AFP
MADRID
Lost for half a century, historic photographs of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara taken by an AFP photographer shortly after his execution have come to light in a small Spanish town.
The dark-bearded guerilla leader lies in a stretcher with his dead eyes open, his bare chest stained with blood and dirt, in the eight black and white photographs taken after he was shot by the Bolivian army in October 1967. The photographs belong to Imanol Arteaga, a local councillor in the northern Spanish town of Ricla. He inherited them from his uncle Luis Cuartero, a missionary in Bolivia in the 1960s.
‘He brought back the photographs when he came for my parents’ wedding in November 1967,’ said Arteaga, 45. ‘My aunt and my mother told me a French journalist had given them to him.’ He and his aunt found the photos among Cuartero’s belongings after the missionary died in 2012. ‘I remembered he had photographs of Che Guevara and my aunt said: ‘Yes, I know where they are,’ Arteaga said.