47 whole years after the execution of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia, a man called Imanol Arteaga, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, in the Spanish town of Zaragoza, found in a box of cigars photos of the great revolutionary that had remained hidden for a long time on his shelf.

In fact, some of these photos that were discovered a few days ago, had not been published before and include images of Che’s body after the execution and also photos of Tamara Bunke, better known as Tania or Tania the Guerrillera, an Argentine-born East German communist revolutionary.

Tamara was the only woman to fight alongside Marxist guerrillas under Che Guevara during the Bolivian Insurgency, where she was killed in an ambush by CIA-assisted Bolivian Army Rangers.

The eight photographs were taken by Marc Hutten, correspondent of the French news agency (AFP), who was the only photographer to document the death of the great rebel.

Fearing that the authorities would confiscate the photos before he was able to take them out of the country, Hutten gave the photos to Luis Cuartero, Arteaga’s uncle, who was a missionary for 11 years in Bolivia since 1959.

The quality of the images, and also the fact that even the color ones had been printed in black and white, reveal the photographer’s haste to save the photos.

The missionary took the photos and hid them in a cigar box, where they remained for 47 years, until Arteaga found them in a weird twist of fate.