Description

October 9, 1967. World-renowned revolutionary Che Guevara is dead at the age of thirty-nine.

The charismatic Argentinian revolutionary had been leading guerilla fighters in the jungles of Bolivia and was captured by the Bolivian army. Mario Terán, a sergeant in the Bolivian army, volunteered to execute the prisoner. He carried out the bloody assignment with nine point-blank shots to Guevara's body.

Around the globe, reactions to the assassination were mixed. In Cuba, where Guevara had helped overthrow a brutally repressive dictatorship in 1959, more than one million people mourned openly. But in the United States and elsewhere, many business leaders and government officials were relieved. Guevara's anti-capitalist movement sought to strip big businesses of their land and power. He wanted to set up socialist systems to spread wealth and resources among ordinary workers--in Latin America and all around the world. To the rich and powerful, Guevara was a dangerous threat.

In this chronicle of an assassination, find out what inspired the myth of Che Guevara and what brought him to this bloody crossroads of history.