Osama Bin Laden & The Burial Of Ché Guevara

The man who wrote a gigantic biography on the Argentinian icon and noted Communist Ernesto “Ché” Guevara wrote an essay recently in The New Yorker about the similarities between what happened with Guevara’s targeted death, and that of the recently killed Osama Bin Laden. Part of what Jon Lee Anderson wrote:

On the night of October 10th, the Vallegrande hospital was cordoned off while two Argentine police forensic experts, who had arrived secretly that day, took Che’s fingerprints to cross-check them with their own records. Che’s hands were amputated, put in jars with formaldehyde, and placed in the custody of Bolivia’s intelligence chief. Then, in the wee hours, without any civilian onlookers present, Che’s body was taken to a nearby dirt airstrip on the edge of town, where a bulldozer dug a large pit, and it was dumped inside, together with the bodies of several dead comrades. The pit was then covered over. By the time Che’s brother Roberto arrived the next morning, intending to identify him and reclaim his remains, his body was gone.

The essay goes on to detail the confusion over what happened to Guevara’s body. It was 28 years before his body was found, in 1997 it was exhumed and reburied in Cuba with full state honors, as part of what Anderson called a propaganda campaign.

Ché’s body, and that of Bin Laden, are still both subject to conspiracy theories and rumors. Where were they really buried? Were those the real bodies? Lots of information remained hidden and so theorists were able to fill-in the blanks on their own. We wrote about the contribution of Latinos to Bin Laden’s discovery and eventual death, but hopefully the U.S.’s decision to bury him at sea will close this chapter in history a lot quicker than what happened with Guevara’s body.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD