently, he would be one of the five survivors of the Bolivian campaign.
After completing her training, in order to further develop the legend, in April 1964, “Tanya” was sent to Western Europe, and then to Czechoslovakia. After that, she illegally, with documents in the name of Laura Gutierrez Bauer, an Argentine of German origin, ethnographer, daughter of an Argentine entrepreneur and German anti-fascist, arrived in Bolivia in October 1964. The country was ruled by corrupt generals and politicians, the miners eked out a miserable existence, and the peasant masses - mostly Indians who did not speak Spanish - lived in poverty and ignorance. The revolutionary forces were weakened by the schismatic activities of Trotskyists, Maoists and anarchists. And yet, Che, as evidenced by his Bolivian Diary, believed that continental guerrilla would change the situation in the country and lead to the collapse of American imperialism and the triumph of socialism on the American continent, and therefore on a global scale. This was worth living and dying for, and “Tanya” happened to be in the thick of things at this dramatic historical moment.
To obtain Bolivian citizenship, she marries a Bolivian, but soon divorces him, gives private lessons in German, which allows her to make the necessary connections in high circles Bolivian society, including President Rene Barrientos. Soon she becomes the personal secretary of Gonzalo Lopez Muñoz, head of the department of press and information under the president. She explains her trips to remote areas of the country by her interest in Indian folk songs (later it turns out that she actually collected a unique collection of Indian folklore). These expeditions allow her to select a place for the central base of the future guerrilla: in July 1966, Che Guevara’s ally Roberto Peredo (pseudonym “Coco”) buys a ranch or farm for 30 thousand Bolivian pesos ($2,500), which went down in history under the name “Calamina” "on the Nyancahuazu River 285 km south of Santa Cruz. The area was infested with poisonous midges and ticks, which made it difficult to inhabit, and was located far from the mining centers, but closer to Argentina - the homeland of “Tanya” and Che.
In September, an active supporter of the Cuban Revolution, French journalist Regis Debray, comes to Bolivia under his own name. A friend of Tanya Lopez Muñoz accredited him and gave him permission to free movement around the country, allegedly to collect materials for a book about Bolivia. Debray began to travel around the areas designated for the guerrillas, diligently buying maps and photographing various objects.
In November 1966, Che Guevara arrived by plane from Sao Paulo (Brazil) to La Paz. He changed his appearance so much that when he went to say goodbye to his wife and daughter Celia in Havana, she did not recognize him. A gray-haired old man without a beard and with a receding hairline now walked freely through the streets of the Bolivian capital, and in his pocket was a passport in the name of the Uruguayan businessman Ramon Benitez Fernandez.

double click - edit image

On November 7, Che arrives at the Calamina ranch, and “Tanya” gets a job as the host of the popular radio program “Advice for Unrequited Lovers” on Radio Santa Cruz. From here she could send encrypted messages over the air, which were received by the partisans in the mountains. This was extremely important, since the local population, consisting mainly of Guarani Indians, was politically extremely backward and ignorant and did not provide adequate assistance to the guerrillas. Therefore, through “Tanya” the detachment’s main connection with the outside world was maintained and its supplies were maintained.
On November 24, Major Juan Vitalio Acuña Nunez (pseudonym “Joaquin”), one of the most active participants in the Cuban Revolution, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Che’s closest ally, arrived in Bolivia using Panamanian passport No. 65736 in the name of Joaquin Rivera Nunez. Soon he appeared at the Calamina ranch, where Che and the future fighters of his squad, mostly officers of the Cuban army, were already located. December 12 Che appoints "Joaquin" as his deputy.
On December 31, “Tanya” arrives at “Calamina”, accompanying the first secretary of the Communist Party of Bolivia (CPB), Mario Monge Molina. All day and all night, Che negotiated with Monche, which he documented in his diary: “In the morning, without entering into an argument with me, Monche let me know that he was leaving and would announce his resignation from the leadership of the party. In his opinion, the mission is over. He left looking as if he was going to the scaffold. I have a feeling that after learning from Coco about my determination not to give in strategic issues, he took advantage of this to accelerate the break, since his arguments are untenable. After lunch, I gathered everyone and explained Monkhe’s behavior.”
Monje himself recalled: “There were several Bolivians there to whom I said: ‘There are two lines: the party line and the Cuban line. The choice is voluntary. There will be nothing for this, no repressive measures. But by following the Cubans, you cannot act on behalf of the party." In his diary, Che Guevara wrote: “As I expected, Monje’s attitude was evasive at first and treacherous later.”
On January 8 and 10, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPB, meeting in La Paz, ratified the Monje resolution. This means that Che finds himself without the rear support of the communists. Despite this, on March 25, at a meeting of his detachment near the M-26 camp, he announced the creation of the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (ELN), announced the ELN Manifesto and an appeal to Bolivian miners. And although after this the statement of the CPB on March 30, 1967 said that “the Communist Party declares its solidarity with the struggle of the patriotic partisans,” the outcome of this struggle was a foregone conclusion. For the death of Che's partisan detachment in Bolivia, Fidel Castro primarily blamed Mario Monje, who soon arrived safely in the Soviet Union, received Soviet citizenship, long time worked at the Institute of Latin America of the USSR Academy of Sciences and still lives happily in Moscow.
As for “Tanya,” on the first day of the new year, Che sends her to Argentina, conveying with her New Year’s wishes to his father, Don Ernesto, in which he calls her a fleeting star: “I entrusted my wishes to a fleeting star who met me on the way along the will of the Magic King."
For the first time, “Tanya” visited her homeland, but her efforts to gain effective support from local revolutionaries also did not lead to success. On March 5, 1967, the “Fleeting Star” in a tunic, trousers and with a machine gun returns to the Calamina ranch, accompanying the Argentinean Ciro Roberto Bustos (Pelado), the Bolivian Moises Guevara with a detachment of 20 people, the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang Navarro (Chino) and Frenchman Regis Debray, nicknamed "Danton". In violation of Che's order not to be at the base, she waited for him here for two weeks from March 5 to March 19. During this time, two of Moisés Guevara's volunteers deserted the squad and gave the authorities in Camiri all the information about him, including a description of the “beautiful terrorist.” During a police raid, a jeep parked by “Tanya” was found with her notebook containing numerous secret reports, which led to her exposure. Che Guevara commented on this event in his war diary: “As a result of her exposure, two years of good and patient work were lost.”

double click - edit image

After this, the “Fleeting Star” - again against the will of Che - joined the detachment, which on March 24 left the Kalamine villa and the nearby M-26 camp and went on a raid. Among the 60 guerrillas whom the commandant declared on March 25 as the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, “Fleeting Star” was the only woman. On April 17, near the town of Bella Vista, Che Guevara divided his detachment into two parts. He placed 17 men under “Joaquin” and ordered them to conduct a small military operation in the vicinity of Bella Vista in order to divert attention from the main forces. Then the Joaquin detachment, avoiding clashes, had to wait for Che Guevara for three days.
Subordinate to “Joaquin” were the sick commanders “Alejandro” (Cuban Major Gustavo Machin Oed de Beche), “Fleeting Star” (Tamara Bunke), Moises Guevara and the Bolivian “Serapio” (Serapio Aquino Tudela), “Marcos” (Cuban Major Antonio Sanchez Diaz), "Braulio" (Cuban Lieutenant Israel Reyes Sayas), Bolivian "Victor" (Casildo Condori Vargas), Bolivian "Walter" (Walter Arencibia Ayala), Bolivian "Polo" (Apolinar Aquino Quispe), Bolivian "Pedro" ( one of the leaders of the Bolivian Komsomol Antonio Fernandez), the Peruvian doctor “Negro” (José Restituto Cabrera Flores), the Bolivian doctor “Ernesto” (Freddy Maimura Hurtado) and four “demoted” Bolivians - “Paco”, “Pepe”, “Chingolo” and "Eusebio."
Soon the radio failed and communication with Che's main detachment was cut off - while the Joaquin detachment advanced along the northern bank of the Rio Grande River, while Che operated on the southern bank. On May 23, the Bolivian “Pepe” (Julio Velasco Montagna) fled from the “Joaquin” detachment, who surrendered to the Bolivian troops and told everything he knew about the “Joaquin” detachment. This did not save the traitor - on May 29, the rangers killed him. Soon, units of the 4th and 8th divisions of the Bolivian army began a targeted search for the separated detachment. When army helicopters began searching for guerrillas from the air in the Bella Vista area, and the Bolivian Air Force began spraying napalm in the jungle, “Joaquin” decided to leave the zone assigned to him by Che Guevara. On June 4, the detachment loses “Marcos” and “Victor”, who are ambushed while going to the peasants for food.
For more than a month, “Joaquin” manages to evade the Bolivian army. On July 9, on the Higuera River, the Bolivian “Serapio” fell behind the detachment and was killed in a skirmish with rangers. A month later, on August 9, the Bolivian “Pedro” dies in battle. Then the demoted “Eusebio” and “Chingolo” flee from the detachment and report to the authorities new information about the state of the partisans, their hiding places and plans.

double click - edit image

With the remaining ten fighters, “Joaquin” again goes in search of Che. On August 30, he went to the hut of the peasant Onorato Rojas on the banks of the Rio Grande. Honorato Rojas, who was promised $3,000 by the authorities for his help in the fight against the guerrillas, volunteered to show “Joaquin” a good ford across the Rio Grande and supply the detachment with food. When the guerrillas left, leaving money for Rojas, he sent his 8-year-old son to the La Loja garrison, 13 kilometers from the hut. At dawn on August 31, a unit of Captain Mario Vargas Salinas approached Rojas' house.
At 17:00 “Joaquin” came to Onorato Rojas with his fighters. They took food and, accompanied by Rojas, went to the Vado del Yeso ("chalk ford"), also known as the Puerto Mauricio ford near the Nyancahuazú River, where Captain Vargas had already set up an ambush. Around 18:00, Roxas said goodbye to the fighters on the banks of the Rio Grande and left. "Joaquin", without sending forward reconnaissance and without studying the situation, began crossing the entire detachment in an Indian chain.
“Braulio” walked first with a machete in his hands, “Alejandro” second, followed by “a thin blonde in a light green blouse and camouflage-colored soldier’s trousers, with a duffel bag and a machine gun on her shoulders,” then the rest. “Joaquin” himself completed the chain. When the rangers opened fire, all 10 fighters were already in the water. “Fleeting Star” was just in the rapids when a bullet hit her in the chest. Most of the partisans were killed on the spot; “Joaquin” himself managed to get out of the river and fell dead on the bank.
By an evil irony of fate, the next day, September 1, 1967, the main detachment of Che Guevara came to the house of Onorato Rojas, a meeting with whom “Joaquin” unsuccessfully sought for four months. On September 4, Che learned about the death of his comrades from a Bolivian radio broadcast. On September 7, he wrote in his diary: “Radio La Cruz del Sur announces the discovery of the corpse of Tanya the guerrilla on the banks of the Rio Grande. The testimony does not leave a true impression.” The commandant will meet his own death on October 9, marking the fortieth day since the death of the “Fleeting Star”.
The body of the “Fleeting Star” was found a week later, three kilometers downstream of the river. President Barrientos arrived at the site of the discovery by helicopter. The body was strapped to the skids of a helicopter and transported to Valle Grande. A letter was found in the deceased’s duffel bag: “ Dear Mom, I'm afraid. I don't know what will happen to me and everyone else. Probably nothing. I don't know what will happen to me. I try to remember what courage is. I am nobody. I’m not even a woman or a girl anymore, just a child.”
In September 1998, a group of Cuban medical experts, traveling to Bolivia in the footsteps of Che Guevara's squad, identified the remains of Tamara Bunke, as well as the remains of other guerrillas, in Valle Grande. With the consent of her family, they were transported to Cuba and in December 1998 they were solemnly buried in memorial complex"Mausoleum of Che Guevara" in the city center of Santa Clara.

double click - edit image

During socialism, in the GDR alone, more than 200 schools, youth brigades and kindergartens bore the name of Tamara Bunke - which, however, they were deprived of after the annexation of the GDR by West Germany. Her mother Nadja Bunke lived in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin until her death in 2003. After her daughter's death, she quit her job to devote herself entirely to preserving her memory. She tried to fight numerous attacks and insults against her, including in court.
On April 27, 1969, Bolivian President Rene Barrientos died in a helicopter crash in Arque (Cochabamba). Few people doubt that the president's helicopter was shot down. In the same year, on his farm, purchased for 30 pieces of silver, the peasant Onorato Rojas was shot in the back of the head.
Colonel Quintanilla, chief of the secret police, on whose orders the amputations were carried out hands of the dead Che was rewarded with the position of Consul General of Bolivia in Hamburg. On April 1, 1971, he was expecting a visit from a charming blonde who had approached him the day before about a Bolivian visa. What happened next was like a thriller. The young lady grabbed a revolver from her purse and shot the consul three times point-blank in the chest. The bullet entry holes formed a regular “V” triangle, which meant Victory, or Victory. Everything became clear when the arriving police found a note - on a piece of paper it said: “Victory or death!” - the motto of the Bolivian guerrillas.