82 The Economist April 9th 2022
Obituary Mario Terán
Theyhadspentthenightcelebratingthearrestoftheir ex
traordinary prisoner, but in the bleary morning of October 9th
1967 a wakeup order came for A and B Company of the Bolivian
Manchego Regiment. The words were “Saluden a Papá”, sent by
President René Barrientos himself. They meant “Say hello to Dad”,
and kill him. The original idea, backed by the United States, had
been to send Che Guevara for courtmartial; but Barrientos wanted
this poisonous influence stamped out right away. Someone had to
kill both Che and Willy, a guerrilla arrested with him; and when
seven men were asked, and all volunteered, Colonel Zenteno’s fin
ger had pointed at Mario Terán. “Usted al Che,” he said; you do Che.
For 40 minutes he had hung about, hoping the order would be
annulled. This only infuriated his superiors. So from their camp at
La Higuera, a village of no more than 20 dwellings in the dry bro
ken hills of southern Bolivia, he was now climbing up to the
schoolhouse. It was a humble place, built of mud and thatch, and
silent now the children were away. But inside it was a legend, the
most famous guerrilla leader anywhere, whose revolutionary so
cialist ideas had spread from Cuba all over Latin America and then
beyond. He had been absent for years, fomenting trouble on Fidel
Castro’s orders in Congo, Tanzania, Vietnam and even Europe.
Now he had turned up in Bolivia with a ragtag band of guerrillas,
and the day before A and B Company had run into them.
The fight had been fierce. Terán, a 26yearold noncommis
sioned officer in Company A, saw two good friends killed in front
of him. But Che had lost more, and was wounded and his carbine
barrel shattered, so he surrendered. He looked almost ordinary
then, like some tramp, unkempt and rasping with asthma in a
filthy uniform. But when he was given some tobacco for his pipe,
and cheekily asked whether anyone had any Astoria, the old
charm came out again.
To the man who now had to kill him, the task was dreadful. Heneeded a stiff drink, but could find only beer, so he shouldered his
m2automatic and struggled on with a slopping bottle in each
hand. He had tried to find a better rifle, too, but had no luck. No
luck with anything that day.
Why he had been picked remained a mystery. He was a good
soldier, his superiors said, efficient and calm, did his duties well.
His father was in commerce, but he had chosen the army in his
teens, gone to the Sergeants’ School in his home town of Cocha
bamba, and had made enough progress to become an instructor
there. He was nothing special, though, and no more eager than
anyone else to volunteer. Or perhaps a bit more, with his friends
just killed and his wife Julia about to give birth back at home.
Whatever had drawn him to the colonel’s notice, it led him now to
the schoolhouse door.
If he had known then how his life was about to change, he
would never have raised his hand. Almost all the rest of his exis
tence was spent in hiding and denial. In December that year he let
Michelle Rey from Paris Matchtake his picture and label him as
Che’s killer. It remained the only clear photo of him until his pen
sioner’s iddecades later. In between, in effect, he disappeared. He
gave no hint of his story either publicly or even privately, to his six
children or their children. There was said to be a “curse of Che”, by
which people involved in his death met sudden or violent ends. He
did not need to believe in that to feel he was a marked man.
Until he retired from the army in 1997 with the rank of senior
warrant officer, both the army and the government protected him.
He also stayed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia’s biggest city, but
moved about in its labyrinth of streets, giving out no address ex
cept to claim his oldage benefit. Sometimes he went by the name
“Pedro Salazar”. When two reporters from Spain’s El Mundonews
paper tracked him down in 2014, they found him in a middleclass
street in a house behind high green railings, with a frisky Rottwei
ler patrolling but no doorknocker or bell.
To those reporters he gave the story he had told himself for de
cades. He was not the killer of Che, not for sure. Yes, he was the
man in the Paris Matchphotograph, who bore a strong resem
blance to the officer at Che’s layingout (above) who stood behind
his dead head, seeming to explain. He also had the same name as
the man who had written a longsecret report on the killing to his
superiors, and had been given Che’s handmade pipe by an embed
ded ciaagent. But there were two other Mario Teráns in the Boliv
ian army, distinguished only by their maternal surnames: Mario
Terán Ortuño and Mario Terán Reque. As he told the reporters
without blinking, it could well have been one of them.
It was therefore not him for certain who, according to the se
cret report, entered the schoolhouse in La Higuera to find Che sit
ting on a bench. He said, “You’ve come to kill me.” To this his killer
could only bow his head and make no answer. He was unable to
fire. The figure of Che seemed suddenly gigantic. Those eyes
shone so intensely that he felt dizzy, overwhelmed. He thought his
m2might be wrenched away by one movement of Che’s hand. (The
guards said later that he rushed from the building, soaked in
sweat, and that he did so more than once.) At last Che said: “Calm
down and aim well! You are going to kill a man.”
The man who was not him for certain aimed his carbine at
Che’s legs, recalling the order that he should do so to spread the of
ficial story that he had died of battle wounds. With the first burst
he made him topple writhing to the ground, his legs destroyed and
blood streaming across the floor. His killer regained his spirits
then, and unleashed a second burst that found Che’s arm, his
shoulder and his heart. Then the giant was dead, and he left.
Death in such a fashion, and especially the layingout after
wards, mightily magnified the myth of Che. La Higuera became a
shrine and a touristtrap, with the guerrillero heroicoits patron
saint. As for the soldier who was not his killer, not for certain, he
went back down the hill believing he would never forget, and pro
ceeded to work on his forgetting for 55 years. nMan and mythMario Terán Salazar, the Bolivian soldier who killed
Che Guevara, died on March 10th, aged 80