In death, larger than life

It was a long fight, but the Cubans have finally conquered the forlorn Andean hamlet of La Higuera in Bolivia, four decades after Ernesto "Che" Guevara was executed in the adobe schoolhouse here.

Cuban physicians provide healthcare, Cuban educators oversee literacy classes and the Cuban-donated library features Che-as-superhero comic books. A monumental bust of the revolutionary who helped Fidel Castro, a lawyer, seize power in Cuba dominates the central plaza.

"Great men like Che never die," said Ubanis Ramirez, one of hundreds of Cuban doctors and teachers imported by Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales. "His lesson is with us always."

Today, the ideological legacy of this peripatetic militant may loom larger than ever in Latin America, abetted by the election of a "Pink Tide" of Leftist governments from Nicaragua to Argentina. Socialism is in, the Cubans are on the march and Che is the defiant embodiment of it all.

To his critics, Guevara, a physician, was a trigger-happy megalomaniac whose bloody example led thousands to their deaths in futile uprisings that only hardened military repression from Guatemala to Chile. But to the legions of devotees who subscribe to his personality cult, Guevara is the doomed idealist, the poetry-loving "guerrillero" and "most complete human being of our age", in the words of French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre.

Armed struggle

"Our side is moving forward, and we don't have to go to the mountains and fight like Che did anymore," said Osvaldo Peredo, who heads Bolivia's Che Guevara Foundation and lost two brothers in guerrilla wars — one fighting alongside Che.

Cuban doctors and petro-dollars from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela are the new arsenal in a nonviolent insurrection that Guevara, committed to armed struggle, could never have envisioned. "Finally, Che's dream is coming true," said former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Casteneda, a Guevara biographer who casts the revolutionary more as wayward fanatic than just an inspired visionary.

"Cuba's export of revolution is finally succeeding in many countries in Latin America, thanks to Chavez and his oil."

A legendary guerrilla leader in the Cuban Revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Guevara stumbled in his 1960s struggles.

Virtually exiled from Cuba after differing with Castro and Cuba's Soviet patrons, he suffered an ignominious defeat alongside anti-US rebels in Congo before meeting his demise in a Bolivian canyon at the end of an 11-month campaign.

But, 40 years later, Guevara has scored big in the battleground of memory, emerging as a secular saint, freeze-framed at age 39 between the Summer of Love and the abyss of 1968. Guevara, with no formal military training, was a prolific executioner, dogmatic totalitarian and co-designer of the Cuban police state and indoctrination apparatus, say his critics.

His detractors contend that his short life may appear to his admirers more James Dean than Chairman Mao, but his politics were more Comrade Stalin than Mahatma Gandhi.

"What's left is a kind of idealistic, romantic aura," said Jorge Lanata, an Argentine journalist who has written about Guevara. "It's more culture than political."

Guevara, keen to ignite "many Vietnams", chose impoverished Bolivia in part because of its proximity to his Argentine homeland, where he hoped to jump-start an insurgency. Today's Cuban volunteers in Bolivia live by the credo, "Seremos como El Che!" (We will be like Che!), the communist island's signature chant.

A renovated laundry shack behind the nearby Senor de Malta Hospital has become one of the most venerated stops on the "Che tour". It was here that the triumphant Bolivian military displayed Guevara's body on a stretcher atop a concrete wash tub and Freddy Alborta photographed the pale, posthumous Che — an iconic image distributed worldwide.

In an ironic twist, the press has reported that among the Bolivians benefiting from cataract surgery by Cuban doctors is none other than Mario Teran, the Bolivian soldier who executed Guevara.

In La Higuera, Guevara's image is ubiquitous. Impoverished villagers hawk Che memorabilia and seek tips via guide services or the repetition of dubious Che anecdotes. "I don't know much about Che, but he attracts tourists, and that's a good thing," said Limbert Arteaga, 29, mayor of the nearby town of Pucara.

Today's Che lovefest is a departure from the state of affairs 40 years ago, when villagers expressed suspicion and mystification. "The campesino [Spanish for farmer] masses don't help us in anything and instead they betray us," Guevara wrote in his diary of the Bolivian campaign a week before he was killed.

By the time he and the bedraggled remnants of his guerrilla band arrived in Bolivia, hundreds of commandos trained by US Green Berets were hot on his trail.

He was captured after being wounded in the foot during a firefight in a dense ravine known as El Churo, about two miles away. He weighed about 100 pounds. A bullet had disabled his carbine and punched a hole in his trademark beret.

"He was completely demoralised, nothing like the heroic guerrilla," said retired Bolivian General Gary Prado, captain of the squad that captured Guevara. "He was dying of hunger, dirty, dishevelled. It made you sorry to see him."

Shackled and marched

Contradicting the notion that Guevara vowed never to be captured alive, Prado says the rebel willingly surrendered. "I'm Che Guevara and I'm worth more to you alive than dead," he told his captors, according to Prado.

He was shackled and marched to the schoolhouse. The next day, President Rene Barrientos, a US-trained General, decided Guevara would be executed.

The volunteer warrant officer, Teran, fired the fatal shots sometime after 1pm, according to various accounts. The autopsy cited eight bullet wounds, but none to the face that would soon be flashed across the globe.

Ernesto Guevara, saint to some, devil to others, bohemian, adventurer and implacable foe of capitalism, was dead.

And the myth of the immortal Che was born.