CHE GUEVARA — CASTRO, Fidel. “Major Fidel Castro’s Appearance in TV in order to inform the people about Major Ernesto Guevara’s death” i.e. Statement made by major Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and prime minister of the revolutionary government, to inform the people on the death of major Ernesto Che Guevara, transmitted over the national radio and television network and Radio Havana Cuba, October 15, 1967. (Translation of transcript made by the Department of Stenographic Transcripts of the Revolutionary Government). [Cuba:] Instituto del libro (1967).

First edition. Che had been executed a week earlier, 9 October 1967, by a CIA-sponsored Bolivian hit squad (he did not die in battle, as his legend records). His killers had originally intended to cut off his head to rebut any possible rumours that Che might still alive, but instead made do with his hands. His body was “disappeared” so that it might not be used for propaganda purpose; it found in 1997 (minus the hands) in a makeshift grave alongside an airstrip. Castro declared “those who boast of victory are mistaken. They are mistaken when they think that his death is the end of his ideas, the end of his tactics, the end of his guerrilla concepts, the end of his theory”. A very good copy in the original illustrated wrappers (lightly faded near the spine).