THERE have been many notable deaths over the past 12 months, and there have been very many which will merit no more than a footnote in history. One such – and, for good reason, he would not have wished it otherwise – was that of Mario Teran, the man who allegedly killed Che Guevara.
Che Guevara was truly a legend, the most famous, and feared, guerrilla leader anywhere, who had relentlessly pursued his revolutionary socialist ideas from central America to Africa and Europe. Son of a wealthy Argentinian family, he had qualified as a doctor but, appalled by the social injustices he encountered over south America, he had thrown in his lot with Fidel Castro of Cuba.
In time, he went on to acquire hero status around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism; the famous 1960 photo of the beret-clad folk hero would appear on countless posters and, it was said, on a million T-shirts.
By 1967, his guerrilla exploits had brought him to Bolivia where, with a small group of fellow fighters, he crossed swords with the regular army, aided by the American CIA, in a tiny village high in the hills. In the ensuing firefight, the outnumbered Guevara finally surrendered, and was taken captive in the mud and thatched schoolhouse of the village. The US wanted to send him for court martial, but the Bolivian president thought otherwise, deciding that the poisonous influence should be disposed of without further ceremony.
And so it was that seven officers of the Bolivian platoon were asked to perform the execution. All seven agreed to volunteer. Then the commanding colonel pointed his finger at Mario Teran with the brief command: ‘You will kill Che’.
Had the young officer known how his life was going to change, he might never have raised his hand. Almost the rest of his life would be spent in hiding and denial. He never gave any hint of his story privately or publicly, either to his six children or to their children, to friends or neighbours. He disappeared, adopting an alias and living an unremarkable life in the labyrinth of Santa Cruz, the country’s biggest city.
His one mistake, shortly after the killing, was to allow himself to be photographed by Paris Match and identified as the Che Guevara killer. Years later, when journalists tracked him down, quoting the photo resemblance, he made enough plausible excuses to sow doubts. There were, he said, two other Mario Terans in the Bolivian army; it could have been one of them, he pleaded. And yes, he did have a souvenir of Che’s handmade smoking pipe, but only because it had been given him several years later by a friendly CIA agent.
But others who were present were less reticent. They remembered Che’s final moments; how his killer, following the order to make it appear that he died from battle wounds, shot him first in the legs. The second round of firing, to his shoulder and heart, ended his life.
Che Guevara’s death, and the image of his laying out on a rough plank in the old schoolhouse, served merely to magnify the myth. The village, and the school, became a shrine, with the guerrilla leader its patron saint. In 1997, his body was repatriated to his adopted Cuba, where national ceremonies were presided over by Fidel Castro.
Mario Teran remained protected by the army and the government. And, until his death, he managed to evade the so called ‘curse of Che’, by which people involved in the death of the guerrilla would themselves meet sudden and violent ends.
COMMENT: The man who killed Che Guevara
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11.01.2024
THERE have been many notable deaths over the past 12 months, and there have been very many which will merit no more than a footnote in history. One such – and, for good reason, he would not have wished it otherwise – was that of Mario Teran, the man who allegedly killed Che Guevara.
Che Guevara was truly a legend, the most famous, and feared, guerrilla leader anywhere, who had relentlessly pursued his revolutionary socialist ideas from central America to Africa and Europe. Son of a wealthy Argentinian family, he had qualified as a doctor but, appalled by the social injustices he encountered over south America, he had thrown in his lot with Fidel Castro of Cuba.
In time, he went on to acquire hero status around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism; the famous 1960 photo of the beret-clad folk hero would appear on countless posters and, it was........
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