Alvaro Vargas Llosa: Who's Buried in Che's Tomb? Hint: Not Che. The Cuban government's most shameless con.
[ALAVARO VARGAS LLOSA, author of Liberty for Latin America, is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.]
Thousands of Cubans and foreigners have been flocking to a mausoleum in central Cuba to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death. For 10 years, the Cuban government has been telling the world that the body inside the mausoleum is that of the famous guerrilla.
It's a lie designed to bamboozle the population into worshiping the Argentine-born revolutionary as if he were a saint--and the Cuban Revolution as if it were a religion. A brilliant investigation by French journalist Bertrand de la Grange, recently published in Spain's El Pais newspaper, demolishes the official version.
In 1995, Bolivian Gen. Mario Vargas, who had fought Che's guerrillas in the 1960s, revealed that the revolutionary's body was buried a few meters from the airport runway in Vallegrande, a town close to La Higuera, the village in eastern Bolivia where Guevara was killed on Oct. 9, 1967. (Guevara had been executed after the Bolivian president ordered the soldiers who ambushed and captured him to get rid of him.) Cuba sent a forensic, diplomatic and legal team to Vallegrande. On June 28, 1997, they claimed to have found the body, which was brought to Cuba a few weeks before the 30th anniversary of the guerrilla's death.
Numerous facts belie the Cuban claim. Havana's envoys say they found the body in the same grave in which six other guerrillas killed in La Higuera were buried. However, Vargas says that Guevara's body was buried separately--a fact confirmed by the widow of Lt. Col. Andres Selich, the man who actually buried all the bodies in 1967.
A jacket and a belt were found on the body exhumed in 1997. But Guevara's real body was buried without clothes: His jacket was removed by Moises Abraham, the doctor who performed the autopsy in 1967. Abraham now lives in Mexico, where he has been visited by Cuban emissaries wishing to buy the jacket from him.
Erich Blossl, a German agricultural engineer who befriended Abraham in the 1960s and saw Guevara's jacket in 1967, says that the garment found on the body dug up in 1997 is not the same one. "It was a waterproof cape, like the ones used by the military," he says in reference to the clothes found on the body that was sent to Cuba. He had a chance to see it because the Cuban team asked him to take a look at it....
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Thousands of Cubans and foreigners have been flocking to a mausoleum in central Cuba to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death. For 10 years, the Cuban government has been telling the world that the body inside the mausoleum is that of the famous guerrilla.
It's a lie designed to bamboozle the population into worshiping the Argentine-born revolutionary as if he were a saint--and the Cuban Revolution as if it were a religion. A brilliant investigation by French journalist Bertrand de la Grange, recently published in Spain's El Pais newspaper, demolishes the official version.
In 1995, Bolivian Gen. Mario Vargas, who had fought Che's guerrillas in the 1960s, revealed that the revolutionary's body was buried a few meters from the airport runway in Vallegrande, a town close to La Higuera, the village in eastern Bolivia where Guevara was killed on Oct. 9, 1967. (Guevara had been executed after the Bolivian president ordered the soldiers who ambushed and captured him to get rid of him.) Cuba sent a forensic, diplomatic and legal team to Vallegrande. On June 28, 1997, they claimed to have found the body, which was brought to Cuba a few weeks before the 30th anniversary of the guerrilla's death.
Numerous facts belie the Cuban claim. Havana's envoys say they found the body in the same grave in which six other guerrillas killed in La Higuera were buried. However, Vargas says that Guevara's body was buried separately--a fact confirmed by the widow of Lt. Col. Andres Selich, the man who actually buried all the bodies in 1967.
A jacket and a belt were found on the body exhumed in 1997. But Guevara's real body was buried without clothes: His jacket was removed by Moises Abraham, the doctor who performed the autopsy in 1967. Abraham now lives in Mexico, where he has been visited by Cuban emissaries wishing to buy the jacket from him.
Erich Blossl, a German agricultural engineer who befriended Abraham in the 1960s and saw Guevara's jacket in 1967, says that the garment found on the body dug up in 1997 is not the same one. "It was a waterproof cape, like the ones used by the military," he says in reference to the clothes found on the body that was sent to Cuba. He had a chance to see it because the Cuban team asked him to take a look at it....