Captured wounded on October 8 while leading a guerrilla column meant to spark revolution across South America, Guevara was shot the next day on orders from the Bolivian government, with CIA operatives present. His hands were severed for fingerprint identification and his body hidden for decades. The execution turned Guevara into a global icon of revolutionary martyrdom, his image reproduced on posters and t-shirts for generations after.
Che Guevara spent his last night alive bound in a mud-walled schoolhouse in La Higuera, a hamlet so remote that soldiers had to bring in a radio operator to relay orders from La Paz. President René Barrientos decided execution was safer than a trial that might turn Guevara into a rallying point for sympathizers, so he ordered it done quietly and blamed on combat.
Sergeant Mario Terán, reportedly drunk for courage, drew the short straw among volunteers. Guevara, according to witnesses, told him, "Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man." Terán fired several rounds into his limbs first, then a fatal shot to the chest, to make it look like he had died in battle. He was 39.
His body was lashed to the skid of a helicopter and flown to Vallegrande, where nuns washed it and photographers snapped pictures that eerily echoed depictions of the deposed Christ. Bolivian officers amputated his hands and preserved them in formaldehyde. His remains were buried secretly beneath an airstrip and not found until 1997, after which Cuba gave him a state funeral. Alberto Korda's earlier photograph of Guevara, Guerrillero Heroico, became one of the most reproduced images of the twentieth century.
Key people: Che Guevara, Mario Terán