CIA man recounts Che Guevara's death

BBC News ^ | 8 October 2007 | Will Grant

[Freeport]

Hero. Rebel. Revolutionary. These are words one often hears in association with Ernesto Che Guevara.

But they are not words you will often hear in Miami where many people see Che Guevara as a brutal guerrilla who brought Cuba nothing but misery with his communist ideals.

One of those anti-Che voices in Miami belongs to Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban-born former CIA agent who was part of the mission of CIA operatives and Bolivian army forces that captured and killed Che Guevara in October 1967.

Forty years on, how does he feel about the role he played in ending the life of one of the most iconic Latin American leaders of the 20th Century?

I visited the ex-CIA man at his Miami home. He was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the logo of the 2506 Association of the Veterans of the Bay of Pigs, another of his earlier military incursions against the Cuban government.

Pride

Mr Rodriguez was present at some of the most notorious events of US anti-communist involvement in Latin America during the Cold War, including training the Nicaraguan Contras and advising the Argentine military government during the 1980s.

It is a history of which Mr Rodriguez is fiercely proud.

[Freeport]

Interesting... The BBC just reporting a story & not skewing it...

[Red Badger]

Hero. Rebel. Revolutionary. These are words one often hears in association with Ernesto Che Guevara.

They skewed it from word one...............

[theDentist]

Does anyone know where Che was buried? I gotta pee...

[Michael.SF.]

The feel good story of the day.

[Freeport]

Ok...Except for the first line....

[CholeraJoe]

It would please me no end if I knew that Che died slowly, painfully and screaming for his mother.

[Red Badger]

They start of telling the reader that this Che was possibly a hero and then this evil CIA guy came and killed him and what’s more, he’s actually proud of it!......

[Grizzled Bear]

Here’s roughly what I recall reading about Che’s death after he was captured by some Bolivian peasants.

“Don’t shoot me! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive then dead!”

***BANG***

[Bon mots]

The Anti-Che:

[HamiltonJay]

Che was a coward and a pig! Anyone that holds him up as any sort of “hero” is beyond ignorant. Every Che T-Shirt you see is just another indictment of the failing of the US public educational system.

[fieldmarshaldj]

"Hero Coward. Rebel Psychotic. Revolutionary Mass-murderer. These are words one often hears in association with Ernesto Che Guevara."

Dear, the misspellings at the BBC are a bitch.

[fieldmarshaldj]

[beavus]

“It is a history of which Mr Rodriguez is fiercely proud.”

As well he should be.

Che and Castro accomplished something astonishing. They succeeded in replacing the Batista regime with something worse.

Death to monsters! And to the monsters who replace them!

[Brad from Tennessee]

His grave was located recently and he was exhumed and sent back to Cuba. The story I read said his remains showed signs of “mutilation.” In the 1990’s I met a retired Air Force enlisted man in Colorado who told me he had flown on a plane that landed in Bolivia and retrieved Che’s hands which had been severed before he was buried. He said Che’s hands were packed in dry ice and flown to Washington, D.C. presumably to determine identity.

This year I saw a documentary that confirmed the story about Che’s hands. The documentary said the hands were later sent to the Cuban government.

[Rb ver. 2.0]

“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portugese.... the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead.”—Che Guevara

[IronJack]

“Don’t shoot me! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive then dead!”

***BANG***

Close.

"Don't shoot ..." [Next day] BANG!

[Rocko]

How about this one:

Mr Rodriguez was present at some of the most notorious events of US anti-communist involvement in Latin America

"Notorious." Like in a Hitchcock film.

[Rummyfan]

Hero. Rebel. Revolutionary. These are words one often hears in association with Ernesto Che Guevara.

How about:

Murderer? Psychopath?

[Clemenza]

How about “Pale-faced spoiled rich kid from Argentina who didn’t know that the Indios hated his white commie a-s.”

[Billthedrill]

Yeah, I was wondering what the occasion was. Walking across campus today I noticed our little socialist clique attempting to drive a stake in the ground to put up their flag. With a shoe. Let's just say that their construction skills are on a par with their politics. One "progressive" lookin' young feller facing them wasn't having any of it - "what about 100 million dead during the 20th century? What about the police states?" Sure enough, we got the smirk and the classic "but true socialism has never been tried." Only on a college campus, folks (or in the boardroom of the NY Times).

One young fella was wearing a Che shirt and looking just as revolutionary as all git out, the scraggly beard, the beret... I had to ask him "hey, kid - you know your hero liked to shoot 12-year-old boys in the head in the prison he was in charge of?" For some reason he didn't want to hand me a pamphlet.

I'm going home for my ballbat now.