TO 41 YEARS OF ITS FALL IN COMBAT IN BOLIVIA
Tania, the unforgettable guerrilla
When Tamara Bunker (Tania) arrived at Bolivia in November of 1964, with the name of Laura Gutiérrez, of Argentine nationality and etnóloga profession, in the Andean border a wind was anticipated to him that spoke to the language aymara.Tania lived in La Paz giving the appearance on being a well off person and, being worth of his vast culture and intelligence, it began to spin friendship with compatible personalities to the cupola of the government. Thus, camouflaged, one for a long time stayed without nobody suspected her, not even presidents René Barrientos and Alfredo Ovando, next to those who its image in a photography caught during a concentration emerges farmer.
When initiating the organization and stage of preparation of the armed warfare, Tania was already an indispensable gear in the development of the urban work of the guerrilla, although “the general concept of its use by the Che - Harry Villegas remembers (Pombo) - was not in which it participated directly in the execution of action, but, given the possibilities of connections in the high governmental spheres and within the average ones where it could be obtained some type of strategic intelligence and tactical importance, be dedicated abiertamente to this type of task and of maintaining it like reserve, from the operative point of view, that in a while determined outside necessary to use a person that she was not suspicious, counting itself on anybody reliable one to be able to even realise the concealment of some companions and the reception of some messenger who came with something extremely important”.
In December of 1966, on the eve of New Year, Tania and Mario Monk arrived at the guerrilla camp, where it waited for the Che to them. Its arrival was a true joy for all, not only they knew because it from Cuba, but also because it took with himself recordings of Latin American music.
In this occasion, the Che spoke first with Tania and later with Monk. To Tania he gave the instruction him to travel to Argentina to meet themselves with Mauritius and Jozami, and to mention them to the camping. To Monk, whom he tried to hold the top command of the armed warfare, he said to him: the direction of the guerrilla I have and in this I do not admit ambiguities, because “I have a military experience that you do not have”. Which Monk answered: while the guerrilla is developed in Bolivia, “the absolute control it I Now must have (...) if the fight took place in Argentina I am arranged to not more outside go with you although to cargarte the knapsack”.
Tania fulfilled its mission drawing for the obstacles, hardly returned accompanied, among others, of Ciro Busts (surviving of the guerrilla of It jumps). And disobeying instructions of Che, ordered who it not to return to Camiri because the risk ran of being detected, lead in his jeep to Régis Debray, Ciro Busts and others, to the Calamine House in Ñancahuazú.
This one was his third and last trip to the guerrilla base, since from then it would be gotten up to the armed warfare. That is to say, to share with its companions everything when it learned in Cuba. The Che, considering it one more a combatant, gave a gun to him M-1.
Its adaptation to geographic means was amazingly fast, in spite of the steep land. “There were moments at which there were to hang itself by ropes - Pombo- does not say, in that there was to crawl, practically, scratching on rocks, and we can say with all sincerity that did it to Tania in very many cases with more effectiveness than some companions, who, being men, were adapted either to this type of conditions of life”.
However, months later, due to his delicate state of health, it left it to the Che in the group of the rear, where “undertows” were some considered elements, and where the stoic value of Tania served as example to several of its companions, next to those who, four months later, it would fall pestered in the ambush of the Ford of Plaster.
By the end of August of 1967, the guerrilla troops, commanded by Vilo Acuña Núñez (Joaquin), left to the Rio Grande and, bordering it, she arrived after a day the house of Red Honorato, of that, months before, the Che said: “The farmer is within the type; incapable to help us, but incapable to anticipate the dangers that carry and for that reason potentially dangerous”.
When the rear contacted to red, nobody thought that the denunciation of to this would throw them coward enemy under fire. Indeed, the day in which was catched next to other farmers, it was committed to collaborate with the troops of regiment Of La Mancha 12 of Infantry.
At night, the guerrillas slept in the house of the farmer and, when blunting the dawn, retired previous to the agreement in which it would guide on the following day them, by a half-step, towards the Plaster Ford.
That same night, a company of soldiers, directed by captain Mario Vargas, marched in the direction of the Low Masicuri. To the other day, the head of the detachment discussed the last details of the plan with Red. “You do what the guerrillas have asked to him? he said to him. But hágalos to exactly cross the Ford where I say to him and no later than the three”.
The 31 of August, to the been suitable hour, the guerrillas was with the farmer, who guided a stretch to them and he indicated the Ford to them. Of suddenly, the guerrilla column took a break and Israel lieutenant Kings (Braulio), like having a feeling holocausto announced, said: “There are many footsteps by this place”. The farmer, doubtful, I answer: “They are my children watching to the pigs”.
The guerrillas walked a stretch and, before the sun declined to its decline, the farmer took leave giving the hand them. Soon one moved away without returning the glance, while its white shirt served like signal to the soldiers seized in the margins of the river, quick to press the finger in the trigger.
Captain Vargas, when detecting to the guerrillas between the trees that shaded the footpath, raised the prisms binocular around its eyes and descried the physical image of Tania; she was a white woman in the middle of the green, thin steppe by the deprivations of the fight. It wore to speckled trousers, booties of soldier, faded blouse, knapsack and gun to the shoulder.
The distance between the troops was made more and more cuts. Braulio went into in the ambush and the soldiers pointed their arms against the guerrillas.
Braulio was first in feeling the lukewarm rubbing of the water. It turned around the head and, machete in hand, ordered cross a river. Tania advanced in the rear, preceded by a Bolivian guerrilla to whom the Che called “undertow”. When they had submerged in the water? except Jose Castle? , with mochilla heavy and maintaining the weapon on the head, captain Mario Vargas issued the order abrir fire. The shots vibrated like tense wires and, in the middle of an eddy of water and bodies, the combatants were falling in flight gestures. Who did not die in the first unloading, they let themselves drag by the current or they plunged themselves. Braulio, doing agile contorsiones, shot against a soldier who was in the flank, while the other passed away giving shots in the air. Tania tried to manipulate its gun with skill, but a bullet crossed the lung to him it tended and it on the backwater.
Between the singed clothes, the blood and the corpses, were two prisoners and other that escabulló in the weeds, until a raking patrol gave with him it pestered and it in the act.
After massacre, soldiers, that still shot against all bulk that floated in the water, did not give with the corpse of Tania. The doctor Jose Goatherd Flowers (Black), when seeing it wound, wants to save it and he lets himself drag by the current. The doctor leaves to the border dragging the body the guerrilla. He verifies that it is dead, leaves the vague corpse and by the footpaths, they find until it by the tracking of the dogs. The doctor is assassinated by the toilet of the patrol captured that it. The soldiers continue the search of Tania and, to the seven days, they find its corpse in the border. Also was the knapsack, with which as much it wanted to the lake of his life: Latin American music.
Concluded the mission, the soldiers initiate their march towards Vallegrande, with the corps of the tied guerrillas to long branches.
Captain Mario Vargas is decorated with gallons and promoted to major of army by his flashing expensive military man and, at the same time, she is victim of psychic upheavals and distressing nightmares, in which it sees Tania getting up itself with the gun in stop, arranged to take revenge his death.
By Victor Montoya
Tania, the unforgettable guerrilla
When Tamara Bunker (Tania) arrived at Bolivia in November of 1964, with the name of Laura Gutiérrez, of Argentine nationality and etnóloga profession, in the Andean border a wind was anticipated to him that spoke to the language aymara.Tania lived in La Paz giving the appearance on being a well off person and, being worth of his vast culture and intelligence, it began to spin friendship with compatible personalities to the cupola of the government. Thus, camouflaged, one for a long time stayed without nobody suspected her, not even presidents René Barrientos and Alfredo Ovando, next to those who its image in a photography caught during a concentration emerges farmer.
When initiating the organization and stage of preparation of the armed warfare, Tania was already an indispensable gear in the development of the urban work of the guerrilla, although “the general concept of its use by the Che - Harry Villegas remembers (Pombo) - was not in which it participated directly in the execution of action, but, given the possibilities of connections in the high governmental spheres and within the average ones where it could be obtained some type of strategic intelligence and tactical importance, be dedicated abiertamente to this type of task and of maintaining it like reserve, from the operative point of view, that in a while determined outside necessary to use a person that she was not suspicious, counting itself on anybody reliable one to be able to even realise the concealment of some companions and the reception of some messenger who came with something extremely important”.
In December of 1966, on the eve of New Year, Tania and Mario Monk arrived at the guerrilla camp, where it waited for the Che to them. Its arrival was a true joy for all, not only they knew because it from Cuba, but also because it took with himself recordings of Latin American music.
In this occasion, the Che spoke first with Tania and later with Monk. To Tania he gave the instruction him to travel to Argentina to meet themselves with Mauritius and Jozami, and to mention them to the camping. To Monk, whom he tried to hold the top command of the armed warfare, he said to him: the direction of the guerrilla I have and in this I do not admit ambiguities, because “I have a military experience that you do not have”. Which Monk answered: while the guerrilla is developed in Bolivia, “the absolute control it I Now must have (...) if the fight took place in Argentina I am arranged to not more outside go with you although to cargarte the knapsack”.
Tania fulfilled its mission drawing for the obstacles, hardly returned accompanied, among others, of Ciro Busts (surviving of the guerrilla of It jumps). And disobeying instructions of Che, ordered who it not to return to Camiri because the risk ran of being detected, lead in his jeep to Régis Debray, Ciro Busts and others, to the Calamine House in Ñancahuazú.
This one was his third and last trip to the guerrilla base, since from then it would be gotten up to the armed warfare. That is to say, to share with its companions everything when it learned in Cuba. The Che, considering it one more a combatant, gave a gun to him M-1.
Its adaptation to geographic means was amazingly fast, in spite of the steep land. “There were moments at which there were to hang itself by ropes - Pombo- does not say, in that there was to crawl, practically, scratching on rocks, and we can say with all sincerity that did it to Tania in very many cases with more effectiveness than some companions, who, being men, were adapted either to this type of conditions of life”.
However, months later, due to his delicate state of health, it left it to the Che in the group of the rear, where “undertows” were some considered elements, and where the stoic value of Tania served as example to several of its companions, next to those who, four months later, it would fall pestered in the ambush of the Ford of Plaster.
By the end of August of 1967, the guerrilla troops, commanded by Vilo Acuña Núñez (Joaquin), left to the Rio Grande and, bordering it, she arrived after a day the house of Red Honorato, of that, months before, the Che said: “The farmer is within the type; incapable to help us, but incapable to anticipate the dangers that carry and for that reason potentially dangerous”.
When the rear contacted to red, nobody thought that the denunciation of to this would throw them coward enemy under fire. Indeed, the day in which was catched next to other farmers, it was committed to collaborate with the troops of regiment Of La Mancha 12 of Infantry.
At night, the guerrillas slept in the house of the farmer and, when blunting the dawn, retired previous to the agreement in which it would guide on the following day them, by a half-step, towards the Plaster Ford.
That same night, a company of soldiers, directed by captain Mario Vargas, marched in the direction of the Low Masicuri. To the other day, the head of the detachment discussed the last details of the plan with Red. “You do what the guerrillas have asked to him? he said to him. But hágalos to exactly cross the Ford where I say to him and no later than the three”.
The 31 of August, to the been suitable hour, the guerrillas was with the farmer, who guided a stretch to them and he indicated the Ford to them. Of suddenly, the guerrilla column took a break and Israel lieutenant Kings (Braulio), like having a feeling holocausto announced, said: “There are many footsteps by this place”. The farmer, doubtful, I answer: “They are my children watching to the pigs”.
The guerrillas walked a stretch and, before the sun declined to its decline, the farmer took leave giving the hand them. Soon one moved away without returning the glance, while its white shirt served like signal to the soldiers seized in the margins of the river, quick to press the finger in the trigger.
Captain Vargas, when detecting to the guerrillas between the trees that shaded the footpath, raised the prisms binocular around its eyes and descried the physical image of Tania; she was a white woman in the middle of the green, thin steppe by the deprivations of the fight. It wore to speckled trousers, booties of soldier, faded blouse, knapsack and gun to the shoulder.
The distance between the troops was made more and more cuts. Braulio went into in the ambush and the soldiers pointed their arms against the guerrillas.
Braulio was first in feeling the lukewarm rubbing of the water. It turned around the head and, machete in hand, ordered cross a river. Tania advanced in the rear, preceded by a Bolivian guerrilla to whom the Che called “undertow”. When they had submerged in the water? except Jose Castle? , with mochilla heavy and maintaining the weapon on the head, captain Mario Vargas issued the order abrir fire. The shots vibrated like tense wires and, in the middle of an eddy of water and bodies, the combatants were falling in flight gestures. Who did not die in the first unloading, they let themselves drag by the current or they plunged themselves. Braulio, doing agile contorsiones, shot against a soldier who was in the flank, while the other passed away giving shots in the air. Tania tried to manipulate its gun with skill, but a bullet crossed the lung to him it tended and it on the backwater.
Between the singed clothes, the blood and the corpses, were two prisoners and other that escabulló in the weeds, until a raking patrol gave with him it pestered and it in the act.
After massacre, soldiers, that still shot against all bulk that floated in the water, did not give with the corpse of Tania. The doctor Jose Goatherd Flowers (Black), when seeing it wound, wants to save it and he lets himself drag by the current. The doctor leaves to the border dragging the body the guerrilla. He verifies that it is dead, leaves the vague corpse and by the footpaths, they find until it by the tracking of the dogs. The doctor is assassinated by the toilet of the patrol captured that it. The soldiers continue the search of Tania and, to the seven days, they find its corpse in the border. Also was the knapsack, with which as much it wanted to the lake of his life: Latin American music.
Concluded the mission, the soldiers initiate their march towards Vallegrande, with the corps of the tied guerrillas to long branches.
Captain Mario Vargas is decorated with gallons and promoted to major of army by his flashing expensive military man and, at the same time, she is victim of psychic upheavals and distressing nightmares, in which it sees Tania getting up itself with the gun in stop, arranged to take revenge his death.
By Victor Montoya
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