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'Che's Trail' in Bolivia Traces Guevara's Demise
Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 10/04/04 | Reuters - LaPaz

Posted on 10/04/2004 9:19:48 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Tourists and political pilgrims can now follow "Che's trail" in Bolivia, which traces Ernesto Guevara's fatal attempt to export the Cuban revolution to one of Latin America's poorest countries.

Authorities opened the trail on Monday, allowing visitors to travel the same route through Bolivian villages and remote countryside that Guevara's small band of revolutionaries took before they were defeated by the Bolivian army.

The opening of the trail coincides with the release of "The Motorcycle Diaries," a critically acclaimed film that depicts a young Guevara on his motorbike trip through Argentina, Chile and Peru.

Guevara, an Argentine, became an icon after helping Fidel Castro (news - web sites) lead the Cuban revolution. His beret-wearing image still appears on T-shirts worldwide. Soldiers captured and executed him in October 1967, cutting short his ambition to turn Latin America into "one, two, three Vietnams."

The five-day trip on "Che's trail" includes a visit to the Quebrada del Yuro, where the injured Guevara was captured, and La Higuera, the village where he was executed.

When one of his executioners hesitated to pull the trigger of his rifle, Guevara reportedly yelled, "Shoot! Don't be afraid."

The tourist project has been financed by the government and international charities to provide a source of income for poor villagers and local Indian communities along the route.

Another stop on the tour is Vallegrande, some 500 miles southeast of La Paz, where the Bolivian army displayed Guevara's half-naked, open-eyed corpse. Many older women in this town keep shrines to "Saint Che."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bolivia; cheguevara; ches; demise; traces; trail
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1 posted on 10/04/2004 9:19:49 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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To: NormsRevenge
A Bolivian boy shows 'Che' Guevara's drawing in La Higuera, some 900 Kilometers southeast  of La Paz, in this picture taken in December 15, 1995. Tourists and political pilgrims can now follow 'Che trail' in Bolivia, which traces Ernesto Guevara's fatal attempt to export the Cuban revolution to one of Latin America's poorest country.  REUTERS/David Mercado/Files

A Bolivian boy shows 'Che' Guevara's drawing in La Higuera, some 900 Kilometers southeast of La Paz, in this picture taken in December 15, 1995. Tourists and political pilgrims can now follow 'Che trail' in Bolivia, which traces Ernesto Guevara's fatal attempt to export the Cuban revolution to one of Latin America's poorest country. REUTERS/David Mercado/Files


2 posted on 10/04/2004 9:21:31 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... The War on Terrorism is the ultimate 'faith-based' initiative.)
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To: NormsRevenge
Thanks to the good people of Bolivia for taking care of this murdering sack of sh@t. "The people" turned him in rather than buy into his bogus ideology.

Our hero is better:


3 posted on 10/04/2004 9:24:29 PM PDT by The Old Hoosier (Right makes might.)
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To: NormsRevenge

4 posted on 10/04/2004 9:26:10 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... The War on Terrorism is the ultimate 'faith-based' initiative.)
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To: NormsRevenge

5 posted on 10/04/2004 9:27:00 PM PDT by AdamSelene235
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I'll never understand the appeal of Che. He's just another dead red in my book.


6 posted on 10/04/2004 9:27:35 PM PDT by Chief_Illinewek
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To: NormsRevenge

7 posted on 10/04/2004 9:28:43 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... The War on Terrorism is the ultimate 'faith-based' initiative.)
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To: NormsRevenge; Cacique
Of course, the Left won't tell you that it was the Indian peasents in Bolivia who turned in this pasty-faced poser.
8 posted on 10/04/2004 9:29:24 PM PDT by Clemenza (Say NO to Rudy in 2008.)
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To: Chief_Illinewek

The nutbags over at DU were celebrating this guy a week or so ago.


9 posted on 10/04/2004 9:29:28 PM PDT by Bronzewound
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To: NormsRevenge

Che is a loser and scumbag. Thank God he is dead now. That dirty commie.


10 posted on 10/04/2004 9:40:03 PM PDT by Ptarmigan (Proud rabbit hater and killer)
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To: NormsRevenge
I'll never understand the appeal of Che. Neither will I. But some enterprising capitalist that Che would have shot in the back has made a killing putting his picture on red T-Shirts. There's something poetic about that.
11 posted on 10/04/2004 9:42:45 PM PDT by CalRepublican
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To: Bronzewound

The POS ran friggin' torture camps in Cuba under Castro.


12 posted on 10/04/2004 9:43:51 PM PDT by fat city (Julius Rosenberg's soviet code name was "Liberal")
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To: Chief_Illinewek

I suspect that a lot of the youngsters who revere him do not know what he really stood for.


13 posted on 10/04/2004 9:46:55 PM PDT by BunnySlippers ("F" Stands for FLIP-FLOP ...)
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To: NormsRevenge

Sickening to see people revere such a butcher...


14 posted on 10/04/2004 10:10:14 PM PDT by Tamzee (Make Dan Rather cry (again!)...... become a monthly FR donor!)
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To: NormsRevenge

Che Guevara is a good man.

Using the General Sheridan definition of good, of course.


15 posted on 10/04/2004 10:12:57 PM PDT by Rastus (Forget it, Moby! I'm voting for Bush!)
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To: BunnySlippers

I wish I could believe that.


16 posted on 10/04/2004 10:13:18 PM PDT by Rastus (Forget it, Moby! I'm voting for Bush!)
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To: NormsRevenge
The Cult of Che
Paul Berman, Slate - Sept. 24, 2004

"...Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system...

"...Che was an enemy of freedom... He helped establish an unjust social system...

"...a tremendous social struggle is taking place in Cuba. Dissident liberals have demanded fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship has rounded up all but one or two of the dissident leaders and sentenced them to many years in prison. Among those imprisoned leaders is an important Cuban poet and journalist, Raúl Rivero, who is serving a 20-year sentence. In the last couple of years the dissident movement has sprung up in yet another form in Cuba, as a campaign to establish independent libraries, free of state control; and state repression has fallen on this campaign, too.

"...Václav Havel has organized a campaign of solidarity with the Cuban dissidents and, together with Elena Bonner and other heroic liberals from the old Soviet bloc, has rushed to support the Cuban librarians.

"...The statements and manifestos that Havel has signed have been published in Le Monde in Paris, and in Letras Libres magazine in Mexico, but have remained practically invisible in the United States. The days when American intellectuals rallied in any significant way to the cause of liberal dissidents in other countries, the days when Havel's statements were regarded by Americans as important calls for intellectual responsibility—those days appear to be over..."

17 posted on 10/04/2004 10:49:38 PM PDT by concentric circles
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To: NormsRevenge

Search Order
by Raúl Rivero

What are these gentlemen looking for
in my house?

What is this officer doing
reading the sheet of paper
on which I've written
the words "ambition," "lightness," and "brittle"?

What hint of conspiracy
speaks to him from the photo without a dedication
of my father in a guayabera (black tie)
in the fields of the National Capitol?

How does he interpret my certificates of divorce?

Where will his techniques of harassment lead him
when he reads the ten-line poems
and discovers the war wounds
of my great-grandfather?

Eight policemen
are examining the texts and drawings of my daughters,
and are infiltrating themselves into my emotional networks
and want to know where little Andrea sleeps
and what does her asthma have to do
with my carpets.

They want the code of a message from Zucu
in the upper part
of a cryptic text (here a light triumphal smile
of the comrade):
"Castles with music box. I won't let the boy
hang out with the boogeyman. Jennie."

A specialist in aporia came,
a literary critic with the rank of interim corporal
who examined at the point of a gun
the hills of poetry books.

Eight policemen
in my house
with a search order,
a clean operation,
a full victory
for the vanguard of the proletariat
who confiscated my Consul typewriter,
one hundred forty-two blank pages
and a sad and personal heap of papers
—the most perishable of the perishable
from this summer.


18 posted on 10/04/2004 10:50:45 PM PDT by concentric circles
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To: NormsRevenge
Read the book...

"SHADOW WARRIOR"
Felix Rodriquez
he trailed Che' and was on the team that terminated him. He tells exactly how 'brave' comrade Che' was at his end. Good book also.

(thanks Max)

19 posted on 10/04/2004 11:00:46 PM PDT by Khurkris (Proud Scottish/HillBilly - I am grumpy today...I may stay grumpy for a while.)
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To: NormsRevenge

20 posted on 10/04/2004 11:21:28 PM PDT by Main Street (Stuck in traffic.)
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