A Scramble for Rights: Publishers and the Saga of the Che Guevara Diary, 1968

In the months following the October 1967 capture and execution of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia, relations were fraying between the country’s military rulers and their United States benefactors. Washington’s sudden, post-Guevara parsimony was interpreted as ingratitude, and allies of the United States faced charges of having treasonously permitted the CIA to infiltrate the country during the Guevara manhunt. Anti-imperialism grew across Bolivia’s political spectrum, as students, workers, military officials, and clergymen were moved by the martyrdom of the charismatic “Che” Guevara. Lording over the latter’s combat diary was Bolivia’s Military High Command, an increasingly nationalist group of officers who were themselves poised to launch a wave of major defections from Bolivia’s military alliance with the United States. When they opened a global bidding war for the rights to publish Guevara’s diary, their goal was not just to raise money for the armed forces but also to use leverage to ensure the United States did not take credit for the Bolivian army’s combat victory. These tense negotiations went on for months, pitting CIA-linked publishers from New York City against Cuban-backed journalists based in Paris and San Francisco. Suddenly, in the middle of 1968, Bolivia’s most important cabinet minister defected, fleeing the country and announcing that he had delivered photostatic copies of Guevara’s diary, free of charge, into the hands of Fidel Castro in Havana. It was Interior/Government Minister Antonio Arguedas, secret member of the Communist Party and longtime double agent working for the CIA. The publication of “Che” Guevara’s combat diary became an international spy drama, one with political reverberations that nearly brought down Bolivia’s CIA-backed government in late 1968.