Over eleven months in 1966-67, a column of roughly fifty fighters led by Guevara operated in southeastern Bolivia, kept detailed daily records, and was steadily worn down by desertion, illness, loss of radio contact, and army pursuit until its leader was captured and executed. The force never recruited local peasants and was physically split into two groups that never reunited.
The diary records that local peasants consistently refused to join and often informed the army of the column's movements, treating the guerrillas as armed strangers rather than liberators. The insurgency assumed popular support would materialize from the population's objective conditions, and its absence was recorded as a decisive, recurring obstacle rather than a temporary one.
Entry after entry tracks not battles but the failure of supply, broken radio reception, lost contact between the two separated columns, and dwindling medicine for asthma and dysentery. The narrative shows that the operation's viability was governed less by combat outcomes than by whether men could be fed, treated, and coordinated across terrain.
Guevara closes each month with an explicit balance sheet of gains and losses, repeatedly rating the situation as negative while continuing operations, which exposes a pattern of acknowledging decline in writing without changing the strategy. Reading the diary as a sequence of these audits reveals how a committed actor can document mounting evidence of failure yet treat withdrawal as unthinkable.