Ex-soldier was 80 years old
Che Guevara gunman is dead
03/10/2022 9:33 p.m
In October 1967, the Bolivian soldier Mario Terán shot a man and became well-known. The dead man is guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Now Terán also dies at the age of 80.
The gunman who shot Argentine guerrillas Ernesto “Che” Guevara is dead. The Bolivian ex-soldier Mario Terán died at the age of 80 in a military hospital in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the newspaper “El Deber” reported, citing one of the family close pastor.
“He was a brave man,” said retired General Gary Prado Salmon, who led the military operation against Guevara’s rebel group at the time. “He voluntarily carried out an order that came from the President.”
Terán shot dead Guevara on October 9, 1967 in a school in the town of La Higuera in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, after the guerrilla leader had been wounded and captured in a skirmish with Bolivian forces the day before. “It was the worst moment of my life. At that moment, I saw Che big, very big, huge, and his eyes shone brightly,” Terán said in an interview a little later. “Keep calm,” he said to me, “and aim well, you’re going to kill a man. So I took a step back, toward the door, closed my eyes, and fired.”
Along with Fidel Castro, the Argentinean Guevara was one of the most important leaders of the revolution in Cuba. After the revolutionaries’ victory, he was Minister of Industry and head of the National Bank in Cuba. After conflicts with Castro over future political direction, Guevara tried to take the revolution out into the world, building rebel groups in Congo, Angola and Bolivia.