Che Guevara

October 9, 1967. World-renowned revolutionary Che Guevara is dead at the age of thirty-nine.

The charismatic Argentinian revolutionary had been leading guerilla fighters in the jungles of Bolivia and was captured by the Bolivian army. Mario Terán, a sergeant in the Bolivian army, volunteered to execute the prisoner. He carried out the bloody assignment with nine point-blank shots to Guevara's body.

Around the globe, reactions to the assassination were mixed. In Cuba, where Guevara had helped overthrow a brutally repressive dictatorship in 1959, more than one million people mourned openly. But in the United States and elsewhere, many business leaders and government officials were relieved. Guevara's anti-capitalist movement sought to strip big businesses of their land and power. He wanted to set up socialist systems to spread wealth and resources among ordinary workers—in Latin America and all around the world. To the rich and powerful, Guevara was a dangerous threat.

In this chronicle of an assassination, find out what inspired the myth of Che Guevara and what brought him to this bloody crossroads of history.