Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was executed by Bolivian troops near the town of La Higuera on 9 October 1967, following an ambush. The operation was planned by the CIA and organized by US Special Forces. On the 40th anniversary of his death it is appropriate that we make a balance sheet of this outstanding revolutionary and martyr. Alan Woods in a two-part article looks at the evolution of Che Guevara from his early days to the day he was killed.

Forty years ago this month, in a small school hut in La Higuera,
Bolivia, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was brutally executed by the Bolivian
army. Since Che’s death, the popular media have tried to
assimilate his image and turn it into a harmless symbol. They have,
however, not succeeded in burying the memory of Che, just as they have
not managed to solve the problems of poverty and destitution in the
third world.

On April 26th 1937 General Franco commissioned from the German High
Command, against Republican Spain, the aerial bombardment of the small
and defenceless Basque town of Guernica,
visiting a hell on earth in the form of bombs weighing up to 1000lbs
across the town of 10, 000 people. Two months later, seventy years
ago, Pablo Picasso unveiled Guernica. Despite his enormous prestige the
establishment rarely tell us that Picasso was a man of the left.