History Daily - The Execution of Che Guevara

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

October 9, 1967. After being captured by Special Forces in the mountains of Bolivia, the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is executed. This episode originally aired in 2024. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

It's the middle of the day on October 9, 1967 in La Iguera, a tiny village in central Bolivia. 26-year-old Felix Rodriguez smiles as a camera clicks. His youthful, clean-cut looks are a stark contrast to those of the haggard, handcuffed men who've just been posed for a photograph beside him. The revolutionary fighter Che Guevara is barely recognizable. His long, dark hair hangs lengthy around his face, his beard and the green fatigues he wears are filthy. But with the photo shoot now over, Felix gives Guevara a gentle shove

and then marches him toward the dark doorway of the mud-walled village schoolhouse they're in. Like the other soldiers milling around the village, Felix wears a Bolivian army uniform. But in his case, though, it's just a cover. Felix is a Cuban-American CIA operative. He's been hunting Che Guevara for years and at last he snagged him. But Felix won't have him for long. The Bolivian Army Rangers who captured Guevara have been given orders to execute him immediately. Felix thinks this is a mistake and has been stalling for time,

but he doesn't have the authority to override the decision unless he hears from the Pentagon in the next few minutes. So once Guevara has made prisoner once again in the dark schoolhouse, Felix takes out his radio. He checks that there isn't any problem with his equipment, but everything is working normally, which means there's no word from his superiors. Felix turns as the village schoolmistress peeks out from behind a wall. Timidly, she asks whether Guevara is going to be shot because she's just heard on a Bolivian state radio news broadcast that he's already dead. Felix just sighs, knowing he's out of time.

Waiting by the schoolhouse is a Bolivian sergeant holding a rifle. His eyes are a little glassy as if he's been drinking. This is the man who's volunteered to be Che Guevara's executioner. So Felix reminds him not to shoot Guevara in the head, It has to look like he died in battle. Then Felix turns and walks away up the hill as a sergeant heads into the schoolhouse. Felix hasn't gone far when there's the unmistakable sound of gunfire. The building where children usually meet to learn has just become a death chamber.

After his success in helping to overthrow the U.S.-backed government in Cuba, the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara hoped to do the same in Bolivia. He met stiffer resistance than he had anticipated, though, and after nearly a year of guerrilla warfare in the Bolivian jungle, Guevara was captured by U.S. trained Bolivian special forces. Fearful he would escape, the Bolivian government then decided to execute Gabara. But in death, Che Guevara will become more than just a man. His myth and status as a revolutionary icon will soon take on a life of its own, one that will continue long after Guevara himself was killed on October 9, 19th, 19th.

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Go to historydaily live.com. From Noisor in Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily. History is made every day. On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world. Today is October 9, 1967. The Execution of Che Guevara. It's December 28, 1958, just outside Santa Clara on the island of Cuba, nine years before Che Guevara is executed.

Pressing himself into the dirt, 30-year-old Guevara examines the city from a nearby hill, assessing its defenses through a pair of binoculars. When he first landed in Cuba with his friend Fidel Castro and 82 other rebel troops, Gavara was just an idealistic but naive young doctor. In the two years since, though, Gavara has fought numerous battles against the forces of Cuba's authoritarian president, Fulhencio-Batista. Gabara is now a seasoned and courageous fighter, with a growing reputation as a stern and occasionally brutal leader. And as the revolution has spread, more and more Cubans have joined the fight against the island's repressive government. And now Gavara commands a small army of over 300 soldiers.

Their objective is to take the city of Santa Clara, the only major obstacle left between the island's. rebel troops and Cuba's capital Havana. But Gavara's men are severely outnumbered. Observing Santa Clara's rooftops and fortifications with his binoculars, Gavara can see that the city is heavily defended. There are at least 3,500 enemy soldiers in Santa Clara, equipped with tanks and aircraft, the kind of high-tech military equipment the revolutionary forces lack. After getting a lay of the land, Gavara stations his troops in a university, just north of the city. Batista's regime is deeply unpopular, especially among the younger generations in Cuba, so the students at the university welcomed Guevara and his rebels with open arms. Figuring he might be able to win over more civilians

in the region, Guevara decides to take a calculated risk. Forgoing the element of surprise, he visits a local radio station and sends a broadcast into the city. With stirring words, Guevara urges the civilians of Santa Clara to rise up when they see his soldiers entering the city, And hearing this message, Batista's Air Force launches a massive attack on the countryside. Plains strafe the hills at random, hoping to catch the guerrillas in their hiding places, but none of the airstrikes are successful. Having survived this attack, that night under the cover of darkness, Gavara orders his troops to move out. He divides his forces into two.

Half of them attack Santa Clara itself, while the others target the railroad out of the city. There's an armored train parked in Santa Clara, loaded with thousands of people. pounds of ammunition, weapons, and communications equipment. Gavara doesn't want the government troops withdrawing to Havana with those valuable supplies, so he orders his men to pull up sections of the track. Meanwhile, inside the city, his other soldiers advanced slowly through the streets. But Gavara's radio broadcast seems to have worked. The guerrillas are welcomed by the populace. Locals supply them with food and improvised weapons like Molotov cocktails. They barricade the streets to obstruct government troops while allowing Gavara's men to punch holes through the walls of their

homes to move through the city undetected. And a day into the fighting, the tide of the battle turns decisively in Gavara's favor. His men succeed in routing a major section of Batista's troops, but fleeing under heavy fire, these government forces managed to board the armored train and pull out of the city, heading for Havana at high speed. But they don't know Gavara's men have pulled up the tracks ahead. So when the train reaches, the damaged section, he derails, twisting violently into the hillside. Gavara's guerrillas swarm over the wreckage. The battered government soldiers inside have no choice but to surrender, and Gavara gratefully takes possession of the train's ammunition, artillery, and equipment.

With the help of this new firepower, it doesn't take long for Gavara and his men to seize control of Santa Clara. And news of the battle soon spreads throughout Cuba, with government forces across the country starting to surrender. With his regime collapsing around him, President Batista boards a plane and flees Cuba for the Dominican Republic, taking a personal fortune of more than $300 million with him. Then, just over a week after the fall of Santa Clara, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, enters the capital city Havana and declares victory. Che Guevara will be hailed for his role in this successful revolution, but soon his efforts to transform Cuba into a socialist paradise will head down a dark and bloodstained path, one that will take

Gavara far from the island where he made his name all the way to Africa, and finally into the jungles of Bolivia. It's September 1965 in the Central African Republic of the Congo, six years after the end of the Cuban Revolution. Che Guevara looks out warily from a hut at his makeshift base hidden in the mountains. A patrol of Cuban soldiers limps back into camp, and like Gavara himself, they are emaciated and weak from hunger and sickness. Guevara and his men have been fighting in the war-torn Congo for five months, and nothing has gone as planned. After victory in the Cuban Revolution in 1959,

Che Guevara was tasked by Fidel Castro with purging those the new government considered traitors or war criminals. Following brief tribunals, hundreds were executed by firing squad, and Guevara was unapologetic about the deaths, calling them not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people. Guevara then went on to become a powerful member of the new Cuban government, but he proved less effective as an administrator than he had as a soldier.

He was put in charge of the finance ministry and the National Bank, but his economic reforms didn't pay off, and a split steadily emerged between the hardline Marxist Guevara and the more pragmatic Castro. Eventually, in March 1965, Guevara quietly resigned from all positions in the Cuban government and told Castro that he wanted to support the revolutionary struggle abroad instead. So he left Cuba and headed for the Congo. A civil war was underway in the country,

and Guevara joined a left-wing rebel group fighting against the U.S.-backed military government. Now, however, Gavara is realizing that his dream of spreading the Marxist revolution to Central Africa is in trouble. Unable to speak their language, he struggled to communicate with the local rebel forces. And although some volunteers have joined him from Cuba, Guevara still doesn't have the men, supplies, or firepower he needs to fight an effective military campaign. So Congolese government troops, with the support of the CIA, are steadily closing in on Guevara's position. And it's only a few weeks later, early in the morning of October 24, 1965, that Guevara is woken with urgent news. government forces are moving up the mountain and towards Guevara's camp.

They'll be overrun within minutes. Scambling out of his hut, Gavara orders an immediate retreat. There's no time to pack up their things, so they leave valuable supplies, weapons, ammunition, and communications equipment behind as they set fire to the camp and rush away into the forest. There will be no repeat of the great victory Gavara won at Santa Clara. The revolution in the Congo is clearly collapsing, and Gavara has no intention. of being captured by the government troops swarming over the mountains. So a month after his camp was discovered and overrun,

Guevara manages to flee to the neighboring country of Tanzania. There he recuperates and decides what to do next. His resignation from the Cuban government has now been made public back on the island, and Goghara feels he cannot return there a failure. So instead, he stays at various Cuban embassies and safe houses in Africa and Europe, while he writes his memoirs and searches for a new cause to. support. In the fall of 1966, he finds it. Traveling under a false passport and disguised as a middle-aged businessman, Gavara flies into La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. From there, he heads into the country's

rural southwest, determined to form a guerrilla army to overthrow Bolivia's western-backed military government. But he finds no more success in Bolivia than he did in the Congo. The local Communist party wants nothing to do with Guevara's campaign, and he's soon isolated and running low on supplies. And though he expected to face only the poorly trained regular troops of the Bolivian army, he is in fact soon hunted down by a special CIA-trained anti-insurrection units. In early October, 1967, the Bolivian forces discover the location of his encampment. And this time, there is no escape for Che Guevara. Less than a year after his arrival in Bolivia, Gavara's revolutionary career,

career will come to a violent end. He will be captured by government troops and executed in a rural schoolhouse. But that won't be the last chapter of Che Guevara's story, because if he was already famous as a freedom fighter in life, then in death, he will become a revolutionary icon. It's October 17, 1997, in Santa Clara, Cuba, 30 years after Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia. Fidel Castro stands behind a podium on a stage at the end of a long avenue. The street is packed with people. The atmosphere is festive, but there's also a somber tone to the occasion. Military vehicles parade down the avenue, followed by a Jeep pulling a wheeled casket.

And inside is Che Guevara's body. When Guevara was executed in Bolivia, his body was photographed to make it look like he had died in battle. The U.S.-backed Bolivian military didn't want the world to know the truth that Che Guevara had been executed. And following his death, Gavara's remains were done. dumped in a mass grave near a rural airstrip. Decades later, in 1995, the Bolivian government finally allowed Cuban officials to enter the area and searched for Gavar's body.

Two years later, just as the Bolivian government was about to revoke their visas, the researchers found what they were looking for, Che Guevara, still wearing the same olive green jacket he died in. So now, back in Cuba, a choir of schoolchildren seeing as Gavar's body approaches a huge mausoleum constructed in his own. honor. There's a 21 gun salute, and Fidel Castro himself delivers the eulogy, calling his late friend a symbol for all the poor of the world. In the years since his death, Che Guevara has become an icon. A photograph from 1960 is the defining image of him. With rock star good looks and a

determined gaze to the horizon, Gavara seems to be the epitome of youthful, romantic rebellion. But in other places, Gavara is remembered very differently. As much as he was handsome and charismatic, he was also violent, ruthless, and fanatical. In the eyes of some, he became just as bad as the tyrants he fought so hard to defeat. Others, though, still believe he did what he had to do to keep the spirit of the revolution alive. What's certain is that the image of Che Guevara as an iconic freedom fighter will persist for decades to come, as it has ever since he was executed in a Bolivian schoolhouse on October 9, 1967. Next on History Daily. October 12, 1810.

Bavaria celebrates the wedding of Crown Prince Lugwig with a five-day festival which becomes a tradition known as October Fest. From Noisor and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham, audio editing by Mohamed Shazid, sound design by Matthew Filler, music by Throne. This episode is written and researched by Owen Law. Edited by Joel Callan, managing producer Emily Burke,

Executive producers are William Simpson for airship and Pascal Hughes for Noisor.