Tania La Guerrillera

Tania La Guerrillera

The only woman in Che Guevara's final guerrilla force
Biography
1935
Tamara Bunkes Jewish-German father and her Russian-born mother flee Nazi Germany for Buenos Aires, Argentina
1937
Haydée Tamara Bunke is born on November 19. She grows up during Argentina’s Peron era.
1952
Tamara’s parents return to East Germany to help build a Socialist society with their two children.
1953
Tamara is educated at “Clara Zektin Highschool” in Stalinstadt, GDR. She becomes a member of the Communist Youth Organization FDJ and gets weapons training at the state-owned Society for Sports and Technology
1958
Tamara joins the ruling Socialist Party SED during university. She plans to return to Latin America and creates a Latin American student club at her university in Berlin
1960
The Cuban revolution is a great inspiration for Tamara. Sie works as interpreter for Cuban delegations in Berlin und Leipzig and gets to meet Che Guevara – the most important encouter of her life, a lasting friendship develops
1961
Tamara leaves the GDR for Cuba, where she workes as interpreter at the Institute For The Friendship Of Peoples ICAP, and many other institutions. Together with Che she volunteers for labor assigments
1962
The Cuban Secret Service recruits Tamara. Che assigns her a special mission in Bolivia that she is now preparing for. She is given the code name Tania.
1964
Following travels with a number of fake identities, Tamara settles in La Paz, Bolivia under the alias „Laura Gutierrez Bauer“
1966
Agent Tania has gained access to many political leaders in Bolivia and works within the Ministry of Information. Secretly, she prepares the urban support group for the guerrilla and welcomes Che, who arrives with his first fighters in November
1967
Tania leads two foreign comrades to Che’s secret base camp near Camiri, Bolivia. Meanwhile, two deserters reveal a lot about Che’s plans, plus Tanias true identity, to the Bolivian military. Tania has to stay with the group and joins the fight for six months. She is killed on August 31 during an ambush at the banks of the Rio Grande river. Che Guevara himself is captured and assassinated soon afterwards.

The Revolutionary

Tamara Bunke a.k.a. Tania La Guerrillera was the only woman in Che Guevara’s final guerrilla force in the highlands of Bolivia.
Her memory is preserved in many places around the world: In Argentina, where she was born and raised, in the former German Democratic Republic, where she spend the formative years of her youth, in Cuba, where she arrived in 1961 to help create a Socialist society, und last but not least in the mountain region in the North of Bolivia where she fought - and died.
During 1967, when the soldiers of the Bolivian army discovered that a woman was among their adversaries, she quickly developed a reputation as invincible warrior that vastly overstated her actual abilities. Thus, the legend of “Tania La Guerrillera” was born. Even today, many girls in Bolivia are named Tania in memory of a short dream of freedom that never came true.
In 1998, Tamara’s remains where found in Bolivia near the place where she was killed. They were transferred to Cuba where she is now buried alongside Che Guevara in Santa Clara. Many schools in Cuba are named after her, she still enjoys the revered status of revolutionary hero.
In the GDR, too, she became an official hero of the working class after her death. Many people who heard about her then still think highly of her – she remains one of the few cult icons of the East that still has appeal even after the end of Socialism.

Tania and her times

In 1959, Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevera and the fighters of the Cuban Revolution take Havanna – the dream of a liberated Latin America begins. In 1961, the government of the German Democratic Republic orders the building of the Berlin Wall. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the world comes to the brink of nuclear destruction. One year later John F. Kennedy, symbol of a better America, is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In 1964, The Beatles record their album “A Hard Days Night”, triggering world-wide Beatlemania. In 1965, the US Airforce starts it’s massive attacks on North Vietnam. In 1966, Arthur Penn directs “Bonny and Clyde”, leading the way in the aesthetic revolution of Hollywood cinema. And in Bolivia in 1967, Ernesto Che Guevera resumes his struggle for a continuing revolution. At his side: Tamara Bunke alias Tania la Guerillera….

Tanias Story

La Paz, Bolivia, in the mid-sixties. A military regime of laughably operatic generals around René Barrientos, the corrupt president. It’s a lazy provincial outpost of US imperialism, high up in the Andes, ignored by the powers of the world. Among the local big shots, there’s a young woman on the rise. Beautiful, ambitious, an elegant opportunist, trophy in a Macho world, ready to do anything to advance her career… or so it seems.
Truth is, she’s been living a lie, for many years now. Every single day, she betrays her deepest convictions in order to serve them – all for the benefit of the great idea, the secret plan. She waits for Ernesto Che Guevara, the man who has promised to take the Cuban revolution to all of Latin America. She knows, among only a handful of people on earth, where his next fight is to begin – right here in Bolivia. Che has personally given her the order to prepare it. And so she spies on the local regime, counting the days to his arrival, alone and far from home: worldly Buenos Aires, where she was born, socialist Germany, the land of her parents, joyously liberated Havana. The Cuban secret service has given her a codename: Tania.
One evening in November of 1966, Che and a handful of comrades finally arrive in Tanias apartment, unbeknownst to the CIA and the world powers. They are passing through on their way to the jungle up North, where the fighting is due to begin. To Tania, their presence seems like a passing dream. Her duties in La Paz are now more important than ever – and more hopeless at the same time. She’s supposed to keep drinking Champagne, keep lying and listening, while somewhere else, bullets will finally speak the truth. And yet she’s ready to sacrifice herself – until the moment she breaks down in the middle of the day, is brought to a hospital and learns she has cancer. Returning to her parents in Germany, the doctors say, could save her life – maybe. But Tania decides on a different route: Every day she has left, she will use with utmost determination for the great cause.
Against her orders, she leaves the city and makes her way to Che’s base camp in the North, where the Guerrilla prepares for battle. Yet before she has a chance to tell the Commandante about her sickness, bad news come in over the radio: Two Bolivian deserters from the camp have given away it’s location – and also Tania’s true identity – to the military. So now, there’s no way back for her, she will have to move with the group and fight. She welcomes the danger and clarity of this new situation, it feels like a salvation. Only now she has to hide the fact that she is dying – she wants to complete her journey without being pitied or favoured by her comrades.
Soon, all ideas of a romantic liberation army dissolve in a quagmire of problems and hardship. The miles are gruelling, food is scarce, and Che, almost suffocating from asthma, doesn’t seem to know any mercy - least of all for himself. His plan to radicalise and recruit local peasants doesn’t show any promise: Too often, they have to hide, too alien they seem to the scattered peasants they meet along the way. While the group’s general mood is darkening, Tania makes existential new discoveries: the adrenalin rush of danger, the devil may care attitude of Cuban veterans, the first Guerrillero killed in action. An ace marksman in the gun clubs of her Socialist youth, she’s ready for combat – if she can only overcome her fear. Marcos, never seen without his heavy machine gun, encourages her. In Cuba, he used to be a revolutionary hero and member of the State Council, now he’s back in arms where he feels most comfortable. He’s a fighting machine, completely confident in his body and his abilities, a physical presence Tania can’t easily ignore. Furthermore, he’s an independent thinker. More and more, he challenges Che on what he thinks are grave strategic mistakes.
For everyone not blinded by ideology, the truth becomes apparent pretty soon: In this country, people are not on the brink of revolution, this will not be a new Vietnam, and the whole exercise seems more and more pointless. Also, Tania is unable to hide her sickness anymore – during long marches, she trails behind, prompting Che to assign her to the rearguard. His plan to move in separate groups proves to be a fateful mistake: The units can’t seem to connect anymore, Che and his vanguard are lost. The rearguard is a pretty dispirited lot, lead by hesitant commander Joaquin. Thank God Marcos is also with them – his open criticism of Che has led to his relegation.
The secret agent marked by death, the dishonoured fighter, they fall in love – a flare-up of passions in already desperate circumstances. The idea to abandon the fight slowly creeps in on them, even Marcos dreams of a new, more peaceful life with Tania. She knows she should tell him that this is impossible, her cancer has progressed way too far – yet she can’t find the heart to do it. Finally, he summons all his courage to pose the fateful question, high treason for any Guerrillero yet somehow unavoidable: In the end, isn’t love more important than revolution? Tania feels what answer she would give, but she can’t anymore. All she wants now is a dignified end. With her death-defying conviction she even spurs the others to move on, and so she becomes “Tania La Guerrillera”, feared by her enemies, a legend of the Bolivian Andes even today.
During a firefight with US-trained Army Rangers, Tania’s death wish is about to be fulfilled - when Marcos sacrifices his life to rescue her. She mourns her lover but knows he is only leading the way by a few steps: The enemy is closing in, the last traitor has already been paid, an ambush is being prepared along the bank of the Rio Grande…

Concept

TANIA LA GUERRILLERA, the movie, is being developed at Berlin-based production company Tourel Film. It will focus on the final dramatic chapter of Tamara Bunke’s life. This is where her ideas and convictions were put to the ultimate test, in events of great drama and emotion. The focus on her last fight will allow us to concentrate on few but spectacular locations in Latin America that have not changed much since her death: For example the poor and barren mountain region near Camiri, Bolivia, where she fought as guerrillera.
Our shooting style will be flexible, almost documentary-style, with only a small but dedicated crew. We hope to get deep inside our characters, their revolutionary dreams, their suffering, their longing. Tania will always be center stage: A remarkable woman who holds her own in the tough macho world of fighting and dying for the great cause.