A Battle for Che's Legacy

As Fidel Castro's onetime comrade-in-arms and a quixotically unsuccessful exporter of revolution in Latin America, the late Ernesto ("Che") Guevara is a Marxist cult figure of high standing. Last week his chief legacy was a hot capitalist property and the object of hectic legal maneuvering in London. As the result of a legal action by the Bolivian government, a British judge upheld an injunction on Sotheby's auction house, preventing the sale of the original diaries of the Argentine-born guerrilla leader. The court order will allow Bolivia to continue its efforts to recover the documents that, its government says, were stolen from army archives in the capital of La Paz.

Che's famous diaries, which were widely published in facsimile editions, cover the period from 1966, when Guevara launched a guerrilla crusade in the South American jungle, to his ignominious death at the hands of Bolivian troops in October 1967. At the time, the handwritten diaries were displayed only briefly; Bolivian officials believe they may have been stolen some time between 1980 and 1982 from a shoebox kept inside a locked safe. Sotheby's, which has declined to identify the current owner, has estimated a value for the diaries that must have Guevara's spirit writhing in torment: $330,000.