The group established its base camp on a farm across the Ñancahuazú River, a seasonal tributary of the Rio Grande, 250 kilometers southwest of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The guerrillas intended to work as a foco, a point of armed resistance to be used as a first step to overthrow the Bolivian government and create a socialist state.

Che Guevara was committed to ending American imperialism, and he decided to travel to the Congo during its civil war to back the anti-capitalist guerrilla groups.

Guevara's aim was to export the revolution by instructing local anti-Mobutu Simba fighters in Marxist ideology and foco theory strategies of guerrilla warfare.

[2] On 20 November 1965, in ill health with dysentery, suffering from acute asthma, and disheartened after seven months of frustrations and inactivity, Guevara left the Congo with the Cuban survivors (six members of his 12-man column had died).

Planning to start a guerrilla campaign against the military government of President René Barrientos, he assembled a band of 29 Bolivians, 25 Cubans, and a few foreigners which included Guevara himself, one woman from East Germany named Tamara Bunke, and three Peruvians.

[7] As part of the operation, Bunke managed to infiltrate Bolivian high society to the point of winning the adoration of President Barrientos and even going on holiday with him to Peru.

In late 1966, the unreliability of many of her comrades in the urban network set up to support the guerrillas forced her to travel to their rural camp at Ñancahuazú on a number of occasions.

[10] On 31 August 1967, a small group of the guerrillas, totaling eight men as well as Bunke, were ambushed and killed by Bolivian soldiers as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande in Bolivia.

[10] Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban exile turned CIA Special Activities Division operative, trained and advised Bolivian troops during the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia.

[12] On 8 October, they encircled the area with 180 soldiers, and Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeon Cuba Sarabia by a Bolivian Army Ranger unit commanded by Captain Gary Prado Salmón.

Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that a twice wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, shouted "Do not shoot!

According to de Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths.

"[16] During their short conversation, Guevara pointed out to Cortez the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes cars" ... declaring "that's what we are fighting against.

[16] Months earlier, during his last public declaration to the Tricontinental Conference,[26] Guevara wrote his own epitaph, stating "Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons.

"[27] After he was killed, Guevara's body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to nearby Vallegrande, where photographs were taken of him lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestra Señora de Malta.

[28] As hundreds of local residents filed past the body, many of them considered Guevara's corpse to represent a "Christ-like" visage, with some of them even surreptitiously clipping locks of his hair as divine relics.

[29] Such comparisons were further extended when two weeks later upon seeing the post-mortem photographs, English art critic John Berger observed that they resembled two famous paintings: Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ.

[30] There were also four correspondents present when Guevara's body arrived in Vallegrande, including Bjorn Kumm of the Swedish Aftonbladet, who described the scene in a 11 November 1967, exclusive for The New Republic.

Fernando Gómez, a former member of the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla, led the formation of Salvador Allende's informal bodyguard prior to the 1970 Chilean presidential election.

[33] By the time of the election, the bodyguard had expanded with the addition of more ex-Ñancahuazú Guerrillas volunteering to provide security to Allende and, later, members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

[34] On 11 May 1976, Joaquin Zenteno Anaya, a career officer who was the person in charge of the Bolivian military region of Santa Cruz when Guevara captured and executed there, was shot dead in broad daylight underneath a subway bridge over the Seine River in Paris, France.