Che Guevara´S Army and Its Chilean Followers
STUDY Translation: Martin Bruggendieck CHE GUEVARA´S ARMY AND ITS CHILEAN FOLLOWERS Cristián Pérez This article describes the course of the guerrilla focus set up by Che Guevara in 1967 in the mountain ranges of Bolivia. The report deals with the branching of the “Ejército de Liberación Nacional” (ELN), and its connections with Cuba, Chile and other Latin American countries. The author renders special attention to the Chilean followers of the ELN, and to the ideological conceptions that took them to join the guerrilla, as well as on their underground lives and their participation in the subsequent combats of Teoponte. “S it down and write —I told him: ‘Today, February 14, 1968, we the survivants of the guerrilla of Che in Bolivia, approaching the village of Sabaya and grasping its conditions —the school lack of desks, without notebooks and without pencils— donate U.S. $ 400.- for the acquisition of teaching material. Handed over: Pombo, Urbano, Benigno; amount received by the Mayor and the smuggler, “Mr. so and so”. We had him sign the original and two copies. One we handed out to the mayor in face of the villagers. Then we made it to get out of the place”1. CRISTIÁN PÉREZ is studying for his Master´s degree at the University of Santiago in Chile. 1 Dariel Alarcón Ramírez (Benigno), Memorias de un Soldado Cubano: Vida y Muerte de la Revolución (1977), p. 169. Estudios Públicos, 89 (summer 2003). 2 ESTUDIOS PÚBLICOS In the midst of the Altiplano, at an altitude of more than 4.000 m., almost rounded up by the Bolivian army, desperately aiming at crossing the border and reach into Chile, where other members of the Ejército Nacional de Liberación (ELN) expected them, three cuban combatants, the last remainder of Che Guevara´s guerrilla-army defeated at Ñancahuazú, took time for this gesture to the Bolivian people and gave away part of the money they carried in order the authorities of Sabaya would provide the local school with learning material.
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