Fracchia, Antonio Luis Sapienza Che Guevara's Final Adventure

The Guerilla in Bolivia, 1967

Volume 45 in the Latin America @ War series is a detailed military history of Ernesto Che Guevara's last campaign, when he commanded the Ejércitode Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, ELN) of Bolivia in a doomed campaign against the U.S.-backed military regime led by Air Force General René Barrientos. After a failed campaign to bring his type of revolution to Africa, and with the blessing of Fidel Castro (possibly to distance Castro from Guevara) , the Argentine-born Ernesto Guevara led the Cuban-backed National Liberation Army in the Nancahuazú region of Bolivia in 1966 and 1967, known as the Nancahuazú guerrillas. Guevara believed that Bolivia was ripe for revolution after the overthrow of former President Víctor Paz Estenssoro in November 1964, and he thought that the US would not support President Barrientos. Guevara's guerrillas scored some initial successes early in their campaign before the Bolivian army and security forces, now trained and supported by U.S. special forces, launched a relentless pursuit aided by Bolivian air force aircraft. In a campaign typical of the brutal guerrilla wars being fought in South America at the time, the guerrillas were rounded up and killed in action or summarily executed, often after capture, interrogation, and torture. In October 1967, Guevara met this fate. Che Guevara's Final Adventure offers a detailed military history of the last campaign of a figure who remains an instantly recognizable, if controversial, icon of the leftist revolutionary movements of the Cold War era. This work is illustrated throughout with original photographs and includes specially commissioned color artwork.