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A former CIA operative has spoken out about the last hours of the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara before his execution in the jungles of Bolivia 40 years ago - recalling how he looked like a "beggar" and was shot despite the wishes of the US Government.
Felix Rodriguez, a prominent Cuban exile in Miami with a long career working for the Central Intelligence Agency that spanned Cuba's 'Bay of Pigs' invasion fiasco and the Vietnam War, said Guevara was in "rags" when he was first brought to him following his capture by Bolivian soldiers near the town of La Higuera on October 8, 1967.
The former brother-in-arms of Fidel Castro was in Bolivia trying to foment socialist revolution.
"I remembered him from when he used to visit Moscow and he used to visit Mao Tse-tung in China, that arrogant man in uniform, and now you see this man here who looks like a beggar," he told the BBC.
"His uniform was in rags. He didn't have a pair of boots, it was just a pair of ... leather, covering his shoes. I just felt sorry for the man as an individual, as a human being."
Rodriguez's job at the time was to ensure Guevara was kept alive and transported to Panama, where he would face interrogation by the CIA. Rodriguez was overruled during a phone call to the jungle encampment from Bolivia's military high command. "When I answered the phone they gave me the codeword 'five hundred, six hundred'," he recalled.
"We had agreed a simple code; 'five hundred' was Che Guevara, 'six hundred' was dead, 'seven hundred' was alive.
"I asked him to repeat because the line had a lot of noise. They confirmed, it was 'five hundred, six hundred'."
Rodriguez, who earned the nickname Lazarus after surviving the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, was handpicked by the CIA to head a team to track down Guevara, an experience he described in a book. Other historians documented his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair and his acquaintance with the then Vice-President and former CIA chief George Bush Snr.
Rodriguez said this week he argued with his Bolivian counterpart in the jungle, whom he identified as a Colonel Senteno. "Felix, we are grateful for what you have done," the Colonel replied. "But this is an order from my President, my Commander-in-Chief.
"I want your word of honour that at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you wIll bring me back the dead body of Che. You can do anything you want because we know the harm he has done to your country."
Rodriguez said that upon his initial capture, Guevara was almost good-humoured, even agreeing to be photographed with him as he was led from his hideaway. He also remembers the moment when he told the Argentine-born revolutionary that he would not be spared.
"I went into the room, I stood in front of him and said 'Commander Guevara, I'm sorry, I tried my best. But this is an order from the Bolivian high command'. He perfectly understood what I was saying; he turned white like a piece of paper, I've never seen anybody as depressed as he was.
"But he said, 'It's better this way, I should have never been captured alive.'
It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Bolivian time, when we left that area. And between 1.10 and 1.20, I heard the burst of gunfire."
The vivid memories of Rodriguez are not coloured with a great deal of regret over the way Guevara's life ended, however. Nor does he believe that the killing of the revolutionary made him a martyr and resulted in his being mythologised in the decades since. "That was done by the Cuban Government," he said. "Most people don't know the real Che Guevara - who wrote that he was thirsty for blood, the Che who assassinated thousands without any regard for any legal process."
- Independent
