Profile of Tania on Famous Like Me

Haydèe Tamara Bunke Bider (November 19, 1937 – August 31, 1967) was a communist revolutionary, better known as Tania or Tania the Guerrillera, was a spy who played a prominent role in the Cuban Revolution and in other Latin American revolutionary movements. She was the only woman to fight alongside Bolivian communist rebels under Che Guevara.

Bider was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of German communists Erich Bunke and Nadia Bider, who had fled to Argentina from Germany in the 1930s to escape the Nazis. In 1952, her father moved the family to East Germany. At the age of 18, Tamara Bider was accepted into the ranks of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

During the 1950s, she studied political science at Humboldt University. After graduating, began working for the East German Ministry of State Security where she took on several espionage missions. Highly committed to the Communist cause, she traveled throughout Europe and South America under several aliases, posing as a student of folklore.

Back in East Germany in 1960, she met Che Guevara. Guevara was visiting the DDR with a Cuban trade delegation and Bider worked as an interpreter. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution of which Guevara was an icon, Bunke came to Cuba in 1961 to join the guerillas. While in Cuba, she participated in work brigades, the militia, and the literacy campaign, working in the Ministry of Education, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples and the Federation of Cuban Women. She also traveled with Guevara throughout Latin America. It was during this period that she took on the guerilla name "Tania".

In November 1964, she traveled to Bolivia as a secret agent for Guevara's last campaign. It is reported that she used the name Laura Gutierrez Bauer to gather information about Bolivian high society while working as a teacher, and also that she posed as a folk music collector.

In 1966 she joined Juan Vitalio Acuna's group of Bolivian guerrillas, possibly against Guevara's wishes.

On August 31, 1967, at Vado del Yeso, Bolivian soldiers ambushed the group while they were crossing the Rio Grande at Vado del Yeso, and killed Bider and eight fellow communist guerillas. Bider's body was swept away in the river; Bolivian soldiers found it on September 6, and she was buried the next day, close to her fellow dead.

Her remains were tracked down to this location on October 13, 1998. They were transferred to Cuba, where she was reburied alongside her comrades.

Her dedication to the Cuban Revolution became an inspiration to others. During her involvement with the SLA, Patty Hearst took on the alias "Tania".

In 1997, a Newsweek magazine feature on "Che Chic" briefly discussed "Tania, an upcoming Warner Brothers film about the apocryphal romance between Guevara" and Bider, to be directed by Michael Radford and executive produced by Mick Jagger. The project appears to have been dropped.

Extern Link:

Tania la Guerrillera

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