Guevara's hair to be auctioned

MIAMI - A former CIA operative and Cuban exile plans to auction what he says is a lock of Che Guevara's hair, snipped before the Argentinian revolutionary and friend of Fidel Castro was buried in 1967.

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara's capture in Bolivia, according to unclassified U.S. records and other documents. He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.

The scrapbook also holds a map used to track down Guevara, photos of his body and fingerprints taken before his burial.

It's hard to predict how much the collection will net because there is nothing comparable on the market, said Tom Slater of Heritage Auctions of Dallas, which will put the collection on the block Oct. 25-26.

The Cuban government announced in 1995 that its anthropologists had uncovered Guevara's remains in Bolivia and re-interred them in Cuba without doing DNA testing. Some say the body is still in Bolivia.

[Last modified September 4, 2007, 00:57:53]