How Che Guevara's diary reached Cuba, fooling the CIA

The incident took place in mid-1968. The then Cuban President Fidel Castro said that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been fooled.

He said this because Mr. Castro was able to retrieve a copy of the diary of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, which the CIA had kept in its possession with utmost secrecy after he was shot.

“The revolution also has friends and we didn’t have to spend a penny to get it (Che’s diary),” said Mr. Castro.

But how the diary reached Cuba through the eyes of a leading spy agency like the CIA, this long-time close friend of Che Guevara, did not reveal at the time.

That same year, the diary was published in book form, which was called ‘The Bolivian Diary’.

“It is not possible to publish this diary as it came to our hands,” Mr. Castro stated in the first edition of the book.

Later, however, the events surrounding the recovery of the diary gradually began to be revealed.

How was the last diary written by Che Guevara recovered from the CIA? This report highlights that.

Che Guevara went to Bolivia in November 1966 with the dream of revolution. He formed a guerrilla army and began fighting against the then military government of Bolivia.

It was at that time that Mr. Guevara began writing a new diary. He collected the German diary of the red-haired man while traveling in Europe.

“Today a new chapter has begun,” wrote Mr. Guevara in the first line of the last diary of his life.

He continued to write the diary from November 7, 1966 until October 7, 1967, the day before he was captured by the military.

There, he wrote about his guerrilla army, which consisted of Bolivian and Cuban citizens, and the fight against the military government, as well as about his fellow soldiers and Bolivian political figures of the time.

In addition, a list of books is also visible in the diary, which suggests that Mr. Guevara was reading during the war.

The diary contains a description of the guerrillas' first frontal battle with Bolivian government forces, which took place on March 23, 1967.

In fact, that battle was the biggest victory of the guerrilla forces led by Mr. Guevara during the Bolivian campaign.

After that, the guerrilla fighters gradually became cornered. Many of Che Guevara's other dreams of "building Vietnam" and revolution began to fade.

 With the help of the US intelligence agency CIA, Che Guevara was captured by the Bolivian military on October 8, 1967 and killed the next day.