Claim to Guevara diaries

Press, 2 June 1984, Page 11

Claim to Guevara diaries

NZPA-Reuter La Paz Bolivia, claiming it has been robbed of part of its history, yesterday said it would try to stop the last diaries of the revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, from being auctioned in London. The Defence Minister, Mr Manuel Cardenas, told reporters that Bolivia wanted the diaries back and would ask the British Government to stop the sale at Sotheby's auction house on July 16. Mr Cardenas said the diaries had disappeared from the vault of Bolivia’s

Intelligence agency. They were of great importance to the country both historically and militarily. “It is extremely important for us to stop this auction,” he said. A spokesman for Sotheby’s denied that the diaries were stolen. He said Sotheby’s was satisfied that the diaries’ non-British owner had a perfect legal right to sell them. Guevara, once Fidel Castro’s closest aide and a Latin-American revolutionary who became a legend, was killed by Bolivian

troops in 1967 after trying to lead an insurrection that he wanted to become "another Vietnam.” Mr Cardenas said the original diaries disappeared before a democratic Government took over Bolivia 19 months ago after two decades of military rule. The Defence Minister said he had ordered an investigation into how the diaries and assorted other papers written by Guevara had disappeared. Sotheby’s is selling diaries written by Guevara from November 1966 to October

7. 1967, just two days before he was captured and killed. It is also selling unpublished messages he wrote to Dr Castro, an unpublished report on his fellow revolutionaries in the Bolivian campaign, and his reactions to the death of a German woman believed to be his mistress, Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider. Also known as “Tania,” Bunke Bider was later revealed to be a K.GJB. agent sent to keep an eye on "Che’s Bolivian adventure.” She was killed in an ambush in August, 1967.