Che Guevara had already helped topple one government, fighting alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba, when he slipped into Bolivia in 1966 to light the same fuse there. He spent nearly a year leading a ragged guerrilla band through the jungle, hunted by the Bolivian army with American backing, before troops cornered and captured him on 8 October 1967 in a remote ravine.
He was held overnight in a schoolhouse in a small village, then shot dead the following day on orders from the Bolivian government, which wanted him silenced rather than put on public trial. His death turned him instantly into a global revolutionary icon, his face reproduced on posters and T-shirts for decades after the jungle where he fell was forgotten.
