Bolivian officers cut off Che Guevara's hands in 1967, a minister had them smuggled toward Cuba in a jar, and his body was found under an airstrip 30 years later

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was captured in Bolivia and killed at La Higuera on 9 October 1967. President René Barrientos wanted proof of identity and asked Argentina for experts to compare fingerprints with police records. That night the hands were cut off and put in a jar of formaldehyde. Three Argentine officers later said they confirmed the identity by fingerprints and handwriting. The body disappeared. Interior Minister Antonio Arguedas kept the jar hidden at his house from 1967 to 1969, with a death mask. In July 1969 a Bolivian Communist Party courier, Juan Coronel, received the jar at a café in La Paz and carried it through Lima, Bogotá, Caracas, Spain, Paris and Budapest to Moscow, where he handed it to a secretary of the Cuban embassy. Journalist Víctor Zannier was to take it on to Havana. Cuba has never displayed the hands, and their location is officially unknown. In 1995 the Bolivian general Mario Vargas said Guevara was buried beside the Vallegrande airstrip. On 28 June 1997 a forensic team announced it had found the body there, and it was taken to Cuba. The remains were buried in the mausoleum at Santa Clara on 17 October 1997. In 2007 the writer Álvaro Vargas Llosa reported that the 1997 report did not mention amputation marks and that doctors found mismatches with the 1967 autopsy.