Posted on 09/03/2007 8:57:42 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(AP) MIAMI -- A lock of Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara's hair is about to hit the auction block.
Former CIA operative 71-year old Gustavo Villoldo was involved in Guevara's capture in the jungles of Bolivia. He plans to auction the strands of hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.
"It's time for me to put the past behind and pass these on to someone else," said Villoldo, also a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas will hold the auction October 25-26. The scrapbook also includes the map Villoldo used to track down Guevara in Bolivia, photographs of Guevara's body, messages intercepted between Guevara and his rebels and a set of Guevara's fingerprints taken before his burial.
It's hard to predict how much the items will net at auction because there is nothing comparable on the market, said Tom Slater, director of Heritage Auctions' Americana department.
"We cannot recall ever having seen artifacts relating to Che's dramatic career and death appearing on the auction market, and we expect this offering to excite broad bidder interest," Slater said, noting that Guevara has become an icon in popular culture around the world.
"Some will come for the historical value of the items; others may simply collect the hair of famous people," he said.
The Cuban government announced in 1995 that its anthropologists had uncovered Guevara's remains from Bolivia, and re-interred them in Cuba without doing any DNA testing. Villoldo and other exiles and experts say the body of one of Fidel Castro's closest friends is still in Bolivia.
A purchase for the Clinton Campaign. After all, their ideologies are the same..
This will be the foundation for an interesting, new Jurassic Park for sure.
I hear old Che had really bad dandriff.....his Head and shoulders were found by the Bolivian Army....
I’ll buy it if it still has brains stuck to it.
With or without grease?
I would expect it to be worth much more unwashed.
I thought the sales of murderabillia were outlawed in many states and prohibited on many sites.
I want a necklace made out of his teeth.
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