BY A CORRESPONDENT By killing Che Guevara, the Bolivian army and its American advisers have done more than cut short the guerrilla movement in Bolivia. Certainly the small surviving band of Bolivian guerrillas, who have lost their local leaders as well as Guevara, will not now be able to carry out their hopes of bringing the “armed struggle” from the countryside into the towns and mining areas. But Guevara's death will also wreck his grander strategy of using Bolivia as the focus from which rebel activity would radiate across the South American continent. He had seen Bolivia as the first of the “many Vietnams” that would sap the morale of the United States in Latin America, and would destroy those regimes which he considered as Washington's pawns.

A group of Bolivian rangers (the anti-guerrilla forces) caught up with the guerrillas on Sunday. There seems no doubt that the man whom they killed and whose body they afterwards displayed to journalists, intelligence agents and others, is the elusive Dr Guevara, the presiding genius of the Latin American guerrilla movement. His death is a considerable coup for the Bolivian army, which used to have the reputation of being one of the most inefficient in Latin America. It reflects on the skill and thoroughness of the American anti-guerrilla school in the Panama Canal Zone which has in the past few years perfected its methods of instructing Latin American armies in its techniques.

Many Latin Americans will go on believing the legends that will be spun round his Pimpernel existence

This blow at the guerrilla movement in Bolivia follows on its destruction in Peru and its near-destruction in Colombia and Venezuela. It is a major strategic reverse for the “armed struggle.” But there are signs that what may happen now is that the focus of guerrilla activity will move from South America to Central America and the Caribbean. In Matagalpa province in Nicaragua insurgents have become increasingly active this year, while to the north, in Guatemala, the guerrillas, though hard pressed, are continuing to be quite a problem for the government. In Haiti the guerrilla movement is gradually co-ordinating itself, while in the Dominican Republic Dr Juan Bosch's party this month split itself into violent and non-violent factions. Compared with the great South American dream, this is all small and fairly unimpressive fry for the guerrilla movement. But it would still be premature to say that the death of Guevara means the death of armed insurgency in Latin America.

Che Guevara's name is already being classed with that of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. Latin America's marxist “liberation” has yet to look even likely, but Guevara has died with his reputation intact. From his middle-class Argentinian youth, he became a revolutionary by conviction and profession. With the two Castro brothers he invaded Cuba in the cockleshell Granma, stayed on to help run revolutionary Cuba as minister of industry, then, perhaps growing bored, took his leave of Cuba on a dedicated secret mission to set the continent alight. He failed. But many Latin Americans will go on believing that the legends that will be spun round his Pimpernel existence may one day lead to his picture being hung beside that of the Liberator in Latin American halls.