PLANNED AUCTION OF GUEVARA DIARIES STIRS CONTROVERSY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000202400004-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 18, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00
ARTICLE APPEARED PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
ON PAGE_ 18 June 1984
Planned auction of Guevawarie
s
stirs 'con,
By Joanne Mason says it has no doubt that the anony- propaganda tool to the American and
Reuters mous owner, who is not British, has Bolivian authorities trying to
LONDON - When the Bolivians the legal right to sell the diaries. The counter guerrilla insurgency.
captured and killed Che Guevara in firm's experts are also convinced of But the diaries also give a personal
1967, they had to display his corpse the documents' authenticity. We are account of the harsh conditions un-
and copies of his diaries to convince 100 percent sure we have got the der which the guerrillas struggled.
people that the famed revolutionary originals," a spokesman for the auc- They tell of the morale of Gueva-
was dead. tioneers said. ra's small band of guerrillas, who
Now the diaries once, again 1a`e ` Many of Guevara's writings are al ? 'never numbered more than 51, as
emerged, and they're causing an v ready. available. They were first pub- they trekked through the mountains
lished by the Cubans in 1968. :., in pouring rain. Guevara records, for
ternational rumpus. The Bolivian minister of the interi- example, how the first comrade died ?;
Next month they will come up for Qg at~t e, timg~Antonio Argued,, in an absurd manner" - not in
auction in London, despite protests fled -the country after adm'tting,that combat, but by falling in a river and
from Bolivia that the country is be- 4e had leaked a pMy of the diaries. drowning.
ing robbed of part of its history. Declaring himself a Marxist he said If the auctio_ goes abpadAgd
The matter has become a major that he wanted to keg the CIA from the British Foreign Qfj~e say t has
.
scandal in Bolivia, where the coup- uslna the diaries to~ustiy new ag? rLgL1 een_approached :by_BoIJ.: to
try's armed forces say the papers gress on_against in America. i tervene,in.the sale_.- cash-starved
vanished from their possession and Last week Cuba denied foreign Bolivia-is unlikely_to_bid,,.accordi.ng
Defense Minister Manuel Cardenas press reports that it was behind the xp, o;;iv_iangoyer=en, o cgs.
Mallo has announced an investiga- London auction. "It is infuriating They say the Cuban government the
tion into how they were spirited that something as sacred to the histo- Soviet Unio_and`_Ih~CL&could be
away. ry of Latin America as this document among the bidders.
The Argentine-born Guevara, who should be the object of such manipu-
gained a worldwide reputation dur- . lations," Cuba's official Granma
irg Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, newspaper said.
kept a day-to-day account of his 11- The diaries are, a fascinating ac-
month guerrilla campaign in the count of Guevara's quixotic and ulti-
mountains of Bolivia. mately tragic campaign, and a testi-
His entries began in November mony to the courage and dedication
1966 and ended on Oct. 7, 1967. The of. one of the world's most famous
next day'he was wounded and cap- guerrilla fighters.;
tured by the army. After .intgrroga, 'The` entries reveal how Guevara
lion by the CIA, he was~Y the wanted to make'-Bolivia "another
Bolivians on Oct. 9 at the age of 39. Vietnam." His intention was to spark
A few photocopied pages of the an insurrection that would spread
diaries, found on Guevara, were laid throughout Latin America, provoke
out with his body for journalists to, U.S. intervention and lead to a revo-
see in a small mountain laundry. The lution that would-destroy "Yankee
originals, however, disappeared imperialism
from public view until last month,
when Sotheby's, the auctioneering The diaries make clear how care-
firm, said it had acquired the two fully the operation was planned from
diaries and other campaign docu- Havana, and how, essentially, the
ments. peasantry failed to rally to the revo-
. Cardenas Mallo has called on Brit- lutionary call. Such information was
ain to stop the auction, but Sotheby's strategically important and a useful
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202400004-1