written and directed by Romano Scavolini

LA HIGUERA, October 8^th, 1967.  With the phrase in code, ‘Papa Cansado’ (daddy is tired), the news of Che Guevara’s capture was transmitted by radio to La Paz.  It is said that Che was captured by a CIA agent named Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban known simply by one and all as Felix.  But the man truly responsible for Che’s capture was Captain Gary Prado, who commanded the platoon of Bolivian Rangers that surrounded Che and his men at the Quebrada del Churro. So started the countdown of the drama that had only eighteen hours left to run. Many years have passed since that day, many of the witnesses are dead, have disappeared, or are simply leading low profile existences.  And yet many of the witnesses who witnessed the violence that day are very important, none more so than Julia Cortez, the school teacher at La Higuera who, apart from a few soldiers, was the only one who managed to talk to Che in the last hours of his life.  But she isn’t alone.  Many others have documented what really happened during those few hours, and in great detail.  The one who sticks out more than the others is the man who actually captured Che, Gary Prado Salmon, captain of the Bolivian Rangers, now a retired general.  There are several important testimonies, such as General Federico Arana Serrudo, who was Chief of the Bolivian Secret Service at the time.  While in Berlin as the Bolivian Military Delegate, he was the first to receive a tip-off from an unidentified East European agent that a group of Cubans had started an armed uprising in a Latin-American country.  Then there was General Jaime Niño de Guzman, a Major in the Bolivian Air Force at the time, who gave a dramatic account of the events.  He spoke at length with Che shortly before he was killed in cold-blood, and then transported the guerrilla fighter’s body from La Higuera to Vallegrande.  And finally the important declarations made by Cuban historian Froilan Gonzalez, who with great lucidity reconstructed Che’s guerrilla experiences in Bolivia, having visited the same places over a period of four years.  The interviews with the ‘campesinos’ of La Higuera, Jorge Quiroga and Policarpio Cortes, who were involved in the October 8 battle at Quebrada del Churro, and with Irma Rosado, who was very young when all this took place.  And who doesn’t remember the images of Che’s body on the stretcher, bare-chested, his eyes open?  After being exhibited in the hospital laundry room, dirty and muddied, the body was entrusted to two nurses, who washed him, prepared him for burial.  One of them is Susana Osinaga.  She remembers those days only too well.  When they brought her the body, the officers forced her to forget about the hospital patients and think only of him. 

Those image of Che’s eyes, wide open and white, are still with her today. 

“I felt he was looking directly into my heart.  He was like Jesus Christ!”

RUNNING TIME:   60’

DIRECTOR:          ROMANO SCAVOLINI

EDITING:              PAOLO MASELLI

MUSIC:                 PAUL FREEMAN

PRODUCER:         FRANCESCO PAPA

voice:                 FRANCO NERO

PRODUCTION:      VICTORIA MEDIA

YEAR:                  2003

 Shot in Bolivia at Vallegrande, La Higuera, La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

with interviews to

Coordination in Bolivia: Favio Giorgio

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