A Memory As Cuba Ends August of 2023

     Today is August 31st of 2023, a day that finds Cuba recuperating from the passage of Hurricane Idalia. But also today Cubans are remembering August 31st of 1967, the day the Guerrilla Fighter named Tania was ambushed and killed in Bolivia as she waded across a deep creek while holding her rifle high over the water as she fought with Che Guevara.

    The "Tania" that Cubans still idolize was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 19th, 1937 after her parents Erich and Nadia Bider had escaped Hitler's Nazi Germany. So her official name is Haydee Bider, but she will always be worshipped by Cubans for her devotion to the Cuban Revolution and her massive love of Che Guevara. 

     This was Tania the Guerrilla after she followed Che Guevara, the love of her life, to Bolivia where he hoped to create an independence movement similar to the successful one he had so famously accomplished with the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

    This was the playful Tania taking a photo of Che while he was taking a photo of her. Tania was awesomely intelligent and was fluent in multiple languages -- especially German, Spanish, English, and Russian.

This photo of Tania was taken in 1961.

     As a brave and brilliant Guerrilla Fighter with Che Guevara in Bolivia, Tania was personally singled out by both the U. S. CIA as well as the Bolivian Army that finally ambushed Tania as she crossed a swollen creek while holding her rifle above her head on August 31st, 1967.

    Of course, one of history's most famed assassinations was that of Che Guevara in Bolivia on October 9th of 1967, a few weeks after his beloved Tania and fellow guerrila fighter had been ambushed and killed in the creek.

    This was Che Guevara after he was captured and photographed standing with CIA agent Felix Rodriguez who was born in 1941 in Havana, Cuba and today is the most heralded 82-year-old Cuban-American living in Miami.

     The great journalist/author Jon Lee Anderson remains the greatest expert on the life and death of Che Guevara. His article above in The New Yorker started with this paragraph: "Moments before the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara was murdered by his captors in Bolivia, in 1967, the C.I.A. agent who was on the scene told his executioner, a Bolivian sergeant, to shoot Che from the neck down, so as to make it appear that he had died of his wounds in battle." Then after he was killed, both of Che Guevara's hands were chopped off and he was buried in a secret grave but many diligent years of research finally discovered the grave and then Che Guevara's remains, proved by DNA, were sent to Cuba where they were buried in a cherished and not-secret tomb.

    But today -- on August 31st, 2023 -- Cubans are honoring Tania, the devoted and brilliant guerrilla fighter who will forever be linked with Che Guevara. Prior to Che's assassination in Bolivia on October 9, 1967, Tania died on August 31st, 1967 while fighting in Bolivia on Che's behalf.

     To remember the day that Tania was ambushed in the creek and killed in Bolivia on August 31st, 1967, Cuban TV today showed this image of where she died.

     Both Che and Tania were notable photographers. The photo above is believed to be last one she took of Che in Bolivia while he rested and smoked a pipe; and the photo directly above is believed to be the last photo of Tania that Che took in Bolivia.

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