LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Che Guevara: Guerrillas
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It's rarely reported, but Che Guevara had a very bloody hand in one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Seventy to 80 percent of these rural anti-communist peasant guerrillas were executed on the spot on capture. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts" was how one of the few lucky ones who escaped alive described the guerrillas' desperate freedom-fight against the totalitarian agendas of the Cuban regime. (In 1956, when Che linked up with the Cuban exiles in Mexico city, one of them recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.)
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[R]emoved was Guevara's diary, which outlines the guerrilla war being fought in Bolivia. It tells of the group being forced to begin operations due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, the eventual and accidental split of the group, and the general failure of the guerrilla. It shows the split between Guevara and the Bolivian Communist Party that led the guerrilla to have significantly less soldiers than originally anticipated. It shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting the local populace due mainly to the fact that the guerrilla group had learned quechua and not the local language. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara was becoming increasingly sick. He suffered from asthma, and most of the guerrilla's last offensives were carried out to obtain medicine for the sick leader.
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Guevara then spent several months in Africa, particularly the Congo, attempting to train rebel forces in guerrilla warfare. His efforts failed and in 1966 he secretly returned to Cuba. From Cuba he travelled to Bolivia to lead forces rebelling against the government of René Barrientos Ortuño. With US assistance, the Bolivian army captured Guevara and his remaining fighters. He was executed on 9 October 1967 in the Bolivian village of La Higuera and his body was buried in a secret location. In 1997 his remains were discovered, exhumed and returned to Cuba, where he was reburied.
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Guevara's name is indissolubly linked with guerrilla warfare — in practice as well as theory. In Mexico he had been the outstanding student in the training that preceded embarkation on the Granma. In the Sierra Maestra he had risen to the rank of comandante (major), the highest conferred in the Rebel Army. His most celebrated book was Guerrilla Warfare. And, of course, he met his death in the course of the guerrilla fighting in Bolivia. The following is the complete text of his article, 'Guerrilla Warfare: A Method' in Cuba Socialista of September, 1963.
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Guevara ... had a run in with a rebel group named the Second Front of the Escambray. These operated against Batista in the Escambray mountains of Las Villas province. When Che's column entered the area in late 1958, Che sought to bring these guerrillas under his command and met much resistance, especially from a comandante named Jesus Carreras who knew of Che's Communist pedigree. Again Guevara didn't press the issue.
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It was on this basis that Che left Cuba never to return. He went to the Congo, where he worked with the Congolese Liberation Army, supported by the Chinese Stalinists. This was a shambles of a campaign, and Che ended up isolated with many of his band dead. Despite this, Che still believed in guerrilla struggle waged by a tiny armed minority. His final, fatal, campaign was in Bolivia.
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