100 Pesos Che Guerrilla Fighter

Cuba issued this coin in 1997 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Che Guevara's death in Bolivia — executed on October 9, 1967, on orders confirmed to have come ultimately from CIA-backed Bolivian authorities. The timing of the issue was deliberate, coinciding with a period of acute economic crisis following Soviet collapse, when the Cuban government was aggressively mining commemorative gold coinage for hard currency from foreign collectors rather than domestic circulation.

The Guerrillero Heroico photograph by Alberto Korda, taken in 1960, had by this point become the defining image behind Guevara's global iconography — its influence on this series is direct and documented.