Che Guevara's - Air Tickets - 1962

Cuban Missile crisis: Che Guevara's covert mission to Moscow, August 1962. Cold War importance

Che Guevara's airline tickets/overweight luggage slip on Compania Cubana de Aviacion SA, and Aeroflot CCCP, from Cuba via Prague to Moscow and back. Tickets stamped on arrival in Moscow on 25 Agust, 1962. Four double airline tickets.

Fidel Castro sent Che to see Khrushchev in order to persuade him to declare publicly that he had sent nuclear missiles to Cuba - in part as a reaction to the US deployment of missiles in Turkey. Khrushchev would not be persuaded and, in fact, it might have been Che's revolutionary insistence that encouraged the Soviet Premier to back down at the last moment. The process for the missile deployment had started when Raul Castro visited Khrushchev on July 3rd, and detailed arrangements were made. By mid-July, Soviet cargo vessels were moving out of the Black Sea towards Cuba. The pressure between the superpowers grew, taking both countries to a 13 day stand-off (October 16-28th, 1962), considered to be the closest that the world has come to a full-scale nuclear war

The tickets are for: Ernesto Che Guevara (Minister of Industries), Emilio Aragones Navarro (Revolution Head of Organisation and Mobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces), Hermes Pena Torres (Captain in Che's escort group) and Hector Garcia Vidal (Cuban agent based in the Cuban Embassy in Mexico, who provided liaison with the Czech and Russian Embassies).