Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted by

Jon Lee Anderson Jon Lee Anderson (born January 15, 1957) is an American biographer, author, investigative reporter, war correspondent, and staff writer for ''The New Yorker'', reporting from war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, El Salvador, Ir ...

), asserts that he was actually born on 14 May of that year. Constenla alleges that she was told by Che's mother, Celia de la Serna, that she was already pregnant when she and Ernesto Guevara Lynch were married and that the date on the birth certificate of their son was forged to make it appear that he was born a month later than the actual date to avoid scandal. ( Anderson 1997, pp. 3, 769.) – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

revolutionary. A major figure of the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...

, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous

countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

symbol of rebellion and global insignia in

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

. As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.On Revolutionary Medicine
Speech by Che Guevara to the Cuban Militia on 19 August 1960. "Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous or making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people." His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President

Jacobo Árbenz Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (; 14 September 191327 January 1971) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th President of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1950, and the second democratical ...

, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the

United Fruit Company The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 fro ...

solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later in Mexico City, Guevara met

Raúl Raul, Raúl and Raül are the Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Galician, Asturian, Basque, Aragonese, and Catalan forms of the Anglo-Germanic given name Ralph or Rudolph. They are cognates of the French Raoul. Raul, Raúl or Raül may re ...

and

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...

, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht '' Granma'' with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator

Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (; ; born Rubén Zaldívar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator ...

. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the

insurgents An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...

, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.''" Castro's Brain"'', 1960. After the Cuban Revolution, Guevara played key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, Taibo 1999, p. 267. instituting agrarian land reform as Minister of Industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both President of the National Bank and instructional director for Cuba's

armed forces A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fin ...

, Kellner 1989, pp. 69–70. and bringing Soviet nuclear-armed

ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within the ...

s to Cuba, which preceded the 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...

. Additionally, Guevara was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal guerrilla warfare manual, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of

Marxism–Leninism Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various co ...

led him to posit that the

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...

underdevelopment Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, reflects a broad condition or phenomena defined and critiqued by theorists in fields such as economics, development studies, and postcolonial studies. Used primarily to distinguish sta ...

and dependence was an intrinsic result of

imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...

neocolonialism Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, ...

, and

monopoly capitalism ''Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order'' is a 1966 book by the Marxian economists Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It was published by Monthly Review Press. It made a major contribution to Marxian theory by shiftin ...

, with the only remedies being

proletarian internationalism Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...

and

world revolution World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class. For theorists, these revolutions will not necessarily occur simultaneously, but whe ...

.At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria
A speech by Che Guevara to the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algiers, Algeria on 24 February 1965."The struggle against imperialism, for liberation from colonial or neocolonial shackles, which is being carried out by means of political weapons, arms, or a combination of the two, is not separate from the struggle against backwardness and poverty. Both are stages on the same road leading toward the creation of a new society of justice and plenty. ... Ever since monopoly capital took over the world, it has kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing all the profits among the group of the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is based on the extreme poverty of our countries. To raise the living standards of the underdeveloped nations, therefore, we must fight against imperialism. ... The practice of proletarian internationalism is not only a duty for the peoples struggling for a better future, it is also an inescapable necessity." Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment continental revolutions across both Africa and South America, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

, where he was captured by

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

-assisted Bolivian forces and

summarily executed A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes include ...

. Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, Guevara has evolved into a quintessential icon of various left-wing movements. In contrast, his critics on the

political right Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, auth ...

accuse him of promoting authoritarianism and endorsing violence against his political opponents. Despite disagreements on his legacy, ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an

Alberto Korda Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Alberto Korda or simply Korda (September 14, 1928 – May 25, 2001), was a Cuban photographer, remembered for his famous image ''Guerrillero Heroico'' of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. ...

photograph of him, titled ''

Guerrillero Heroico ''Guerrillero Heroico'' ( en, "Heroic Guerrilla Fighter") is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the ''La ...

'', was cited by the

Maryland Institute College of Art The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, making it one of t ...

as "the most famous photograph in the world".

Early life

Ernesto Guevara was born to Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa, on 14 June 1928, in

Rosario Rosario () is the largest city in the central provinces of Argentina, Argentine province of Santa Fe Province, Santa Fe. The city is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the west bank of the Paraná River. Rosario is the third-most populous ci ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. Although the legal name on his birth certificate was "Ernesto Guevara", his name sometimes appears with "de la Serna" and/or "Lynch" accompanying it. He was the eldest of five children in an upper-class Argentine family of pre-independence immigrant

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

(

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, Cantabrian), and

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

ancestry. Two of Guevara's notable 18th century ancestors included

Luis María Peralta Luis María Peralta (1759 in Sonora, New Spain – August 26, 1851) was a Spanish-born Californio ranchero and soldier in the Spanish Army. Peralta received Rancho San Antonio, one of the largest of the rancho grants in California, coveri ...

, a prominent Spanish landowner in colonial California, and Patrick Lynch, who emigrated from

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

to the Río de la Plata Governorate. Referring to Che's "restless" nature, his father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the

Irish rebels Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

". Early on in life, Ernestito (as he was then called) developed an "affinity for the poor". Growing up in a family with

leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, would host veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home. Despite numerous bouts of acute

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, cou ...

that were to affect him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete, enjoying swimming, football, golf, and shooting, while also becoming an "untiring" cyclist. He was an avid

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

player, and played at

fly-half In the game of rugby union, there are 15 players on each team, comprising eight forwards (wearing jerseys numbered 1–8) and seven backs (numbered 9–15). In addition, there may be up to eight replacement players "on the bench", numbered 16– ...

for

Club Universitario de Buenos Aires Club Universitario de Buenos Aires, commonly known for its acronym CUBA, is an Argentine sports club with headquarters in the autonomous city of Buenos Aires. Universitario hosts the practise of a large variety of sports and activities, includin ...

. His rugby playing earned him the nickname "Fuser"—a contraction of ''El Furibundo'' (furious) and his mother's surname, de la Serna—for his aggressive style of play.

Intellectual and literary interests

Guevara learned

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

from his father and began participating in local tournaments by the age of 12. During adolescence and throughout his life he studied poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Antonio Machado,

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

Gabriela Mistral Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (; 7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957), known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral (), was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and humanist. In 1945 she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Li ...

César Vallejo César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938) was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only two books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators ...

, and

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...

. Hart 2004, p. 98. He could also recite

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

's ''

If— "If—" is a poem by English writer and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), written circa 1895 as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson. It is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism. The poem, first published in ''Rewards and Fairies'' (1 ...

'' and José Hernández's ''

Martín Fierro ''Martín Fierro'', also known as ''El Gaucho Martín Fierro'', is a 2,316-line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, ''El Gaucho Martín Fierro'' (1872) and ''La Vuelta de Martín Fi ...

'' by heart. The Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed Guevara to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...

Emilio Salgari Emilio Salgari (, but often erroneously ; 21 August 1862 – 25 April 1911) was an Italian writer of action adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of spe ...

, and

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

. Additionally, he enjoyed the works of

Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

, and

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...

; as well as

Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie França ...

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

Robert Frost.( Anderson 1997, pp. 37–38). As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers

Horacio Quiroga Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 – 19 February 1937) was a Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, used the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of ...

Ciro Alegría Ciro Alegría Bazán (November 4, 1909 – February 17, 1967) was a Peruvian journalist, politician, and novelist. Biography Born in Huamachuco District, he exposed the problems of the Native Peruvians while learning about their way of life. ...

Jorge Icaza Jorge Icaza Coronel (July 10, 1906 – May 26, 1978), commonly referred to as Jorge Icaza, was a writer from Ecuador, best known for his novel '' Huasipungo'', which brought attention to the exploitation of Ecuador's indigenous people by Ecuadoria ...

Rubén Darío Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as ''modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...

, and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors' ideas he cataloged in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...

and

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, along with examining

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

love Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love o ...

and patriotism,

Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

, and

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...

on the idea of

death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

's ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from

dreams A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...

and

libido Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act u ...

narcissism Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...

and the

Oedipus complex The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to hav ...

. His favorite subjects in school included

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

, and

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

. A

"biographical and personality report", dated 13 February 1958 and declassified decades later, made note of Guevara's range of academic interests and intellect – describing him as "quite well read", while adding that "Che is fairly intellectual for a

Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...

Motorcycle journey

In 1948, Guevara entered the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one of the most prestigi ...

to study medicine. His "hunger to explore the world" led him to intersperse his collegiate pursuits with two long introspective journeys that fundamentally changed the way he viewed himself and the contemporary economic conditions in Latin America. The first expedition, in 1950, was a 4,500-kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he had installed a small engine. Guevara then spent six months working as a nurse at sea on Argentina's merchant marine freighters and oil tankers. His second expedition, in 1951, was a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi) continental motorcycle trek through part of South America. For the latter, he took a year off from his studies to embark with his friend,

Alberto Granado Alberto Granado Jiménez (August 8, 1922March 5, 2011) was an Argentine–Cuban biochemist, doctor, writer, and scientist. He was also the youthful friend and traveling companion of Che Guevara during their 1952 motorcycle tour in Latin Amer ...

, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the

Amazon River The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of t ...

Che Guevara-Granado - Mapa 1er viaje - 1952

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, Guevara was angered by the working conditions of the miners at

Anaconda Anacondas or water boas are a group of large snakes of the genus '' Eunectes''. They are found in tropical South America. Four species are currently recognized. Description Although the name applies to a group of snakes, it is often used ...

Chuquicamata Chuquicamata ( ; referred to as Chuqui for short) is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at above sea level. It is northeast of Antofagasta and ...

copper mine, moved by his overnight encounter in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in th ...

with a persecuted communist couple who did not even own a blanket, describing them as "the shivering flesh-and-blood victims of capitalist exploitation". On the way to Machu Picchu he was stunned by the crushing poverty of the remote rural areas, where peasant farmers worked small plots of land owned by wealthy landlords. Kellner 1989, p. 27. Later on his journey, Guevara was especially impressed by the camaraderie among the people living in a leper colony, stating, "The highest forms of human solidarity and loyalty arise among such lonely and desperate people." Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account (not published until 1995), titled '' The Motorcycle Diaries'', which later became a ''New York Times'' best seller, and was adapted into a 2004 film of the same name. The journey took Guevara through Argentina, Chile, Peru,

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...

, and

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

, Florida, for 20 days, before returning home to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

. By the end of the trip, he came to view Latin America not as a collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united

Hispanic America The region known as Hispanic America (in Spanish called ''Hispanoamérica'' or ''América Hispana'') and historically as Spanish America (''América Española'') is the portion of the Americas comprising the Spanish-speaking countries of North, ...

sharing a common Latino heritage was a theme that recurred prominently during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical degree in June 1953. Guevara later remarked that, through his travels in Latin America, he came in "close contact with poverty, hunger and disease" along with the "inability to treat a child because of lack of money" and "stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment" that leads a father to "accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident". Guevara cited these experiences as convincing him that to "help these people", he needed to leave the realm of medicine and consider the political arena of

armed struggle War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

Early political activity

Activism in Guatemala

Ernesto Guevara spent just over nine months in Guatemala. On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama,

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

, Honduras, and

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

. On 10 December 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his aunt Beatriz from

San José, Costa Rica San José (; meaning "Saint Joseph") is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is in the center of the country, in the mid-west of the Central Valley, within San José Canton. San ...

. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing the dominion of the

, a journey which convinced him that the company's capitalist system was disadvantageous to the average citizen. He adopted an aggressive tone to frighten his more conservative relatives, and the letter ends with Guevara swearing on an image of the then-recently deceased

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

, not to rest until these "octopuses have been vanquished". Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala, where President

headed a democratically elected government that, through

land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...

and other initiatives, was attempting to end the ''

latifundia A ''latifundium'' (Latin: ''latus'', "spacious" and ''fundus'', "farm, estate") is a very extensive parcel of privately owned land. The latifundia of Roman history were great landed estates specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, o ...

'' agricultural system. To accomplish this, President Árbenz had enacted a major land reform program, where all uncultivated portions of large land holdings were to be appropriated and redistributed to landless peasants. The largest land owner, and the one most affected by the reforms, was the United Fruit Company, from which the Árbenz government had already taken more than of uncultivated land. Pleased with the direction in which the nation was heading, Guevara decided to make his home in Guatemala to "perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary." Guevara Lynch 2000, p. 26. Che Guevara - 2do Viaje - 1953-55

Guatemala City Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, ne ...

, Guevara sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was politically well-connected as a member of the left-leaning, Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Árbenz government. Guevara then established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to

through the 26 July 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in

Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains t ...

. During this period, he acquired his famous nickname, due to his frequent use of the Argentine filler expression '' che'' (a multi-purpose

discourse marker A discourse marker is a word or a phrase that plays a role in managing the flow and structure of discourse. Since their main function is at the level of discourse (sequences of utterances) rather than at the level of utterances or sentences, disc ...

, like the syllable " eh" in Canadian English). During his time in Guatemala, Guevara was hosted by other Central American exiles, one of whom, Helena Leiva de Holst, provided him with food and lodging, discussed her travels to study Marxism in Russia and China, and to whom Guevara dedicated a poem, "Invitación al camino". In May 1954, a ship carrying infantry and light artillery weapons was dispatched by communist

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

for the Árbenz government and arrived in

Puerto Barrios Puerto Barrios () is a city in Guatemala, located within the Gulf of Honduras. The city is located on Bahia de Amatique. Puerto Barrios is the departmental seat of Izabal department and is the administrative seat of Puerto Barrios municipality. ...

. As a result, the United States government—which since 1953 had been tasked by

President Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

to remove Árbenz from power in the multifaceted CIA operation code-named PBSuccess—responded by saturating Guatemala with anti-Árbenz propaganda through radio and air-dropped leaflets, and began bombing raids using unmarked airplanes. The United States also sponsored an armed force of several hundred anti-Árbenz Guatemalan refugees and mercenaries headed by Carlos Castillo Armas to help remove the Árbenz government. On 27 June, Árbenz chose to resign. This allowed Armas and his CIA-assisted forces to march into Guatemala City and establish a

military junta A military junta () is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in ...

, which elected Armas as president on 7 July. The Armas regime then consolidated power by rounding up and executing suspected communists, while crushing the previously flourishing labor unions and reversing the previous agrarian reforms. Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Árbenz, and joined an armed

militia A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...

organized by the communist youth for that purpose. However, frustrated with that group's inaction, Guevara soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but soon after, Árbenz took refuge in the Mexican embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. Guevara's repeated calls to resist were noted by supporters of the coup, and he was marked for murder. Kellner 1989, p. 32. After Gadea was arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate, where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks later and made his way to

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. The overthrow of the Árbenz regime and establishment of the right-wing Armas dictatorship cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that opposed and attempted to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. In speaking about the coup, Guevara stated: Guevara's conviction strengthened that Marxism, achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace, was the only way to rectify such conditions. Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."

Exile in Mexico

Hilda Gadea y Che Guevara - Luna de miel - Yucatán 1955

Guevara arrived in Mexico City on 21 September 1954, and worked in the allergy section of the General Hospital and at the Hospital Infantil de Mexico. In addition he gave lectures on medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in the National Autonomous University of Mexico and worked as a news photographer for '' Latina News Agency''. His first wife Hilda notes in her memoir ''My Life with Che'', that for a while, Guevara considered going to work as a doctor in Africa and that he continued to be deeply troubled by the poverty around him.Rebel Wife, A Review of ''My Life With Che: The Making of a Revolutionary'' by Hilda Gadea
by Tom Gjelten, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', 12 October 2008. In one instance, Hilda describes Guevara's obsession with an elderly washerwoman whom he was treating, remarking that he saw her as "representative of the most forgotten and exploited class". Hilda later found a poem that Che had dedicated to the old woman, containing "a promise to fight for a better world, for a better life for all the poor and exploited". During this time he renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban exiles whom he had met in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced him to Raúl Castro, who subsequently introduced him to his older brother,

, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of

. During a long conversation with Fidel on the night of their first meeting, Guevara concluded that the Cuban's cause was the one for which he had been searching and before daybreak he had signed up as a member of 26 July Movement. Despite their "contrasting personalities", from this point on Che and Fidel began to foster what dual biographer Simon Reid-Henry deemed a "revolutionary friendship that would change the world", as a result of their coinciding commitment to anti-imperialism. By this point in Guevara's life, he deemed that U.S.-controlled conglomerates installed and supported repressive regimes around the world. In this vein, he considered Batista a " U.S. puppet whose strings needed cutting". Although he planned to be the group's

combat medic A combat medic, or healthcare specialist, is responsible for providing emergency medical treatment at a point of wounding in a combat or training environment, as well as primary care and health protection and evacuation from a point of injury ...

, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement. The key portion of training involved learning hit and run tactics of

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or Irregular military, irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, Raid (military), raids ...

. Guevara and the others underwent arduous 15-hour marches over mountains, across rivers, and through the dense undergrowth, learning and perfecting the procedures of ambush and quick retreat. From the start Guevara was instructor

Alberto Bayo Alberto Bayo y Giroud (27 March 1892 – 4 August 1967) was a Cuban military commander of the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War. His most significant action during the war was the attempted invasion of the Nationalist-held islands ...

's "prize student" among those in training, scoring the highest on all of the tests given. At the end of the course, he was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by General Bayo. Guevara then married Gadea in Mexico in September 1955, before embarking on his plan to assist in the liberation of Cuba.Snow, Anita.
'My Life With Che' by Hilda Gadea
".

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

at WJXX-TV. 16 August 2008; retrieved 23 February 2009.

Cuban Revolution

Granma invasion

The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico via the '' Granma,'' an old, leaky

cabin cruiser A cabin cruiser is a type of power boat that provides accommodation for its crew and passengers inside the structure of the craft. A cabin cruiser usually ranges in size from in length, with larger pleasure craft usually considered yachts. Man ...

. They set out for Cuba on 25 November 1956. Attacked by Batista's military soon after landing, many of the 82 men were either killed in the attack or executed upon capture; only 22 found each other afterwards. During this initial bloody confrontation Guevara laid down his medical supplies and picked up a box of ammunition dropped by a fleeing comrade, proving to be a symbolic moment in Che's life. Only a small band of revolutionaries survived to re-group as a bedraggled fighting force deep in the

Sierra Maestra The Sierra Maestra is a mountain range that runs westward across the south of the old Oriente Province in southeast Cuba, rising abruptly from the coast. The range falls mainly within the Santiago de Cuba and in Granma Provinces. Some view it a ...

mountains, where they received support from the

urban guerrilla An urban guerrilla is someone who fights a government using unconventional warfare or domestic terrorism in an urban environment. Theory and history The urban guerrilla phenomenon is essentially one of industrialised society, resting both ...

network of

Frank País Frank País García (December 7, 1934 – July 30, 1957) was a Cuban revolutionary who campaigned for the overthrow of General Fulgencio Batista's government in Cuba. País was the urban coordinator of the 26th of July Movement, and was a key or ...

, 26 July Movement, and local campesinos. With the group withdrawn to the Sierra, the world wondered whether Castro was alive or dead until early 1957 when an interview by

Herbert Matthews Herbert Lionel Matthews (January 10, 1900 – July 30, 1977) was a reporter and editorialist for ''The New York Times'' who, at the age of 57, won widespread attention after revealing that the 30-year-old Fidel Castro was still alive and living i ...

appeared in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The article presented a lasting, almost mythical image for Castro and the guerrillas. Guevara was not present for the interview, but in the coming months he began to realize the importance of the media in their struggle. Meanwhile, as supplies and morale diminished, and with an allergy to mosquito bites which resulted in agonizing walnut-sized

cysts A cyst is a closed sac, having a distinct envelope and division compared with the nearby tissue. Hence, it is a cluster of cells that have grouped together to form a sac (like the manner in which water molecules group together to form a bubble) ...

on his body, Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war". During Guevara's time living hidden among the poor subsistence farmers of the Sierra Maestra mountains, he discovered that there were no schools, no electricity, minimal access to healthcare, and more than 40 percent of the adults were

illiterate Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

. As the war continued, Guevara became an integral part of the rebel army and "convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience". Guevara set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, and organized schools to teach illiterate campesinos to read and write. Moreover, Guevara established health clinics, workshops to teach military tactics, and a newspaper to disseminate information. Kellner 1989, p. 45. The man whom ''

'' dubbed three years later "Castro's brain" at this point was promoted by

to ''Comandante'' (commander) of a second army column.

Role as commander

As second-in-command, Guevara was a harsh disciplinarian who sometimes shot defectors. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send squads to track those seeking to abandon their duties. As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the summary executions of a number of men accused of being

informers An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...

deserters Desertion is the abandonment of a military duty or post without permission (a pass, liberty or leave) and is done with the intention of not returning. This contrasts with unauthorized absence (UA) or absence without leave (AWOL ), which a ...

, or

spies Spies most commonly refers to people who engage in spying, espionage or clandestine operations. Spies or The Spies may also refer to: * Spies (surname), a German surname * Spies (band), a jazz fusion band * Spies (song), "Spies" (song), a song by ...

. Anderson 1997, pp. 237–238, 269–270, 277–278. In his diaries, Guevara described the first such execution, of Eutimio Guerra, a peasant who had acted as a guide for the Castrist guerrillas, but admitted treason when it was discovered he accepted the promise of ten thousand pesos for repeatedly giving away the rebels' position for attack by the Cuban air force. Luther 2001, pp. 97–99. Such information also allowed Batista's army to burn the homes of peasants sympathetic to the revolution. Upon Guerra's request that they "end his life quickly", Che stepped forward and shot him in the head, writing "The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Eutimio so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal obe" Anderson 1997, p. 237. His scientific notations and matter-of-fact description, suggested to one biographer a "remarkable detachment to violence" by that point in the war. Later, Guevara published a literary account of the incident, titled "Death of a Traitor", where he transfigured Eutimio's betrayal and pre-execution request that the revolution "take care of his children", into a "revolutionary parable about redemption through sacrifice". ChePipe

Although he maintained a demanding and harsh disposition, Guevara also viewed his role of commander as one of a teacher, entertaining his men during breaks between engagements with readings from the likes of

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...

Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...

, and Spanish

lyric poets Lyric may refer to: * Lyrics, the words, often in verse form, which are sung, usually to a melody, and constitute the semantic content of a song * Lyric poetry is a form of poetry that expresses a subjective, personal point of view * Lyric, from t ...

. Together with this role, and inspired by

José Martí José Julián Martí Pérez (; January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the libera ...

's principle of "literacy without borders", Guevara further ensured that his rebel fighters made daily time to teach the uneducated campesinos with whom they lived and fought to read and write, in what Guevara termed the "battle against ignorance". Tomás Alba, who fought under Guevara's command, later stated that "Che was loved, in spite of being stern and demanding. We would (have) given our life for him." His commanding officer

described Guevara as intelligent, daring, and an exemplary leader who "had great moral authority over his troops". Castro further remarked that Guevara took too many risks, even having a "tendency toward foolhardiness". Guevara's teenage lieutenant, Joel Iglesias, recounts such actions in his diary, noting that Guevara's behavior in combat even brought admiration from the enemy. On one occasion Iglesias recounts the time he had been wounded in battle, stating "Che ran out to me, defying the bullets, threw me over his shoulder, and got me out of there. The guards didn't dare fire at him ... later they told me he made a great impression on them when they saw him run out with his pistol stuck in his belt, ignoring the danger, they didn't dare shoot." Guevara was instrumental in creating the clandestine radio station ''

Radio Rebelde Radio Rebelde (English: Rebel Radio) is a Cuban Spanish-language radio station. It broadcasts 24 hours a day with a varied program of national and international music hits of the moment, news reports and live sport events. The station was set up ...

'' (Rebel Radio) in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people with statements by 26 July movement, and provided radiotelephone communication between the growing number of rebel columns across the island. Guevara had apparently been inspired to create the station by observing the effectiveness of

supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of

Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán Jacobo is both a surname and a given name of Spanish origin. Based on the name Jacob. Notable people with the name include: Surname: * Alfredo Jacobo (born 1982), Olympic breaststroke swimmer from Mexico * Cesar Chavez Jacobo, Dominican professio ...

. To quell the rebellion, Cuban government troops began executing rebel prisoners on the spot, and regularly rounded up, tortured, and shot civilians as a tactic of intimidation. By March 1958, the continued atrocities carried out by Batista's forces led the United States to stop selling arms to the Cuban government. Then in late July 1958, Guevara played a critical role in the

Battle of Las Mercedes The Battle of Las Mercedes (29 July-8 August 1958) was the last battle which occurred during the course of Operation Verano, the summer offensive of 1958 launched by the Batista Government during the Cuban Revolution. The battle was a trap, de ...

by using his column to halt a force of 1,500 men called up by Batista's General Cantillo in a plan to encircle and destroy Castro's forces. Years later, Major Larry Bockman of the

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

analyzed and described Che's tactical appreciation of this battle as "brilliant". During this time Guevara also became an "expert" at leading hit-and-run tactics against Batista's army, and then fading back into the countryside before the army could counterattack.

Final offensive

As the war extended, Guevara led a new column of fighters dispatched westward for the final push towards

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

. Travelling by foot, Guevara embarked on a difficult 7-week march, only travelling at night to avoid an ambush and often not eating for several days. Kellner 1989, p. 47. In the closing days of December 1958, Guevara's task was to cut the island in half by taking

Las Villas Las Villas is a natural region and ''comarca'' in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is located in the mountainous area at the eastern end of Jaén Province. The main town is Villacarrillo. Together with the Sierra de Cazorla and Sierra de Segura ...

province. In a matter of days he executed a series of "brilliant tactical victories" that gave him control of all but the province's capital city of Santa Clara. Guevara then directed his "suicide squad" in the attack on Santa Clara, which became the final decisive military victory of the revolution. In the six weeks leading up to the battle, there were times when his men were completely surrounded, outgunned, and overrun. Che's eventual victory despite being outnumbered 10:1 remains in the view of some observers a "remarkable tour de force in modern warfare". Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. At 3 am on 1 January 1959, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with Guevara,

boarded a plane in Havana and fled for the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

, along with an amassed "fortune of more than $300,000,000 through graft and payoffs". The following day on 2 January, Guevara entered

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

to take final control of the capital. Fidel Castro took six more days to arrive, as he stopped to rally support in several large cities on his way to rolling victoriously into Havana on 8 January 1959. The final death toll from the two years of revolutionary fighting was 2,000 people.

Political career in Cuba

Revolutionary tribunals

In mid-January 1959, Guevara went to live at a summer villa in

Tarará Tarará is a gated resort town in the municipality of Habana del Este in the city of Havana, Cuba. It is about 19 km east of the city centre and west of other beaches including Santa Maria del Mar and Guanabo. Geography This resort commun ...

to recover from a violent asthma attack. While there he started the Tarara Group, a group that debated and formed the new plans for Cuba's social, political, and economic development.Castañeda, p. 146. In addition, Che began to write his book ''

Guerrilla Warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or Irregular military, irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, Raid (military), raids ...

'' while resting at Tarara. In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph. When

Hilda Gadea Hilda Gadea Acosta (21 March 1925 – 11 February 1974)My Life With Che
." ''

arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two agreed on a divorce, which was finalized on 22 May. The first major political crisis arose over what to do with the captured Batista officials who had perpetrated the worst of the repression. Skidmore 2008, pp. 273. During the rebellion against Batista's dictatorship, the general command of the rebel army, led by Fidel Castro, introduced into the territories under its control the 19th-century penal law commonly known as the ''Ley de la Sierra'' (Law of the Sierra). This law included the death penalty for serious crimes, whether perpetrated by the Batista regime or by supporters of the revolution. In 1959 the revolutionary government extended its application to the whole of the republic and to those it considered war criminals, captured and tried after the revolution. According to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, this latter extension was supported by the majority of the population, and followed the same procedure as those in the

Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...

held by the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

after World War II. Che Guevara June 2, 1959

To implement a portion of this plan, Castro named Guevara commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison, for a five-month tenure (2 January through 12 June 1959). Guevara was charged by the new government with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting "revolutionary justice" against those regarded as traitors, ''chivatos'' (informants) or war criminals. As commander of La Cabaña, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted during the revolutionary tribunal process. The tribunals were conducted by 2–3 army officers, an assessor, and a respected local citizen. On some occasions the penalty delivered by the tribunal was death by firing-squad. Raúl Gómez Treto, senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, has argued that the death penalty was justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands, as had happened twenty years earlier in the anti-Machado rebellion. Biographers note that in January 1959 the Cuban public was in a "lynching mood", and point to a survey at the time showing 93% public approval for the tribunal process. Moreover, a 22 January 1959,

Universal Newsreel Universal Newsreel (sometimes known as Universal-International Newsreel or just U-I Newsreel) was a series of 7- to 10-minute newsreels that were released twice a week between 1929 and 1967 by Universal Studios. A Universal publicity official, S ...

broadcast in the United States and narrated by

Ed Herlihy Edward Joseph Herlihy (August 14, 1909 – January 30, 1999)Cox, Jim (2008). ''This Day in Network Radio: A Daily Calendar of Births, Debuts, Cancellations and Other Events in Broadcasting History''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . was an Ameri ...

featured Fidel Castro asking an estimated one million Cubans whether they approved of the executions, and being met with a roaring "''¡Sí!''" (yes). With between 1,000 and 20,000 Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista's collaborators,''The World Guide 1997/98: A View from the South'', by University of Texas, 1997, , pg 209. "Batista engineered yet another coup, establishing a dictatorial regime, which was responsible for the death of 20,000 Cubans."'' Fidel: The Untold Story''. (2001). Directed by Estela Bravo.

First Run Features First Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City. History First Run was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers in order to advance the distribution of independent film. In the 1980s, the company focused ...

. (91 min)
Viewable clip
"An estimated 20,000 people were murdered by government forces during the Batista dictatorship." and many of the accused war criminals sentenced to death accused of

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

and physical atrocities, the newly empowered government carried out executions, punctuated by cries from the crowds of ''"¡al paredón!"'' (

o the O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...

wall!), which biographer Jorge Castañeda describes as "without respect for due process". Although accounts vary, it is estimated that several hundred people were executed nationwide during this time, with Guevara's jurisdictional death total at La Cabaña ranging from 55 to 105. Conflicting views exist of Guevara's attitude towards the executions at La Cabaña. Some exiled opposition biographers report that he relished the rituals of the firing squad, and organized them with gusto, while others relate that Guevara pardoned as many prisoners as he could. Castañeda 1998, pp. 143–144. All sides acknowledge that Guevara had become a "hardened" man who had no qualms about the death penalty or about summary and collective trials. If the only way to "defend the revolution was to execute its enemies, he would not be swayed by humanitarian or political arguments". In a 5 February 1959 letter to Luis Paredes López in

, Guevara states unequivocally: "The executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people." Along with ensuring "revolutionary justice", the other key early platform of Guevara was establishing agrarian

. Almost immediately after the success of the revolution, on 27 January 1959, Guevara made one of his most significant speeches where he talked about "the social ideas of the rebel army". During this speech he declared that the main concern of the new Cuban government was "the social justice that land redistribution brings about". A few months later, 17 May 1959, the agrarian reform law, crafted by Guevara, went into effect, limiting the size of all farms to . Any holdings over these limits were expropriated by the government and either redistributed to peasants in parcels or held as state-run communes. The law also stipulated that foreigners could not own Cuban sugar-plantations. Tito sa Ernestom Če Gevarom, 1959

On 2 June 1959, he married

Aleida March Aleida March Torres (born 19 October 1936) is a Cuban revolutionary who was Ernesto "Che" Guevara's second wife, and a member of Fidel Castro's Cuban army. Life Aleida March was an active combatant in Che Guevara's Lightning Campaign in ...

, a Cuban-born member of 26 July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958. Guevara returned to the seaside village of Tarara in June for his honeymoon with Aleida. A civil ceremony was held at La Cabaña military fortress. In total, Guevara would have five children from his two marriages.

Early political office

On 12 June 1959, Castro sent Guevara out on a three-month tour of mostly Bandung Pact countries (Morocco,

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, Japan,

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

, and Greece) and the cities of Singapore and Hong Kong. Sending Guevara away from Havana allowed Castro to appear to distance himself from Guevara and his

sympathies, which troubled both the United States and some of the members of Castro's 26 July Movement. While in

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...

, Guevara visited Indonesian president Sukarno to discuss the recent revolution of 1945–1949 in Indonesia and to establish trade relations between their two countries. The two men quickly bonded, as Sukarno was attracted to Guevara's energy and his relaxed informal approach; moreover they shared revolutionary

aspirations against Western

. Guevara next spent 12 days in Japan (15–27 July), participating in negotiations aimed at expanding Cuba's trade relations with that country. During the visit he refused to visit and lay a wreath at Japan's

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier A Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is a monument dedicated to the services of an unknown soldier and to the common memories of all soldiers killed in war. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-prof ...

commemorating soldiers lost during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, remarking that the Japanese "imperialists" had "killed millions of Asians". Anderson 1997, p. 431. Instead, Guevara stated that he would visit Hiroshima, where the American military had

detonated Detonation () is a type of combustion involving a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it. Detonations propagate supersonically through shock waves with ...

an atomic bomb 14 years earlier. Despite his denunciation of

Imperial Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...

, Guevara considered

President Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

a "macabre clown" for the bombings, and after visiting Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial Museum he sent back a postcard to Cuba stating, "In order to fight better for peace, one must look at Hiroshima." Upon Guevara's return to Cuba in September 1959, it became evident that Castro now had more political power. The government had begun land seizures in accordance with the agrarian reform law, but was hedging on compensation offers to landowners, instead offering low-interest "bonds", a step which put the United States on alert. At this point the affected wealthy cattlemen of

Camagüey Camagüey () is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 321,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province. It was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by S ...

mounted a campaign against the land redistributions and enlisted the newly disaffected rebel leader

Huber Matos Huber Matos Benítez (26 November 1918 – 27 February 2014) was a Cuban military leader, political dissident, activist, and writer. He opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista from its inception in 1952 and fought alongside Fidel Castro, R ...

, who along with the

anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...

wing of the 26 July Movement, joined them in denouncing "communist encroachment". Anderson 1997, p. 435. During this time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was offering assistance to the "

Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean The Anti-Communist Foreign Legion of the Caribbean ( es, Legión Extranjera Anticomunista del Caribe, LAC) was an anti- Castroist right-wing paramilitary group based in the Dominican Republic funded by the dictators Rafael Trujillo of the Dominic ...

" which was training in the Dominican Republic. This multi-national force, composed mostly of Spaniards and Cubans, but also of Croatians, Germans, Greeks, and right-wing mercenaries, was plotting to topple Castro's new regime. At this stage, Guevara acquired the additional position of Minister of Finance, as well as President of the

National Bank In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings: * a bank owned by the state * an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally) * in the United States, an ordinary p ...

. These appointments, combined with his existing position as Minister of Industries, placed Guevara at the zenith of his power, as the "virtual czar" of the Cuban economy. As a consequence of his position at the head of the central bank, it became Guevara's duty to sign the Cuban currency, which per custom bore his signature. Instead of using his full name, he signed the bills solely "''Che''". Crompton 2009, p. 71. It was through this symbolic act, which horrified many in the Cuban financial sector, that Guevara signaled his distaste for money and the class distinctions it brought about. Guevara's long time friend Ricardo Rojo later remarked that "the day he signed ''Che'' on the bills, (he) literally knocked the props from under the widespread belief that money was sacred." Kellner 1989, p. 60. International threats were heightened when, on 4 March 1960, two massive explosions ripped through the French freighter ''La Coubre'', which was carrying Belgian munitions from the port of

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, and was docked in

Havana Harbor Havana Harbor is the port of Havana, the capital of Cuba, and it is the main port in Cuba (not including Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a territory on lease by the United States). Other port cities in Cuba include Cienfuegos, Matanzas, Manzanillo, ...

. The blasts killed at least 76 people and injured several hundred, with Guevara personally providing first aid to some of the victims. Fidel Castro immediately accused the CIA of "an act of terrorism" and held a state funeral the following day for the victims of the blast. At the memorial service

took the famous photograph of Guevara, now known as ''Guerrillero Heroico''. Perceived threats prompted Castro to eliminate more "

counter-revolutionaries A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...

" and to utilize Guevara to drastically increase the speed of

. To implement this plan, a new government agency, the

National Institute of Agrarian Reform The National Institute for Agrarian Reform ( es, Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria, INRA) was an agency of the Cuban Government that was formed to institute the Agrarian Reform Law of 1959. INRA also implemented the Second Agrarian Reform La ...

(INRA), was established by the Cuban government to administer the new agrarian reform law. INRA quickly became the most important governing body in the nation, with Guevara serving as its head in his capacity as minister of industries. Kellner 1989, p. 58. Under Guevara's command, INRA established its own 100,000-person militia, used first to help the government seize control of the expropriated land and supervise its distribution, and later to set up cooperative farms. The land confiscated included owned by United States corporations. Months later, in retaliation, U.S. President

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

sharply reduced United States imports of Cuban sugar (Cuba's main cash crop), which led Guevara on 10 July 1960 to address over 100,000 workers in front of the Presidential Palace at a rally to denounce the "economic aggression" of the United States. Kellner 1989, p. 55. ''Time Magazine'' reporters who met with Guevara around this time described him as "guid(ing) Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and a perceptive sense of humor." Along with land reform, Guevara stressed the need for national improvement in

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...

. Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60 and 76%, with educational access in rural areas and a lack of instructors the main determining factors. Kellner 1989, p. 61. As a result, the Cuban government at Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education" and mobilized over 100,000 volunteers into "literacy brigades", who were then sent out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominantly illiterate ''guajiros'' (peasants) to read and write.Latin lessons: What can we Learn from the World's most Ambitious Literacy Campaign?
by ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', 7 November 2010 Unlike many of Guevara's later economic initiatives, this campaign was "a remarkable success". By the completion of the Cuban literacy campaign, 707,212 adults had been taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%. Accompanying literacy, Guevara was also concerned with establishing universal access to higher education. To accomplish this the new regime introduced affirmative action to the universities. While announcing this new commitment, Guevara told the gathered faculty and students at the University of Las Villas that the days when education was "a privilege of the white middle class" had ended. "The University" he said, "must paint itself black, mulatto, worker, and peasant." If it did not, he warned, the people were going to break down its doors "and paint the University the colors they like." Anderson 1997, p. 449

Economic reforms and the "New Man"

In September 1960, when Guevara was asked about Cuba's ideology at the First Latin American Congress, he replied, "If I were asked whether our revolution is Communist, I would define it as

. Our revolution has discovered by its methods the paths that Marx pointed out." Consequently, when enacting and advocating Cuban policy, Guevara cited the political philosopher

as his ideological inspiration. In defending his political stance, Guevara confidently remarked, "There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them. One ought to be Marxist with the same naturalness with which one is ' Newtonian' in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, or ' Pasteurian' in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

." According to Guevara, the "practical revolutionaries" of the Cuban Revolution had the goal of "simply fulfill(ing) laws foreseen by Marx, the scientist." Using Marx's predictions and system of dialectical materialism, Guevara professed that "The laws of Marxism are present in the events of the Cuban Revolution, independently of what its leaders profess or fully know of those laws from a theoretical point of view." Beauvoir Sartre - Che Guevara -1960 - Cuba

Beauvoir Sartre - Che Guevara -1960 - Cuba

In an effort to eliminate

social inequalities Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It posses and creates gender c ...

, Guevara and Cuba's new leadership had moved to swiftly transform the political and economic base of the country through

nationalizing Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

factories, banks, and businesses, while attempting to ensure affordable housing, healthcare, and employment for all Cubans. Hansing 2002, pp 41–42. In order for a genuine transformation of consciousness to take root, it was believed that such structural changes had to be accompanied by a conversion in people's

social relation A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...

s and

values In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of di ...

. Believing that the attitudes in Cuba towards

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...

individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...

, and

manual labor Manual labour (in Commonwealth English, manual labor in American English) or manual work is physical work done by humans, in contrast to labour by machines and working animals. It is most literally work done with the hands (the word ''manual ...

were the product of the island's outdated past, all individuals were urged to view each other as equals and take on the values of what Guevara termed ''"el Hombre Nuevo"'' (the New Man). Guevara hoped his "new man" to be ultimately "selfless and cooperative, obedient and hard working, gender-blind, incorruptible, non-materialistic, and

anti-imperialist Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...

". To accomplish this, Guevara emphasized the tenets of

, and wanted to use the state to emphasize qualities such as

egalitarianism Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...

and

self-sacrifice Self-sacrifice is the giving up of something that a person wants for themselves so that others can be helped or protected or so that other external value can be advanced or protected. See also * Altruism (unselfishness) * Altruistic suicide * Sacr ...

, at the same time as "unity, equality, and freedom" became the new maxims. Guevara's first desired economic goal of the new man, which coincided with his aversion for wealth condensation and

economic inequality There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...

, was to see a nationwide elimination of material incentives in favor of moral ones. He negatively viewed capitalism as a "contest among wolves" where "one can only win at the cost of others" and thus desired to see the creation of a "new man and woman". Guevara continually stressed that a socialist economy in itself is not "worth the effort, sacrifice, and risks of war and destruction" if it ends up encouraging "greed and individual ambition at the expense of collective spirit". Kellner 1989, p. 62. A primary goal of Guevara's thus became to reform "individual consciousness" and values to produce better workers and citizens. In his view, Cuba's "new man" would be able to overcome the "

egotism Egotism is defined as the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself and generally features an inflated opinion of one's personal features and importance distinguished by a person's amplified vision of one's self and self-importanc ...

" and "

selfishness Selfishness is being concerned excessively or exclusively, for oneself or one's own advantage, pleasure, or welfare, regardless of others. Selfishness is the opposite of altruism or selflessness; and has also been contrasted (as by C. S. Lewis) w ...

" that he loathed and discerned was uniquely characteristic of individuals in capitalist societies. To promote this concept of a "new man", the government also created a series of party-dominated institutions and mechanisms on all levels of society, which included organizations such as labor groups, youth leagues, women's groups,

community centers Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

, and houses of culture to promote state-sponsored art, music, and literature. In congruence with this, all educational, mass media, and artistic community based facilities were nationalized and utilized to instill the government's official

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

ideology. In describing this new method of "development", Guevara stated: A further integral part of fostering a sense of "unity between the individual and the mass", Guevara believed, was volunteer work and will. To display this, Guevara "led by example", working "endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane" on his day off. He was known for working 36 hours at a stretch, calling meetings after midnight, and eating on the run. Such behavior was emblematic of Guevara's new program of moral incentives, where each worker was now required to meet a quota and produce a certain quantity of goods. As a replacement for the pay increases abolished by Guevara, workers who exceeded their quota now only received a certificate of commendation, while workers who failed to meet their quotas were given a pay cut. Guevara unapologetically defended his personal philosophy towards motivation and work, stating: CheFishing

In the face of a loss of commercial connections with Western states, Guevara tried to replace them with closer commercial relationships with

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

states, visiting a number of Marxist states and signing trade agreements with them. At the end of 1960 he visited

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, and

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

and signed, for instance, a trade agreement in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

on 17 December 1960. Such agreements helped Cuba's economy to a certain degree but also had the disadvantage of a growing economic dependency on the Eastern Bloc. It was also in East Germany where Guevara met

Tamara Bunke __NOTOC__ Tamara may refer to: People * Tamara (name), including a list of people with this name * Tamara (Spanish singer) (born 1984) * Tamara, stage name of Spanish singer Yurena (born 1969) * Tamara, stage name of Macedonian singer Tamara Tod ...

(later known as "Tania"), who was assigned as his interpreter, and who joined him years later, and was killed with him in Bolivia. According to Douglas Kellner, his programs were unsuccessful, Kellner 1989, p. 63. and accompanied a rapid drop in productivity and a rapid rise in absenteeism. In a meeting with French economist

René Dumont René Dumont (March 13, 1904 – June 18, 2001) was a French engineer in agronomy, a sociologist, and an environmental politician. Biography Dumont was born in Cambrai, Nord, in the north of France. His father was a professor in agriculture ...

, Guevara blamed the inadequacy of the agrarian reform law enacted by the Cuban government in 1959, which turned large plantations into farm

cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

s or split up land amongst peasants. In Guevara's opinion, this situation continued to promote a "heightened sense of individual ownership" in which workers could not see the positive social benefits of their labor, leading them to instead seek individual material gain as before. Decades later, Che's former deputy Ernesto Betancourt, subsequently the director of the US government-funded

Radio Martí Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

and an early ally turned Castro-critic, accused Guevara of being "ignorant of the most elementary economic principles." Vargas Llosa 2005.

Bay of Pigs Invasion and Missile Crisis

On 17 April 1961, 1,400 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba during the

. Guevara did not play a key role in the fighting, as one day before the invasion a warship carrying Marines faked an invasion off the West Coast of

Pinar del Río Pinar del Río is the capital city of Pinar del Río Province, Cuba. With a population of 139,336 (2004) in a municipality of 190,332, it is the 10th-largest city in Cuba. Inhabitants of the area are called ''Pinareños''. History Pinar del R� ...

and drew forces commanded by Guevara to that region. However, historians give him a share of credit for the victory as he was director of instruction for Cuba's armed forces at the time. Author

Tad Szulc Tadeusz Witold Szulc (July 25, 1926 – May 21, 2001) was an author and foreign correspondent for ''The New York Times'' from 1953 to 1972. Szulc is credited with breaking the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Early life Szulc was born in War ...

in his explanation of the Cuban victory, assigns Guevara partial credit, stating: "The revolutionaries won because Che Guevara, as the head of the Instruction Department of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in charge of the militia training program, had done so well in preparing 200,000 men and women for war." It was also during this deployment that he suffered a bullet grazing to the cheek when his pistol fell out of its holster and accidentally discharged. CheyFidel

In August 1961, during an economic conference of the

Organization of American States The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...

Punta del Este Punta del Este () is a seaside city and peninsula on the Atlantic Coast in the Maldonado Department of southeastern Uruguay. Starting as a small town, Punta del Este later became internationally known as a resort for the Latin and North American j ...

, Uruguay, Che Guevara sent a note of "gratitude" to United States President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

through

Richard N. Goodwin Richard Naradof Goodwin (December 7, 1931 – May 20, 2018) was an American writer and presidential advisor. He was an aide and speechwriter to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and to Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He was married to ...

, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. It read "Thanks for Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs). Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now it's stronger than ever." In response to United States Treasury Secretary

Douglas Dillon Clarence Douglas Dillon (born Clarence Douglass Dillon; August 21, 1909January 10, 2003) was an American diplomat and politician, who served as U.S. Ambassador to France (1953–1957) and as the 57th Secretary of the Treasury (1961–1965). He w ...

presenting the

Alliance for Progress The Alliance for Progress ( es, Alianza para el Progreso, links=no), initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, ostensibly aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marí ...

for ratification by the meeting, Guevara antagonistically attacked the United States' claim of being a "democracy", stating that such a system was not compatible with "financial

oligarchy Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, r ...

, discrimination against blacks, and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan"."Economics Cannot be Separated from Politics"
speech by Che Guevara to the ministerial meeting of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council (CIES), in Punta del Este, Uruguay on 8 August 1961. Guevara continued, speaking out against the "persecution" that in his view "drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of

Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his p ...

, and sent the

Rosenbergs Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret i ...

to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world." Guevara ended his remarks by insinuating that the United States was not interested in real reforms, sardonically quipping that "U.S. experts never talk about agrarian reform; they prefer a safe subject, like a better water supply. In short, they seem to prepare the revolution of the toilets." Kellner 1989, p. 78. Nevertheless, Goodwin stated in his memo to President Kennedy following the meeting that Guevara viewed him as someone of the "newer generation" and that Guevara, whom Goodwin alleged sent a message to him the day after the meeting through one of the meeting's Argentine participants whom he described as "Darretta," also viewed the conversation which the two had as "quite profitable." Guevara, who was practically the architect of the Cuban–Soviet relationship, played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed

s that precipitated the

in October 1962 and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. After the Soviets proposed planting nuclear missiles in Cuba it was Che Guevara himself who traveled to the Soviet Union on August, 30, 1962 to sign off on the final agreement. Guevara argued with Khruschev that the missile deal should be made public but Khruschev insisted on secrecy, and swore the Soviet Union's support if the Americans discovered the missiles. By the time Guevara arrived in Cuba the United States had already discovered the Soviet troops in Cuba via U-2 spy planes. A few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with the British communist newspaper the ''

Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were ...

'', Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. Anderson 1997, p. 545. While expounding on the incident later, Guevara reiterated that the cause of socialist liberation against global "imperialist aggression" would ultimately have been worth the possibility of "millions of atomic war victims". The missile crisis further convinced Guevara that the world's two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) used Cuba as a pawn in their own global strategies. Afterward, he denounced the Soviets almost as frequently as he denounced the Americans.

Great Debate

The era in Cuban history retroactively named the "Great Debate" by historians was defined by public debate about the future of Cuban economic policy that took place from 1962 to 1965. The debate began after Cuba fell into an economic crisis in 1962 after years of internal economic complications,

United States sanctions After the failure of the Embargo Act of 1807, the federal government of the United States took little interest in imposing embargoes and economic sanctions against foreign countries until the 20th century. United States trade policy was entirely ...

, and the flight of professionals from Cuba. In 1962

invited Marxist economists around the world to debate two main propositions. One proposition proposed by Che Guevara was that Cuba could bypass any capitalist then "socialist" transition period and immediately become an industrialized "communist" society if "subjective conditions" like public consciousness and vanguard action are perfected. The other proposition held by the Popular Socialist Party was that Cuba required a transitionary period as a

mixed economy A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise. Common to all mixed economie ...

in which Cuba's sugar economy was maximized for profit before a "communist" society could be established. Guevara elaborated in this period that moral incentives should exist as the main motivator to increase workers' production. All profits created by enterprises were to be given to the state budget, and the state budget would cover loses. Institutions that developed socialist consciousness were regarded as the most important element in maintaining a path to socialism rather than materially incentivized increases in production. Implementation of the profit-motive was regarded as a path towards capitalism and was one of the flaws of the

Eastern bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

economies. The economy would also rely on mass mobilizations and centralized planning as a method for developing the economy. The main ideal that compromised the conciousness that would develop socialism was the praise of the "new man", a citizen that was only motivated by human solidarity and self-sacrifice. In 1966 the Cuban economy was reorganized on moral lines. Cuban propaganda stressed voluntarism and ideological motivations to increase productions. Material incentives were not given to workers who were more productive than others. Cuban intellectuals were expected to participate actively in creating a positive national ethos and ignore any desire to create "art for art's sake". In 1968 all non-agricultural private businesses were nationalized, central planning was done more on an ad-hoc basis and the entire Cuban economy was directed at producing a 10 million ton sugar harvest. These developments were generally inspired by the resolutions brought about by the Great Debate years earlier. The focus on sugar would eventually render all other facets of the Cuban economy underdeveloped and would be the ultimate legacy of the offensive.

International diplomacy

United Nations delegation

In December 1964, Che Guevara had emerged as a "revolutionary statesman of world stature" and thus traveled to New York City as head of the Cuban delegation to speak at the United Nations. On 11 December 1964, during Guevara's hour-long, impassioned address at the UN, he criticized the United Nations' inability to confront the "brutal policy of

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

" in South Africa, asking "Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?"."Colonialism is Doomed"
speech to the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City by Cuban representative Che Guevara on 11 December 1964. Guevara then denounced the United States policy towards their black population, stating: An indignant Guevara ended his speech by reciting the ''Second Declaration of Havana'', decreeing Latin America a "family of 200 million brothers who suffer the same miseries". This "epic", Guevara declared, would be written by the "hungry Indian masses, peasants without land, exploited workers, and progressive masses". To Guevara the conflict was a struggle of masses and ideas, which would be carried forth by those "mistreated and scorned by

" who were previously considered "a weak and submissive flock". With this "flock", Guevara now asserted, "Yankee monopoly capitalism" now terrifyingly saw their "gravediggers". It would be during this "hour of vindication", Guevara pronounced, that the "anonymous mass" would begin to write its own history "with its own blood" and reclaim those "rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years". Guevara closed his remarks to the General Assembly by hypothesizing that this "wave of anger" would "sweep the lands of Latin America" and that the labor masses who "turn the wheel of history" were now, for the first time, "awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected". Chenasser

Guevara later learned there had been two failed attempts on his life by

Cuban exile A Cuban exile is a person who emigrated from Cuba in the Cuban exodus. Exiles have various differing experiences as emigrants depending on when they migrated during the exodus. Demographics Social class Cuban exiles would come from various ec ...

s during his stop at the UN complex.Bazooka Fired at UN as Cuban Speaks
by

Homer Bigart Homer William Bigart (October 25, 1907 – April 16, 1991) was an American reporter who worked for the ''New York Herald Tribune'' from 1929 to 1955 (later known as the ''International Herald Tribune'') and for ''The New York Times'' from 1955 to ...

, ''

'', 12 December 1964, p. 1. The first from Molly Gonzales, who tried to break through barricades upon his arrival with a seven-inch hunting knife, and later during his address by Guillermo Novo, who fired a timer-initiated bazooka from a boat in the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Quee ...

at the

United Nations Headquarters zh, 联合国总部大楼french: Siège des Nations uniesrussian: Штаб-квартира Организации Объединённых Наций es, Sede de las Naciones Unidas , image = Midtown Manhattan Skyline 004.jpg , im ...

, but missed and was off target. Afterwards Guevara commented on both incidents, stating that "it is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun", while adding with a languid wave of his cigar that the explosion had "given the whole thing more flavor". CheinMoscow

While in New York, Guevara appeared on the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

Sunday news program ''

Face the Nation ''Face the Nation'' is a weekly news and morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and television network. Created by Frank Stanton in 1954, ''Face the Nation'' is one of the longest-running news programs in the history ...

,'' and met with a wide range of people, from United States Senator Eugene McCarthy to associates of

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of I ...

. The latter expressed his admiration, declaring Guevara "one of the most revolutionary men in this country right now" while reading a statement from him to a crowd at the

Audubon Ballroom The Audubon Theatre and Ballroom, generally referred to as the Audubon Ballroom, was a theatre and ballroom located at 3940 Broadway at West 165th Street in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1912 a ...

World travel

On 17 December, Guevara left New York for Paris, France, and from there embarked on a three-month world tour that included visits to the People's Republic of China, North Korea, the

United Arab Republic The United Arab Republic (UAR; ar, الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, al-Jumhūrīyah al-'Arabīyah al-Muttaḥidah) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 until 1971. It was initially a political union between Eg ...

, Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Dahomey, Congo-Brazzaville, and Tanzania, with stops in Ireland and

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. While in Ireland, Guevara embraced his own Irish heritage, celebrating

Saint Patrick's Day Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick ( ga, Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit=the Day of the Festival of Patrick), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patr ...

Limerick Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...

. He wrote to his father on this visit, humorously stating "I am in this green Ireland of your ancestors. When they found out, the television tationcame to ask me about the Lynch genealogy, but in case they were horse thieves or something like that, I didn't say much." During Guevara's time in Algeria he was interviewed by Spanish poet Juan Goytisolo inside the Cuban embassy. During the interview Guevara noticed a book by openly gay Cuban writer

Virgilio Piñera Virgilio Piñera Llera ( Cárdenas, Cuba, August 4, 1912 – Havana, October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short story writer, essayist and translator. His most notorious works are the poem ''La isla en peso'' (1943), the collec ...

that was sitting on the table next to him. When he noticed it he threw the book against the wall and yelled "how dare you have in our embassy a book by this foul faggot?". This moment has been marked as a turn in Juan Goytisolo's personal identity as it influenced him to slowly come out of the closet as gay and begin to sympathize with the LGBT citizens of Cuba. This moment has also been marked for its significance in the Cuban government's slow and ultimately final ousting of

from official literary discourse in Cuba. Piñera had originally been regarded as an important dramatist of the Cuban Revolution but had later become slowly condemned and finally arrested. During this voyage, he wrote a letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of a Uruguayan weekly, which was later retitled ''Socialism and Man in Cuba''."Socialism and Man in Cuba"
A letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of ''

Marcha Marcha (born Margaretha Hendrika Maria Groeneveld on 2 July 1956), also known as Marga Bult, is a Dutch singer and television presenter, who has been a member of the groups Tulip, Babe and Dutch Divas and is also known for her participation in th ...

'', a weekly newspaper published in Montevideo, Uruguay; published as "From Algiers, for Marcha: The Cuban Revolution Today" by Che Guevara on 12 March 1965. Outlined in the treatise was Guevara's summons for the creation of a new consciousness, a new status of work, and a new role of the individual. He also laid out the reasoning behind his anti-capitalist sentiments, stating: Guevara ended the essay by declaring that "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love" and beckoning on all revolutionaries to "strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into acts that serve as examples", thus becoming "a moving force". The genesis for Guevara's assertions relied on the fact that he believed the example of the Cuban Revolution was "something spiritual that would transcend all borders".

Visit to Algeria and political turn

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

, Algeria, on 24 February 1965, Guevara made what turned out to be his last public appearance on the international stage when he delivered a speech at an economic seminar on Afro-Asian solidarity. He specified the moral duty of the socialist countries, accusing them of tacit complicity with the exploiting Western countries. He proceeded to outline a number of measures which he said the communist-bloc countries must implement in order to accomplish the defeat of

. Having criticized the Soviet Union (the primary financial backer of Cuba) in such a public manner, he returned to Cuba on 14 March to a solemn reception by Fidel and Raúl Castro, Osvaldo Dorticós, and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez at the Havana airport. As revealed in his last public speech in Algiers, Guevara had come to view the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

, led by the U.S. in the West and the Soviet Union in the East, as the exploiter of the Southern Hemisphere. He strongly supported communist

North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, and urged the peoples of other developing countries to take up arms and create "many Vietnams".Message to the Tricontinental
(1967) A letter sent by Che Guevara from his jungle camp in Bolivia, to the

Tricontinental Conference 1966 The Tricontinental Conference was a gathering of countries that focused on anti-colonial and anti-imperial issues during the Cold War era, specifically those related to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The conference was held from 3rd to 16 Jan ...

, published by the Executive Secretariat of the

Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America The Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America ( es, Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina), abbreviated as OSPAAAL, was a Cuban political movement with the stated purpose of ...

(OSPAAAL), Havana, 16 April 1967. Che's denunciations of the Soviets made him popular among intellectuals and artists of the Western European left who had lost faith in the Soviet Union, while his condemnation of imperialism and call to revolution inspired young radical students in the United States, who were impatient for societal change.Brand Che: Revolutionary as Marketer's Dream
by

Michiko Kakutani Michiko Kakutani (born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for ''The New York Times'' from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Early life ...

, ''

'', 20 April 2009 In Guevara's private writings from this time (since released), he displays his growing criticism of the Soviet political economy, believing that the Soviets had "forgotten

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

".Ernesto 'Che' Guevara: A Rebel Against Soviet Political Economy
by Helen Yaffe (author of ''Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution''), 2006 This led Guevara to denounce a range of Soviet practices including what he saw as their attempt to "air-brush the inherent violence of class struggle integral to the transition from capitalism to socialism", their "dangerous" policy of peaceful co-existence with the United States, their failure to push for a "change in consciousness" towards the idea of work, and their attempt to " liberalize" the socialist economy. Guevara wanted the complete elimination of

money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...

, commodity production, the market economy, and " mercantile relationships": all conditions that the Soviets argued would only disappear when

world communism World communism, also known as global communism, is the ultimate form of communism which of necessity has a universal or global scope. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless (lacking ...

was achieved. Disagreeing with this incrementalist approach, Guevara criticized the ''Soviet Manual of Political Economy'', correctly predicting that if the Soviet Union did not abolish the law of value (as Guevara desired), it would eventually return to capitalism. Two weeks after his Algiers speech and his return to Cuba, Guevara dropped out of public life and then vanished altogether. His whereabouts were a great mystery in Cuba, as he was generally regarded as second in power to Castro himself. His disappearance was variously attributed to the failure of the Cuban industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industries, to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials who disapproved of Guevara's pro-

Chinese communist The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...

stance on the

Sino-Soviet split The Sino-Soviet split was the breaking of political relations between the China, People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union caused by Doctrine, doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications ...

, and to serious differences between Guevara and the pragmatic Castro regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line. Pressed by international speculation regarding Guevara's fate, Castro stated on 16 June 1965, that the people would be informed when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Still, rumors spread both inside and outside Cuba concerning the missing Guevara's whereabouts. There are various rumors from retired Cuban officials who were around the Castro brothers that the Castro brothers and Guevara had a staunch disagreement after Guevara's Algiers speech. Intelligence files from the

East German East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

embassy in Cuba detail various heated exchanges between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara after Guevara's return from Africa. Whether Castro disagreed with Guevara's criticisms of the Soviet Union or just found them unproductive to express on the world stage remains unclear. On 3 October 1965, Castro publicly revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara around seven months earlier which was later titled Che Guevara's "farewell letter". In the letter, Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but declared his intention to leave Cuba to fight for the revolutionary cause abroad. Additionally, he resigned from all his positions in the Cuban government and communist party, and renounced his honorary Cuban citizenship.

Congo Crisis

Military involvement

In early 1965, Guevara went to Africa to offer his knowledge and experience as a guerrilla to the ongoing conflict in the Congo. According to Algerian President

Ahmed Ben Bella Ahmed Ben Bella ( ar, أحمد بن بلّة '; 25 December 1916 – 11 April 2012) was an Algerian politician, soldier and socialist revolutionary who served as the head of government of Algeria from 27 September 1962 to 15 September 1963 ...

, Guevara thought that Africa was imperialism's weak link and so had enormous revolutionary potential. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had fraternal relations with Che since his 1959 visit, saw Guevara's plan to fight in Congo as "unwise" and warned that he would become a "

Tarzan Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adv ...

" figure, doomed to failure. Despite the warning, Guevara traveled to Congo using the alias Ramón Benítez. He led the Cuban operation in support of the Marxist Simba movement, which had emerged from the ongoing Congo conflict. Guevara, his second-in-command

Víctor Dreke Víctor Emilio Dreke Cruz (born 10 March 1937, in Sagua La Grande) is a Cuban Communist Party leader of African descent, and a former commander in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.Dreke (2002). Following involvement in various student protes ...

, and 12 other Cuban expeditionaries arrived in Congo on 24 April 1965, and a contingent of approximately 100

Afro-Cubans Afro-Cubans or Black Cubans are Cubans of West African ancestry. The term ''Afro-Cuban'' can also refer to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community and the combining of native African and other cultural el ...

joined them soon afterward. For a time, they collaborated with guerrilla leader

Laurent-Désiré Kabila Laurent-Désiré Kabila () (27 November 1939 – 18 January 2001) or simply Laurent Kabila ( US: ), was a Congolese revolutionary and politician who was the third President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1997 until his assassinatio ...

, who had helped supporters of the overthrown prime minister

Patrice Lumumba Patrice Émery Lumumba (; 2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as the Republic of the Congo) from June u ...

to lead an unsuccessful revolt months earlier. As an admirer of the late Lumumba, Guevara declared that his "murder should be a lesson for all of us". Guevara, with limited knowledge of Swahili and the local languages, was assigned a teenage interpreter, Freddy Ilanga. Over the course of seven months, Ilanga grew to "admire the hard-working Guevara", who "showed the same respect to black people as he did to whites". Guevara soon became disillusioned with the poor discipline of Kabila's troops and later dismissed him, stating "nothing leads me to believe he is the man of the hour". As an additional obstacle, white mercenary troops of the Congo National Army, led by Mad Mike Hoare, Mike Hoare and supported by anti-Castro Cuban pilots and the CIA, thwarted Guevara's movements from his base camp in the mountains near the village of Fizi on Lake Tanganyika in southeast Congo. They were able to monitor his communications and so pre-empted his attacks and interdicted his supply lines. Although Guevara tried to conceal his presence in Congo, the United States government knew his location and activities. The National Security Agency was intercepting all of his incoming and outgoing transmissions via equipment aboard the USNS Private Jose F. Valdez (T-AG-169), USNS ''Private Jose F. Valdez'', a floating listening post that continuously cruised the Indian Ocean off Dar es Salaam for that purpose. Cheguevaracongo

Guevara's aim was to Exporting the revolution, export the revolution by instructing local anti-Mobutu Sese Seko, Mobutu Simba fighters in Marxist ideology and Foco, foco theory strategies of

. In his ''Congo Diary'' book, he cites a combination of incompetence, intransigence, and infighting among the Congolese rebels as key reasons for the revolt's failure. Later that year, on 20 November 1965, suffering from dysentery and acute asthma, and disheartened after seven months of defeats and inactivity, Guevara left Congo with the six Cuban survivors of his 12-man column. Guevara stated that he had planned to send the wounded back to Cuba and fight in the Congo alone until his death, as a revolutionary example. But after being urged by his comrades, and two Cuban emissaries personally sent by Castro, at the last moment he reluctantly agreed to leave Africa. During that day and night, Guevara's forces quietly took down their base camp, burned their huts, and destroyed or threw weapons into Lake Tanganyika that they could not take with them, before crossing the border by boat into Tanzania at night and traveling by land to Dar es Salaam. In speaking about his experience in Congo months later, Guevara concluded that he left rather than fight to the death because: "The human element failed. There is no will to fight. The [rebel] leaders are corrupt. In a word ... there was nothing to do." Guevara also declared that "we can not liberate, all by ourselves, a country that does not want to fight." A few weeks later, he wrote the preface to the diary he kept during the Congo venture, that began: "This is the story of a failure."

Flight from the Congo

Guevara was reluctant to return to Cuba, because Castro had already made public Guevara's "farewell letter"—a letter intended to only be revealed in the case of his death—wherein he severed all ties in order to devote himself to revolution throughout the world. As a result, Guevara spent the next six months living clandestinely at the Cuban embassy in Dar es Salaam and later at a Cuban safehouse in

. While in Europe, Guevara made a secret visit to former Argentine president Juan Perón who lived in exile in Francoist Spain where he confided in Perón about his new plan to formulate a communist revolution to bring all of Latin America under socialist control. Perón warned Guevara that his plans for implementing a communist revolution throughout Latin America, starting with Bolivia, would be suicidal and futile, but Guevara's mind was already made up. Later, Perón remarked that Guevara was "an immature utopian... but one of us. I am happy for it to be so because he is giving the Yankees a real headache." During this time abroad, Guevara compiled his memoirs of the Congo experience and wrote drafts of two more books, one on philosophy and the other on economics. As Guevara prepared for Bolivia, he secretly traveled back to Cuba on 21 July 1966 to visit Castro, as well as to see his wife and to write a last letter to his five children to be read upon his death, which ended with him instructing them:

Bolivian insurgency

Departure to Bolivia

In late 1966, Guevara's location was still not public knowledge, although representatives of Mozambique's independence movement, the FRELIMO, reported that they met with Guevara in Dar es Salaam regarding his offer to aid in their revolutionary project, an offer which they ultimately rejected. In a speech at the 1967 International Workers' Day rally in Havana, the acting minister of the armed forces, Major Juan Almeida Bosque, announced that Guevara was "serving the revolution somewhere in Latin America".. In his book ''Opération Condor'' published in 2020, French journalist Pablo Daniel Magee reconstitutes the first incursion of Che Guevara in Bolivia on 3 October 1966, based on top-secret documents kept in the UNESCO protected Archives of Terror, in Paraguay. Before he departed for Bolivia, Guevara altered his appearance by shaving off his beard and much of his hair, also dying it grey so that he was unrecognizable as Che Guevara. On 3 November 1966, Guevara secretly arrived in La Paz on a flight from Montevideo, under the false name Adolfo Mena González, posing as a middle-aged Uruguayan businessman working for the

. Three days after his arrival in Bolivia, Guevara left La Paz for the rural south east region of the country to form his guerrilla army. Guevara's first base camp was located in the Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests, montane dry forest in the remote Ñancahuazú region. Training at the camp in the Ñancahuazú valley proved to be hazardous, and little was accomplished in way of building a guerrilla army. The Argentine-born

operative

, better known by her ''Pseudonym#Military and paramilitary organizations, nom de guerre'' "Tania", had been installed as Che's primary agent in La Paz.#refSelvage1985, Selvage 1985.

Ñancahuazú Guerrilla

Guevara's guerrilla force, numbering about 50 men and operating as the ELN (''Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia'', "Ñancahuazú Guerrilla, National Liberation Army of Bolivia"), was well equipped and scored a number of early successes against Bolivian army regulars Route of Che, in the difficult terrain of the mountainous Camiri region during the early months of 1967. As a result of Guevara's units winning several skirmishes against Bolivian troops in the spring and summer of 1967, the Bolivian government began to overestimate the true size of the guerrilla force. Researchers hypothesize that Guevara's plan for fomenting a revolution in Bolivia failed for an array of reasons: * Guevara had expected assistance and cooperation from the local dissidents that he did not receive, nor did he receive support from Bolivia's Communist Party under the leadership of Mario Monje, which was oriented toward Moscow rather than Havana. In Guevara's own diary captured after his death, he wrote about the Communist Party of Bolivia, which he characterized as "distrustful, disloyal and stupid". * He had expected to deal only with the Bolivian military, who were poorly trained and equipped, and was unaware that the United States government had sent a team of the

's Special Activities Center, Special Activities Division commandos and other operatives into Bolivia to aid the anti-insurrection effort. The Bolivian Army was also trained, advised, and supplied by United States Army Special Forces, U.S. Army Special Forces, including an elite battalion of United States Army Rangers, U.S. Rangers trained in jungle warfare that set up camp in La Esperanza, a small settlement close to the location of Guevara's guerrillas. * He had expected to remain in radio contact with Havana. The two shortwave radio transmitters provided to him by Cuba were faulty. Thus, the guerrillas were unable to communicate and be resupplied, leaving them isolated and stranded. In addition, Guevara's known preference for confrontation rather than compromise, which had previously surfaced during his guerrilla warfare campaign in Cuba, contributed to his inability to develop successful working relationships with local rebel leaders in Bolivia, just as it had in the Congo. This tendency had existed in Cuba, but had been kept in check by the timely interventions and guidance of Fidel Castro. The result was that Guevara was unable to attract inhabitants of the local area to join his militia during the eleven months he attempted recruitment. Many of the inhabitants willingly informed the Bolivian authorities and military about the guerrillas and their movements in the area. Near the end of the Bolivian venture, Guevara wrote in his diary: "Talking to these peasants is like talking to statues. They do not give us any help. Worse still, many of them are turning into informants." Félix Rodríguez (soldier), Félix Rodríguez, a

turned CIA Special Activities Division operative, advised Bolivian troops during the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia. In addition, the 2007 documentary ''My Enemy's Enemy'' alleges that Nazism, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie#Che Guevara, Klaus Barbie advised and possibly helped the CIA orchestrate Guevara's eventual capture.Barbie "Boasted of Hunting Down Che"
by David Smith, ''The Observer'', 23 December 2007.

Capture

On 7 October 1967, an informant apprised the Bolivian Special Forces of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment in the Yuro ravine. On the morning of 8 October, they encircled the area with two companies numbering 180 soldiers and advanced into the ravine triggering a battle where Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeon Cuba Sarabia. Che's biographer

reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that as the Bolivian Rangers approached, a twice-wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, threw up his arms in surrender and shouted to the soldiers: "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead." Guevara was tied up and taken to a dilapidated mud schoolhouse in the nearby village of La Higuera on the evening of 8 October. For the next half-day, Guevara refused to be interrogated by Bolivian officers and only spoke quietly to Bolivian soldiers. One of those Bolivian soldiers, a helicopter pilot named Jaime Nino de Guzman, describes Che as looking "dreadful". According to Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths. Despite his haggard appearance, he recounts that "Che held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only for something to smoke." De Guzman states that he "took pity" and gave him a small bag of tobacco for his pipe, and that Guevara then smiled and thanked him.The Man Who Buried Che
" by Juan O. Tamayo, ''Miami Herald'', 19 September 1997. Later on the night of 8 October, Guevara—despite having his hands tied—kicked a Bolivian army officer, named Captain Espinosa, against a wall after the officer entered the schoolhouse and tried to snatch Guevara's pipe from his mouth as a souvenir while he was still smoking it. In another instance of defiance, Guevara spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Horacio Ugarteche, who attempted to question Guevara a few hours before his execution. The following morning on 9 October, Guevara asked to see the school teacher of the village, a 22-year-old woman named Julia Cortez. She later stated that she found Guevara to be an "agreeable looking man with a soft and ironic glance" and that during their conversation she found herself "unable to look him in the eye" because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing, and so tranquil". During their short conversation, Guevara pointed out to Cortez the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-Pedagogy, pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes (marque), Mercedes cars"; Guevara said "that's what we are fighting against".

Execution

Later that morning on 9 October, Bolivian President René Barrientos ordered that Guevara be killed. The order was relayed to the unit holding Guevara by Félix Rodríguez reportedly despite the United States government's desire that Guevara be taken to Panama for further interrogation. The executioner who volunteered to kill Guevara was Mario Terán, a 27-year-old sergeant in the Bolivian army who while Alcohol intoxication, half-drunk requested to shoot Guevara because three of his friends from B Company, all with the same first name of "Mario", had been killed in a firefight several days earlier with Guevara's band of guerrillas. To make the bullet wounds appear consistent with the story that the Bolivian government planned to release to the public, Félix Rodríguez ordered Terán not to shoot Guevara in the head, but to aim carefully to make it appear that Guevara had been killed in action during a clash with the Bolivian army. Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain in command of the army company that captured Guevara, said that the reasons Barrientos ordered the immediate execution of Guevara were so there could be no possibility for Guevara to escape from prison, and also so there could be no drama of a public trial where adverse publicity might happen. About 30 minutes before Guevara was killed, Félix Rodríguez attempted to question him about the whereabouts of other guerrilla fighters who were currently at large, but Guevara continued to remain silent. Rodríguez, assisted by a few Bolivian soldiers, helped Guevara to his feet and took him outside the hut to parade him before other Bolivian soldiers where he posed with Guevara for a photo opportunity where one soldier took a photograph of Rodríguez and other soldiers standing alongside Guevara. Afterwards, Rodríguez told Guevara that he was going to be executed. A little later, Guevara was asked by one of the Bolivian soldiers guarding him if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No" he replied, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution". A few minutes later, Sergeant Terán entered the hut to shoot him, whereupon Guevara reportedly stood up and spoke to Terán what were his last words: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!" Terán hesitated, then pointed his self-loading M1 carbine#Carbine, Cal .30, M2, M2 carbine at Guevara and opened fire, hitting him in the arms and legs. Anderson 1997, p. 739. Then, as Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out, Terán fired another burst, fatally wounding him in the chest. Guevara was pronounced dead at 1:10 pm local time according to Rodríguez. In all, Guevara was shot nine times by Terán. This included five times in his legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, and once in the chest and throat. Months earlier, during his last public declaration to the Tricontinental Conference (1966), Tricontinental Conference, Guevara had written his own epitaph, stating: "Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons."

Aftermath

After his execution, Guevara's body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to nearby Vallegrande, where photographs were taken of him lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestra Señora de Malta. Several witnesses were called to confirm his identity, key amongst them the British journalist Richard Gott, the only witness to have met Guevara when he was alive. Put on display, as hundreds of local residents filed past the body, Guevara's corpse was considered by many to represent a "Christ-like" visage, with some even surreptitiously clipping locks of his hair as divine relics. Such comparisons were further extended when English art critic John Berger, two weeks later upon seeing the post-mortem photographs, observed that they resembled two famous paintings: Rembrandt's ''The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp'' and Andrea Mantegna's ''Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Mantegna), Lamentation over the Dead Christ''. There were also four correspondents present when Guevara's body arrived in Vallegrande, including Björn Kumm of the Swedish ''Aftonbladet'', who described the scene in a 11 November 1967, exclusive for ''The New Republic''. A declassified memorandum dated 11 October 1967 to President of the United States, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson from his National Security Advisor (United States), National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara "stupid" but "understandable from a Bolivian standpoint". After the execution, Rodríguez took several of Guevara's personal items, including a watch which he continued to wear many years later, often showing them to reporters during the ensuing years. Today, some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at the CIA. After a military doctor Dismemberment, dismembered his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. They were later sent to Cuba. SculptureCheGuevaraCuba

On 15 October in Havana,

publicly acknowledged that Guevara was dead and proclaimed three days of public mourning throughout Cuba. On 18 October, Castro addressed a crowd of one million mourners in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución and spoke about Guevara's character as a revolutionary. Fidel Castro closed his impassioned eulogy thus: Also removed when Guevara was captured were his 30,000-word, hand-written diary, a collection of his personal poetry, and a short story he had authored about a young communist guerrilla who learns to overcome his fears. His diary documented events of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, with the first entry on 7 November 1966, shortly after his arrival at the farm in Ñancahuazú, and the last dated 7 October 1967, the day before his capture. The diary tells how the guerrillas were forced to begin operations prematurely because of discovery by the Bolivian Army, explains Guevara's decision to divide the column into two units that were subsequently unable to re-establish contact, and describes their overall unsuccessful venture. It also records the rift between Guevara and the Communist Party of Bolivia that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally expected, and shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, partly because the guerrilla group had learned Quechuan languages, Quechua, unaware that the local language was actually a Tupi–Guarani languages, Tupi–Guarani language. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He endured ever-worsening bouts of asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out in an attempt to obtain medicine. The Bolivian diary was quickly and crudely translated by ''Ramparts (magazine), Ramparts'' magazine and circulated around the world. There are at least four additional diaries in existence—those of Israel Reyes Zayas (Alias "Braulio"), Harry Villegas Tamayo (Harry Villegas, "Pombo"), Eliseo Reyes Rodriguez ("Rolando") and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez ("Benigno")—each of which reveals additional aspects of the events. French intellectual Régis Debray, who was captured in April 1967 while with Guevara in Bolivia, gave an interview from prison in August 1968, in which he enlarged on the circumstances of Guevara's capture. Debray, who had lived with Guevara's band of guerrillas for a short time, said that in his view they were "victims of the forest" and thus "eaten by the jungle". Debray described a destitute situation where Guevara's men suffered malnutrition, lack of water, absence of shoes, and only possessed six blankets for 22 men. Debray recounts that Guevara and the others had been suffering an "illness" which caused their hands and feet to swell into "mounds of flesh" to the point where you could not discern the fingers on their hands. Debray described Guevara as "optimistic about the future of Latin America" despite the futile situation, and remarked that Guevara was "resigned to die in the knowledge that his death would be a sort of renaissance", noting that Guevara perceived death "as a promise of rebirth" and "ritual of renewal".

Legacy

Political left

Far-left politics, Radical left wing activists responded to Guevara's apparent indifference to rewards and glory, and concurred with Guevara's sanctioning of violence as a necessity to instill Socialism (Marxism), socialist ideals. Even in the United States, the government which Guevara so vigorously denounced, students began to emulate his style of dress, donning military fatigues, berets, and growing their hair and beards to show that they too were opponents of U.S. foreign policy. For instance, the Black Panthers began to style themselves "Che-type" while adopting his trademark black beret, while Arab guerrillas began to name combat operations in his honor.Che: A Myth Embalmed in a Matrix of Ignorance
by ''Time Magazine'' October 12, 1970 Addressing the wide-ranging flexibility of his legacy, Trisha Ziff, director of the 2008 documentary ''Chevolution'', has remarked that "Che Guevara's significance in modern times is less about the man and his specific history, and more about the ideals of creating a better society." In a similar vein, the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman has suggested Guevara's enduring appeal might be because "to those who will never follow in his footsteps, submerged as they are in a world of cynicism, self-interest and frantic consumption, nothing could be more vicariously gratifying than Che's disdain for material comfort and everyday desires."Comrade Che Keeps an Eye on British Workers
by Owen Booth, ''BBC News'', October 24, 2002 To a certain extent, the belief of Guevara's of a metaphorical resurrection after death came true. After pictures of the dead Guevara began being circulated and the circumstances of his death were being debated, Che's legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his "assassination" occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, and poems were written about his life and death. Rallies in support of Guevara were held from "Mexico to Santiago,

to Angola, and Cairo to Kolkata, Calcutta". The population of Budapest and

lit candles to honor Guevara's passing; and the picture of a smiling Che appeared in London and Paris. When a few months later riots broke out in Berlin, May 68, France, and 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, Chicago, and the unrest spread to the American college campuses, young men and women wore Che Guevara T-shirts and carried his pictures during their protest marches. In the view of military historian Erik Durschmied: "In those Protests of 1968, heady months of 1968, Che Guevara was not dead. He was very much alive."

Retrieval of remains

In late 1995, the retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas revealed to

, author of ''Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life'', that Guevara's corpse lay near a Vallegrande airstrip. The result was a multi-national search for the remains, which lasted more than a year. In July 1997 a team of Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropology, forensic anthropologists discovered the remnants of seven bodies in two mass graves, including one man without hands (as Guevara would have been). Bolivian government officials with the Ministry of Interior later identified the body as Guevara when the excavated teeth "perfectly matched" a plaster mold of Che's teeth made in Cuba prior to his Congolese expedition. The "clincher" then arrived when Argentine forensic anthropologist Alejandro Inchaurregui inspected the inside hidden pocket of a blue jacket dug up next to the handless cadaver and found a small bag of pipe tobacco. Nino de Guzman, the Bolivian helicopter pilot who had given Che a small bag of tobacco, later remarked that he "had serious doubts" at first and "thought the Cubans would just find any old bones and call it Che"; but "after hearing about the tobacco pouch, I have no doubts." On 17 October 1997, Guevara's remains, with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with military honors in a specially built Che Guevara Mausoleum, mausoleum in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, where he had commanded over the Battle of Santa Clara, decisive military victory of the

. In July 2008, the Bolivian government of Evo Morales unveiled Guevara's formerly-sealed diaries composed in two frayed notebooks, along with a logbook and several black-and-white photographs. At this event Bolivia's vice-minister of culture, Pablo Groux, expressed that there were plans to publish photographs of every handwritten page later in the year. Meanwhile, in August 2009 anthropologists working for Bolivia's Justice Ministry discovered and unearthed the bodies of five of Guevara's fellow guerrillas near the Bolivian town of Teoponte.

Biographical debate

Guevara's life and legacy remain contentious. The perceived contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of duality, one who was "able to wield the pen and submachine gun with equal skill", while prophesying that "the most important revolutionary ambition was to see man liberated from Marx's theory of alienation, his alienation".#refLowy1973, Löwy 1973, p. 7. Guevara's paradoxical standing is further complicated by his array of seemingly diametrically opposed qualities. A Secular humanism, secular humanist and sympathetic practitioner of medicine who did not hesitate to shoot his enemies, a celebrated Proletarian internationalism, internationalist leader who advocated violence to enforce a utopian philosophy of the Public good (economics), collective good, an Idealism, idealistic intellectual who loved literature but refused to allow dissent, an Anti-imperialism, anti-imperialist

Insurgency, insurgent who was radically willing to forge a poverty-less new world on the apocalyptic ashes of the old one, and finally, an outspoken anti-capitalist whose image has been Commodification, commoditized. Che's history continues to be rewritten and re-imagined.The Spark That Does Not Die
by Michael Löwy, ''International Viewpoint'', July 1997 Moreover, Sociology, sociologist Michael Löwy contends that the many facets of Guevara's life (i.e. doctor and economist, revolutionary and banker, military theoretician and ambassador, deep thinker and political agitator) illuminated the rise of the "Che myth", allowing him to be invariably crystallized in his many metanarrative roles as a "Red Robin Hood, Don Quixote of communism, new Giuseppe Garibaldi, Garibaldi, Marxist Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, Saint Just, El Cid, Cid Campeador of the Wretched of the Earth, Galahad, Sir Galahad of the beggars ... and Bolsheviks, Bolshevik devil who haunts the dreams of the rich, kindling braziers of subversion all over the world". Chile quema libros 1973

As such, various notable individuals have lauded Guevara; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom", while

described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age". Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara "represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure", and Susan Sontag, who supposed that "[Che's] goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself." In the Pan-Africanism, Pan-African community philosopher Frantz Fanon professed Guevara to be "the world symbol of the possibilities of one man", while Black power, Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael eulogized that "Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us." Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with Libertarianism, libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a "heroic figure" who "more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution", while journalist Christopher Hitchens reminisced that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us Bourgeoisie, bourgeois Romanticism, romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs." 4CheFaces

Conversely, Jacobo Machover, an exiled opposition author, dismisses all praise of Guevara and portrays him as a callous executioner.Behind Che Guevara's mask, the cold executioner
''Times Online'', 16 September 2007. Exiled former Cuban prisoners have expressed similar opinions, among them Armando Valladares, who declared Guevara "a man full of hatred" who executed dozens without trial, and Carlos Alberto Montaner, who asserted that Guevara possessed "a Maximilien Robespierre, Robespierre mentality", wherein cruelty against the revolution's enemies was a virtue. Álvaro Vargas Llosa of the Independent Institute has hypothesized that Guevara's contemporary followers "delude themselves by clinging to a myth", describing Guevara as a "Marxist Puritans, Puritan" who employed his rigid power to suppress dissent, while also operating as a "cold-blooded killing machine". Llosa also accuses Guevara's "fanatical disposition" as being the linchpin of the "Sovietization" of the Cuban revolution, speculating that he possessed a "total subordination of reality to blind ideological orthodoxy". On a macro-level, Hoover Institution research fellow William Ratliff regards Guevara more as a creation of his historical environment, referring to him as a "fearless" and "head-strong Messiah-like figure", who was the product of a martyr-enamored Latin American culture which "inclined people to seek out and follow Paternalism, paternalistic miracle workers".Che is the "Patron Saint" of Warfare
by William Ratliff, ''The Independent Institute'', 9 October 2007. Ratliff further speculates that the economic conditions in the region suited Guevara's commitment to "bring justice to the downtrodden by crushing centuries-old tyrannies"; describing Latin America as being plagued by what Moisés Naím referred to as the "legendary malignancies" of inequality, poverty, dysfunctional politics and malfunctioning institutions. In a mixed assessment, British historian Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, Hugh Thomas opined that Guevara was a "brave, sincere and determined man who was also obstinate, narrow, and dogmatic". Kellner 1989, p. 106. At the end of his life, according to Thomas, "he seems to have become convinced of the virtues of violence for its own sake", while "his influence over Castro for good or evil" grew after his death, as Fidel took up many of his views. Similarly, the Cuban-American sociologist Samuel Farber lauds Che Guevara as "an honest and committed revolutionary", but also criticizes the fact that "he never embraced socialism in its most democratic essence". Nevertheless, Guevara remains a national hero in Cuba, where his image adorns the 3 Cuban peso, peso banknote and school children begin each morning by pledging "We will be like Che." In his homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Che museums dot the country and in 2008 a bronze statue of him was unveiled in the city of his birth, Rosario. Guevara has been Sanctification, sanctified by some Bolivian campesinosOn a tourist trail in Bolivia's hills, Che's fame lives on
By Hector Tobar, ''Los Angeles Times'', 17 October 2004. as "Che Guevara in popular culture#In religion, Saint Ernesto", who pray to him for assistance. In contrast, Guevara remains a hated figure amongst many in the

and Cuban Americans, Cuban American community of the United States, who view him as "the butcher of La Cabaña". Despite this polarized status, a high-contrast monochrome graphic of Guerrillero Heroico, Che's face, created in 1968 by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick (artist), Jim Fitzpatrick, became a universally Merchandising, merchandized and objectified image, found on an endless array of items, including T-shirts, hats, posters, tattoos, and bikinis, contributing to the Consumer capitalism, consumer culture Guevara despised. Yet, he still remains a transcendent figure both in specifically political contexts and as a wide-ranging popular icon of youthful rebellion.#refOHagan2004, O'Hagan 2004.

International honors

Guevara received several honors of state during his life. * 1960: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion * 1961: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross"Janio Condecora Guevara" (en portugués). Folha de S.Paulo. 20 de agosto de 1961. Consultado el 13 de octubre de 2014.

Archival media

Video footage

* Guevara addressing the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December 1964, (6:21), public domain footage uploaded by the UN
video clip
* Guevara interviewed by ''

'' on 13 December 1964, (29:11), from

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* Guevara interviewed in 1964 on a visit to Dublin, Ireland, (2:53), English translation, from RTÉ Libraries and Archives
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* Guevara interviewed in Paris, France, Paris and speaking French in 1964, (4:47), English subtitles, interviewed by Jean Dumur
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* Guevara reciting a poem, (0:58), English subtitles, from ''El Che: Investigating a Legend'' – Kultur Video 2001
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* Guevara showing support for Fidel Castro, (0:22), English subtitles, from ''El Che: Investigating a Legend'' – Kultur Video 2001
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* Guevara speaking about labor, (0:28), English subtitles, from ''El Che: Investigating a Legend'' – Kultur Video 2001
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* Guevara speaking about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Bay of Pigs, (0:17), English subtitles, from ''El Che: Investigating a Legend'' – Kultur Video 2001
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* Guevara speaking against

, (1:20), English subtitles, from ''El Che: Investigating a Legend'' – Kultur Video 2001
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* Guevara visiting Algeria in 1963 and giving a speech in French, from the Algerian Cinema Archive
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Audio recording

* Guevara interviewed on ABC's ''Issues and Answers'', (22:27), English translation, narrated by Lisa Howard (reporter), Lisa Howard, 24 March 1964
audio clip

List of English-language works

* ''A New Society: Reflections for Today's World'', Ocean Press, 1996, * ''Back on the Road: A Journey Through Latin America'', Grove Press, 2002, * ''Che Guevara, Cuba, and the Road to Socialism'', Pathfinder Press, 1991, * ''Che Guevara on Global Justice'', Ocean Press (AU), 2002, * ''Che Guevara: Radical Writings on Guerrilla Warfare, Politics and Revolution'', Filiquarian Publishing, 2006, * ''Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics & Revolution'', Ocean Press, 2003, * ''Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings'', Pathfinder Press (NY), 1980, * ''Che Guevara Talks to Young People'', Pathfinder, 2000, * ''Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara'', Ocean Press (AU), 2008, * ''Colonialism is Doomed'', Ministry of External Relations: Republic of Cuba, 1964, ASIN B0010AAN1K * ''Congo Diary: The Story of Che Guevara's "Lost" Year in Africa'' Ocean Press, 2011, * ''Critical Notes on Political Economy: A Revolutionary Humanist Approach to Marxist Economics'', Ocean Press, 2008, * ''Diary of a Combatant: The Diary of the Revolution that Made Che Guevara a Legend'', Ocean Press, 2013, * ''Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956–58'', Pathfinder Press (NY), 1996, * ''Global Justice: Three Essays on Liberation and Socialism'', Seven Stories Press, 2022, * ''

: Authorized Edition'', Ocean Press, 2006, * ''I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967'', Seven Stories Press, 2021, * ''Latin America: Awakening of a Continent'', Ocean Press, 2005, * ''Latin America Diaries: The Sequel to The Motorcycle Diaries'', Ocean Press, 2011, * ''Marx & Engels: An Introduction'', Ocean Press, 2007, * ''Our America And Theirs: Kennedy And The Alliance For Progress'', Ocean Press, 2006, * ''Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War: Authorized Edition'', Ocean Press, 2005, * ''Self Portrait Che Guevara'', Ocean Press (AU), 2004, * ''Socialism and Man in Cuba'', Pathfinder Press (NY), 1989, * ''The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo'', Grove Press, 2001, * ''The Argentine'', Ocean Press (AU), 2008, * ''The Awakening of Latin America: Writings, Letters and Speeches on Latin America, 1950–67'', Ocean Press, 2012, * ''The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara'', Pathfinder Press, 1994, * ''The Great Debate on Political Economy'', Ocean Press, 2006, * '' The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America'', London: Verso, 1996, * ''The Secret Papers of a Revolutionary: The Diary of Che Guevara'', American Reprint Co, 1975, ASIN B0007GW08W * ''To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's "Cold War" Against Cuba Doesn't End'', Pathfinder, 1993,

References

Referenced works

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Ariel Dorfman, Dorfman, Ariel (14 June 1999).
Time 100: Che Guevara
'. ''Time magazine''. * Dorschner, John and Roberto Fabricio (1980). ''The Winds of December: The Cuban Revolution of 1958''. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegen. . * Dumur, Jean (interviewer) (1964).
L'interview de Che Guevara
' (Video clip; 9:43; with English subtitles). * * Free Society Project Inc. / Cuba Archive (30 September 2009). " ". Summit, New Jersey: Free Society Project. * Gálvez, William (1999). ''Che in Africa: Che Guevara's Congo Diary''. Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999. . * Gómez Treto, Raúl (Spring 1991).
Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Penal Law
. ''Latin American Perspectives'' 18(2), Cuban Views on the Revolution. 114–125. * * * Gott, Richard (11 August 2005).

. ''Le Monde diplomatique''. Accessed 26 February 2006. * Grant, Will (8 October 2007).
CIA man recounts Che Guevara's death
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Electronic Briefing Book No. 5
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The Final Triumph of Saint Che
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The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand
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. ''People's Weekly World''. *

Early life

Intellectual and literary interests

Motorcycle journey

Early political activity

Activism in Guatemala

Exile in Mexico

Cuban Revolution

Granma invasion

Role as commander

Final offensive

Political career in Cuba

Revolutionary tribunals

Early political office

Economic reforms and the "New Man"

Bay of Pigs Invasion and Missile Crisis

Great Debate

International diplomacy

United Nations delegation

World travel

Visit to Algeria and political turn

Congo Crisis

Military involvement

Flight from the Congo

Bolivian insurgency

Departure to Bolivia

Ñancahuazú Guerrilla

Capture

Execution

Aftermath

Legacy

Political left

Retrieval of remains

Biographical debate

International honors

Archival media

Video footage

Audio recording

List of English-language works

See also

References

Referenced works

External links