by Mitch Weiss
But as we traveled through Bolivia and talked with dozens of people who were involved in the campaign or lived in the villages in the operations area, we discovered another important part of the story: the manhunt. For nearly seven months in 1967, fear gripped Bolivia while soldiers tracked the guerrillas. The Bolivians helped us understand what life was like during those months—how they believed that the nation might at any moment be overrun by Communist guerrillas. They followed every development of the manhunt in newspapers and on radio broadcasts, and like Americans who remember where they were when they heard about the September 11 terrorist attacks or President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, many Bolivians remember Che’s capture and death as a defining moment for them.
Looking back, it’s easy to understand their fear. The United States had precious little intelligence about Che or his movements. The Bolivian high command stoked the chaos by claiming Che had hundreds of well-trained Cuban guerrillas. At the time, it made sense. Che’s reputation as a skilled guerrilla leader preceded him. No one imagined that his “army” was so small, skinny, and scared or that he’d already committed a series of blunders that would seal his fate.
Che believed, with good reason, that Bolivia was ripe for revolution. Long considered to have South America’s weakest military, Bolivia also had a history of coups. The government, especially under Barrientos, was unstable and weak.
For his operation Che picked a remote part of Bolivia with a treacherous landscape, making it difficult to maneuver.
The area in southeastern Bolivia was sparsely populated, and the people who lived there—the campesinos—were suspicious of outsiders. The early stages of a revolution depend on secrecy—mobilizing rural forces against the government. Yet the campesinos reported the guerrillas’ every move to authorities. That’s how Che’s band was initially discovered.
If Che had picked another area to stage his revolution—one closer to the mines and urban networks of La Paz—he might have had a chance. There was real discontent in the country. Many were unhappy with Barrientos for seizing power. The unions battled the government over living and working conditions. Che could have capitalized on the mining massacre and the protests that followed. Instead, he was stuck in an unforgiving part of the country, with no way to get out his message.
The Bolivian military didn’t know it, but Che scrambled from village to village to escape detection. He was more an on-the-lam fugitive than revolutionary commander.
In addition, a serious rift developed within the rebel band. The Bolivian Communists wanted to lead the revolution, but Che insisted the Cubans stay in control. At that point, many Bolivian Communists withdrew their support, leaving Che’s army without a supply pipeline.
Even at the height of his fame, Che only led about fifty guerrillas. Many of them—driven by Che’s relentless marching and desire to replicate the Cuban Revolution—had become so disillusioned with the campaign they were looking for ways to leave.
One of his most grave errors was dividing his thin guerrilla forces into two groups. For the final four months of the campaign the two groups constantly searched for each other. They never met again. In this way Che lost Joaquin, one of his most faithful men, a friend who had served with Che since the Sierra Maestra in 1958.
As a student of history, Prado still doesn’t understand many of Che’s moves. They defy conventional military wisdom, he says. His bookcases are filled with hundreds of books about war and strategy. Prado is retired and now teaches history at a university.
He looks the part of a retired general with his thick mane of silver hair and neatly trimmed mustache. He spends most of his days at home.
Prado is confined to a wheelchair. In 1981, he was shot in the back while putting down a right-wing Falangist takeover attempt at an Occidental Petroleum site in Bolivia. It left him paralyzed below the waist.
It also gave him time to reflect on his life and to write a book about Che’s campaign, called The Defeat of Che Guevara: Military Response to Guerrilla Challenge in Bolivia, in which he detailed his nation’s military response to the guerrilla threat. The text includes his conversations with Che.
He understands why President René Barrientos Ortuno ordered Che Guevara’s execution, but he wishes justice could have been dispensed by a Bolivian court. For years, he had to fight allegations that he played a role in Che’s death.
“There have been so many rumors over the years. They are wrong. It’s been frustrating,” Prado says.
Che’s defeat helped solidify Barrientos’s government. But in April 1969, eighteen months after Che’s death, the rotor on Barrientos’s presidential helicopter snagged electricity cables running through a rural canyon. Barreintos was killed in the crash.
Vice President Luis Adolfo Siles stepped up, but like most governments in Bolivia, his tenure was short-lived. General Alfredo Ovando Candía seized power a few months later, but was himself deposed after a year.
He died in January 1982.
Of Che’s band of guerrillas, only three made it out of Bolivia alive. On February 22, 1968, after crossing the Andes on foot, three Cuban and two Bolivian guerrillas reached the Chilean border. Chilean socialist senator Salvador Allende welcomed the refugees. The two Bolivian guerrillas decided to stay inside their country and were later killed by police.
Regis Debray, the French Marxist, was convicted on November 17, 1967, of having been part of Che’s guerrillas. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison but set free in 1970 after an international campaign for his release. His celebrity supporters included Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, General Charles de Gaulle, and Pope Paul VI.
Debray didn’t give up his revolutionary ways. He sought refuge in Chile, where he interviewed Allende and wrote The Chilean Revolution. Debray returned to France in 1973 following the coup by Augusto Pinochet. He is alive and living in France.
Some paid a high price for helping Barrientos. In July 1969, in an act of vengeance, Communists gunned down Honorato Rojas, the farmer who betrayed Joaquin’s lost patrol at Yado del Yeso.
For Major Ralph “Pappy” Shelton the Bolivian mission was the highlight of his military career.
Shelton left the army when he returned to Tennessee. He and Margaret eventually divorced. He later remarried.
Shelton went to school. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Memphis State University and later became an executive with the federal Office of Personnel Management in Memphis.
He taught twelve years of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) in the Memphis City schools and served five years as director of Operation Wilderness, a summer “boot camp” program modeled after Outward Bound. Shelton was elected a Sweetwater City commissioner from 2000 to 2006.
Like others, Shelton was contacted over the years to talk about the Bolivia mission. He collected photos, books, and clippings about the Rangers training program. It made him proud, he said—he called it “a classic Green Beret mission.” The training techniques used in Bolivia are still in use today in Afghanistan.
“We did what we had to do,” Shelton recalled. “We turned these boys into soldiers. The mission was a total success. You couldn’t have planned or executed it any better.”
Still, not many people knew the full extent of Shelton’s role. In most history books about Che’s Bolivian campaign, Shelton and the Green Beret mission are relegated to a few paragraphs. The focus is always on Che Guevara.
Shelton died in July 2010. He left behind family and friends and a community who fondly recalled the tough-as-nails commander who did things his way. The La Esperanza schoolhouse is still standing.
For years, many of the Special Forces soldiers who took part in the Bolivian mission couldn’t speak of it because it was a classified exercise. But in time the restrictions expired, and documents have been released. Some of the men have opened up.
“We did a good thing,”
said Peterson, the medic. He said he still takes “great pride” in knowing he played a role in Che’s capture.
All of Pappy Shelton’s Special Forces soldiers, including Peterson, eventually left the army. One kept his promise to a village girl. After the mission was over, Sergeant Alvin Graham returned to Bolivia on leave and married Dorys Roca. Villagers in La Esperanza recalled the excitement.
“There was a big ceremony in the village when he came back,” said Dioniso Valderomas, the farmer who kept a watchful eye on the soldiers so many years ago. “It was beautiful.”
Graham took his bride with him to the base in Panama. He stayed in the army until 1970, then became a high school teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. Dorys Roca became a U.S. citizen in 1971. She never returned to La Esperanza.
Today, the village is much the way it was in 1967. The sugar mill and the outbuildings used for the mission stand vacant on the edge of town. Stories of that time have been passed down. Dozens of villagers fondly recall the guitar-playing major who brought the town together that summer over at Kiosko Hugo. La Esperanza is quiet these days. There are no markers to let the curious know that in 1967 a Special Forces team trained Bolivian conscripts in this sleepy village. It’s hard to imagine that anyone from outside really cares.
“We know what happened. It was an important time for the village,” said Valderomas, whose four children are grown and live nearby.
For Mario Salazar, his days in La Esperanza were among the best of his life. After the Che campaign he stayed in the military for a few years, then left as a sergeant. He returned to his village, got married, and had two children. He worked hard as a farmer and laborer and supported his family.
“I have no regrets,” he said.
One windy September day he escorted us to La Esperanza. It was the first time he had been back in decades. His face lit up when we pulled into the village square. Salazar bounded out of the car and looked around. “It’s the same,” he said.
As he walked, he pointed out familiar places, including the spot where they held the dances. At times, tears would well in the corners of his eyes. This whole place reminded him of his lost youth.
Back in Santa Cruz, he ordered a Bolivian pale ale. He lifted his mug and said “salud” before taking a long swig. He licked his lips and placed his glass down, then turned serious.
“No one in this country appreciates what we did,” he said. “It’s all about Che. But we killed Che. We brought him down. Even in death, he got all the glory. When you think about it, we got no credit.”
Once home in Miami, Rodríguez and Villoldo continued their CIA careers.
Rodríguez became an American citizen in 1969. He flew hundreds of helicopter missions in Vietnam. He trained provincial reconnaissance units for the Phoenix Program, a counterinsurgency group later accused of torturing and murdering suspected South Vietnamese Communists.
In the 1980s, Rodríguez was a key player in the Iran-Contra affair—a complicated scheme to trade arms to Iran in exchange for U.S. hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Part of the proceeds from the arms sales was diverted to fund the “Contras,” anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua.
When the plot came to light, it created a scandal in Washington. Congressional hearings were held to determine whether President Ronald Reagan’s administration knew about the plan.
Rodríguez is retired now. He is president of the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association and chairman of the board for the Bay of Pigs Museum and Library in Miami.
We arrived on a fall morning to meet Rodríguez at the museum. Tucked into a Little Havana neighborhood, it looks more like a house than a memorial to those lost.
Inside, the walls were lined with mementos. Glass cases were filled with photos of the soldiers training and documents about the mission. Weapons and other memorabilia were on display in tribute to the more than one hundred men killed during the failed invasion.
Coming from his office, Rodríguez met us in the hall. His skin was still bronze and his gray hair perfect. He moved quietly like a cat as he ushered us into his office. He had reluctantly agreed to meet with us after several emails. Like Prado, he has talked about the mission many times and published a book about his long career in the CIA.
Sitting there, Rodríguez recalled his time in Bolivia, the planning and the gathering of intelligence. It was a chess game, he said, trying to figure out Che’s next move.
He still regrets not doing more to save Che’s life.
Villoldo worked for the CIA in Latin America and the Caribbean before leaving in 1988. He is now a businessman with fishing, banking, and development companies. Villoldo never stopped fighting Castro, ultimately winning one more victory in 2009: A federal judge awarded Villoldo over $1 billion in damages against the Cuban government for the suicide of his father. Cuba still has not paid the fine. The lawsuit was more symbolic than anything else. It’s unlikely that Cuba will ever pay the judgment.
Despite their successful partnership in Bolivia, Villoldo and Rodríguez no longer speak to one another.
“Unfortunately in the last few years Villoldo started claiming that he was the boss of the operation and I was his radio operator,” Rodríguez said. “Our boss was the American case officer.”
He paused for a moment.
“It is sad. Villoldo and I were very good friends and I have fond memories of our tour in Bolivia,” Rodríguez said.
To this day Che remains a worldwide icon for radical change. His romantic image, heightened by his early, violent death and the power of international media, allowed his appeal to transcend ideological lines.
And it’s that romantic figure that is portrayed in books and movies.
Writer Christopher Hitchens said, “Che’s iconic status was assured because he failed. His story was one of defeat and isolation, and that’s why it is so seductive. Had he lived, the myth of Che would have long ago died.”
Maybe. The way one faces death tells a lot about the man. When Che saw his executioner enter the schoolhouse, he didn’t flinch. He told the soldier, “I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!” The executioner did. Che died alone in a hail of bullets. Even staunch anticommunists admired the way he faced death—unapologetic and defiant to the end.
Che’s diary, a day-by-day recording of the Bolivian campaign, has only added to the legend. He was a prolific writer—friends said he always had a pad and a pen and was disciplined enough to write every day. After his death, the diary was smuggled to Cuba, where it became a publishing sensation. Che’s writing has a clarity that belies his campaign. On September 10, his entry started this way: “A bad day. It began promising, but then, as a result of the poor state of the trail, the animals began to put up a struggle. Finally the mule refused to go any further and we had to leave it on the side.” He continued: “I swam across the river with the mule, but lost my shoes in the process. I am now wearing sandals, and do not particularly enjoy it.” He ended the day by saying: “I forgot to highlight an event. Today, after more than six months, I bathed. This constitutes a record that several others are already approaching.”
In the end, Che’s legacy harkens back to a different time, when the ideological struggle was between democracy and communism. Now the lines are less clear. Capitalism trumps democracy at home, and the “outside” threat comes from religious zealots willing to fly airplanes into buildings or blow themselves up at checkpoints.
One of the final mysteries of Che’s demise took thirty years to unravel: Where was Che’s body?
In 1995 retired Bolivian general Mario Vargas revealed to Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, that Guevara’s body was interred near a Vallegrande airstrip.
The result was a multinational search that lasted more than a year. In July 1997 a team of Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered the remains of seve
n bodies in two mass graves, including one man with amputated hands.
On October 17, 1997, Guevara’s remains, with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with military honors in a specially built mausoleum in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, where he led a decisive military victory of the Cuban Revolution.
Miles away in Havana, a seventeen-ton, five-story steel profile of Che covers the facade of the Interior Ministry headquarters in Revolution Plaza.
His monumental image now is a backdrop to Fidel’s speeches, the icon of the Cuban capital.
The man who served Cuba as a general, banker, hero, and a martyr of revolution now serves a most capitalistic function.
He is a logo.
AFTERWORD
Why the Hunt for Che Matters Today
Ahmed flashed his yellow toothy grin and nodded toward a baseball hat on the table of the operations center.
With his thick black beard and scrawny body, Ahmed looked like a mop top on a stick figure clothed in camouflage. As he waited for me to say the word in Pashtu, his eyebrow climbed up his forehead. If it got any higher, it would hit the back of his collar.
I smiled and said “hat” in Pashtu. He followed by pronouncing the word in English.
He was pleased because he was winning. He was close to beating the “gray one” in our game of wit, intellect, and clash of culture.
We were essentially playing “Show and Tell,” but in our version of this game, Special Forces and Afghan soldiers would compete to see who could describe the objects chosen by the opposing team and translate the words into either English or Pashtu. Whoever got the most translated out of twenty objects won a case of Gatorade or energy drinks.
The game, which started as an icebreaker when my team first arrived, became so popular that before long I was bombarded by Afghans walking past my truck, pointing to weapon magazines, pencils, bread, cups, knives, or any object that they thought they could stump me on while betting a piece of chewing gum or candy. The game was an exercise in rapport building that generated not only cultural understanding but also friendships while expanding vocabulary and providing English training for the Afghans.