Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a little-known doctor in Argentina when he decided to abandon that life and start a new one in support of the worldwide socialist revolution. More even then Fidel Castro, Guevara sparked the socialist movement in Cuba and Latin America. He spoke everywhere he could — East and West — rallying people against American “imperialism.”

On this day, October 9th, 1967, Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by the CIA and the U.S. special forces, cornered and captured Che Guevara.

Guevara had come to Bolivia to foment a socialist revolution, much like the kind that turned Korea, Vietnam and other countries. Bolivia was indeed suffering economically at the time: among other factors, productivity was low at its tin mines, and miners refused to yield their jobs to more productive machines. The U.S. was heavily subsidizing the Bolivian economy, but the native people did not see it as Guevara would, as American imperialism. Instead, one of them gave his location to the state security services, and Guevara was captured.