Execution Still Haunts Village, 50 Years After Che Guevara’s Death
Ms. Rosales, the storekeeper who gave Guevara the bowl of soup after his capture, recalled being stunned one day in La Higuera, shortly before Guevara
was killed, when one of his guerrillas, Roberto Peredo, known as "Coco," walked into the building where she was working and asked to use the phone.
" said Ms. Rosales. that They told us the guerrillas hit the men
and raped their wives, took things, and for that reason, no one waited for them to come,
"They placed him here, they placed him over there —
but no one knew where he was." Loyola Guzmán, a Communist youth leader in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, would be one of the first to learn.
9, 2017
LA HIGUERA, Bolivia — Irma Rosales, tired after decades of tending her tiny store, sat back one morning with a box full of photos
and remembered the stranger who was shot in the local schoolhouse 50 years ago.
In La Higuera after the killing, Ms. Rosales said she remembers seeing Ms. Cortés approaching the schoolhouse to clean up the blood in the classroom.
Later that day, Mr. Salazar, the reporter, was back in La Paz covering the trial
of another guerrilla, when word reached him of the execution in La Higuera.
"He looked at first just like a regular person, like a homeless man even." Ms. Guzmán, Guevara’s
fellow guerrilla, had already been taken into custody by the time he was captured.