Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. After his death, his stylized image became an ubiquitous countercultural symbol worldwide.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara’s radical ideology.
Later, in Mexico, he met Fidel Castro and joined his 26th of July Movement. In December 1956, he was among the revolutionaries who invaded Cuba under Castro's leadership with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to Comandante, and played a pivotal role in the successful guerrilla campaign that deposed Batista.[3] Following the Cuban revolution, Guevara oversaw the revolutionary tribunals and executions of suspected war criminals from the previous regime. Later he served as minister of industry and president of the national bank, before traversing the globe as a diplomat to meet an array of world leaders on behalf of Cuban socialism. He was also a prolific writer and diarist, with one of his most influential works being a manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions first in an unsuccessful attempt in Congo-Kinshasa and then in Bolivia, where he was captured with the help of the CIA and executed.
Both notorious for his harsh discipline and revered for his unwavering dedication to his revolutionary doctrines, Guevara remains an admired, controversial, and significant historical figure. As a result of his death and romantic visage, along with his invocation to armed class struggle and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by "moral" rather than "material" incentives [4]; Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of leftist inspired movements, as well as a global merchandising sensation. He has been mostly venerated and occasionally reviled in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, books, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century,[5] while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world."[6]
Early life
| “ | The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels, the Spanish conquistadores and the Argentinean patriots. Evidently Che inherited some of the features of our restless ancestors. There was something in his nature which drew him to distant wanderings, dangerous adventures and new ideas. | ” |
Ernesto Guevara was born on 14 June 1928[1] in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of Basque and Irish descent.[8] Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. Though suffering from the crippling bouts of asthma that were to afflict him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete. He was an avid rugby union player and earned himself the nickname "Fuser"—a contraction of "El Furibundo" (raging) and his mother's surname "de la Serna"—for his aggressive style of play.[9] Ernesto was also nicknamed "Chancho" (pig) by his schoolmates, because he rarely bathed, and proudly wore a "weekly shirt".
Guevara learned chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by the age of 12. During his adolescence and throughout his life he was passionate about poetry, especially that of Neruda, Keats, Machado, Lorca, Mistral, Vallejo, and Whitman.[10] He could also recite Kipling's "If" and Hernández's "Martín Fierro" from memory.[11] The Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed Guevara to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including Marx, Faulkner, Gide, and Verne.[12] He also enjoyed reading Nehru, Kafka, Camus, Lenin, and Sartre; as well as France, Engels, Wells, and Frost.[13]
As he got older he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Quiroga, Alegria, Icaza, Dario, and Asturias.[14] Many of these author's ideas he would catalog in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas also fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex.[15]
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. While still a student in 1951, Guevara took a year off from his medical studies to embark on a trip traversing South America by motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, 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. Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account entitled The Motorcycle Diaries, which later became a New York Times best-seller,[16] and was adapted into a 2004 award-winning film of the same name.
Witnessing the widespread poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement throughout Latin America, and influenced by his readings of Marxist literature, Guevara began to view armed revolution as the solution to social inequality. By trip's end, he also viewed Latin America not as separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united Hispanic America sharing a common 'mestizo' Hispanic America was a theme that prominently recurred during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical diploma in June 1953.[17]
Guatemala
| “ | After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. 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 for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. | ” |
|
— Che Guevara, 1960 [18] |
On July 7, 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. In December 1953 he arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala so as to "perfect [him]self and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary".[19]
In Guatemala City, Guevara sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was well-connected politically as a member of the left-leaning American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. Guevara also established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro through the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba.[20] During this period he acquired his famous nickname, due to his frequent use of the Argentine interjection "che", which is used in much the same way as "hey" or "pal".[21]
Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and his economic situation was often precarious. On May 15, 1954 a shipment of Škoda infantry and light artillery weapons was sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz Government and arrived in Puerto Barrios,[22][23] prompting a CIA-sponsored coup attempt.[22] Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by the Communist Youth for that purpose, but frustrated with the group's inaction, he soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but soon after, Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. After Hilda 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.[24]
The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. This strengthened his conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions.[25]
Cuba
| “ | Che convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience. When grenades were needed, Che set up a factory to make them. When bread was wanted, Che set up ovens to bake it. When new recruits needed to learn tactics and discipline, Che taught them. When a school was needed to teach peasants to read and write, Che organized it. | ” |
|
— Time Magazine: "Castro's Brain", 1960 [26] |
Guevara arrived in Mexico City in early September 1954, and 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, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During a lengthy conversation with Castro 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 the 26J Movement.[27]
Although he planned to be the group's medic, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement, and, at the end of the course, was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by their instructor, Colonel Alberto Bayo.[28] The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico via the Granma, an old, leaky cabin cruiser. They set out for Cuba on November 25, 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.[29] Guevara wrote that it was during this bloody confrontation that he laid down his medical supplies and picked up a box of ammunition dropped by a fleeing comrade, finalizing his symbolic transition from physician to combatant.
Only a small band of revolutionaries survived to re-group as a bedraggled fighting force deep in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they received support from the urban guerrilla network of Frank País, the 26th of July Movement, and local country folk. With the group withdrawn to the Sierra, the world wondered whether Castro was alive or dead until early 1957 when the interview by Herbert Matthews appeared in The New York Times. 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 grew low, Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war."[30]
At this point Castro promoted Guevara to comandante of a second army column. However, Guevara's first idea to hit an enemy garrison at Bueuycito did not go as planned. When his men were late to arrive, he began the attack without them. He told a sentry to halt, but when the sentry moved, Guevara decided to shoot. However, his gun jammed, as did the gun of the young rebel who was with him. Guevara fled under a hail of bullets, which in turn brought a hail of bullets from the rebels in the hills, and the barracks surrendered before Guevara repaired his tommy gun. As Guevara said, "My survival instincts took over."[31]
As Guevara reconsidered his tactics, he imposed even harsher disciplinary treatment. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send execution squads to hunt down those seeking to escape.[32] As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness.[33] During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies.[34]
Guevara was also instrumental in creating the clandestine radio station Radio Rebelde in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people and statements by the 26th of July movement, and provided radio telephone 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 CIA supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of Jacobo Arbenz.[35]
In late July of 1958 Guevara would play a critical role in the Battle of Las Mercedes 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, USMC Major Larry Bockman, would analyze and describe Che's tactical appreciation of this battle as "brilliant".[36] As the war extended, Guevara led a new column of fighters dispatched westward for the final push towards Havana. In the closing days of December 1958, Guevara directed his "suicide squad" in the attack on Santa Clara, that became the final decisive military victory of the revolution.[37][38] Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Years Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. Batista, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leader, fled to the Dominican Republic the next day on January 1, 1959.
After the revolution
| “ | Che was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship. | ” |
On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana. In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph.[40] When Hilda Gadea arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two "agreed on a divorce,"[41] which became finalized on May 22.[42] On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of the 26th of July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958.[43]
During the rebellion against Batista's dictatorship, the general command of the rebel army, led by Fidel Castro, "introduced into the liberated territories the 19th-century penal law commonly known as the Ley de la Sierra".[44] "This law included the death penalty for extremely serious crimes, whether perpetrated by the dictatorship or by supporters of the revolution. In 1959, the revolutionary government extended its application to the whole of the republic and to war criminals captured and tried after the revolution. This latter extension, supported by the majority of the population, followed the same procedure as that seen in" the Nuremberg Trials held by the Allies after World War II.[45] To implement this plan, Castro named Guevara commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison, for a five-month tenure (January 2 through June 12, 1959).[46] Guevara was charged with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting "revolutionary justice" against traitors, chivatos, and Batista's war criminals.[47] Serving in the post as "supreme prosecutor" on the appellate bench, Guevara oversaw the trials and executions of those convicted by revolutionary tribunal. Raúl Gómez Treto, senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, considered removing restrictions on the death penalty to be justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands.[48]
It is estimated that several hundred people were executed on Guevara's orders during this time.[49]
On June 12, 1959, as soon as Guevara returned to Havana, Castro sent him out on a three-month tour of fourteen countries, most of them Bandung Pact members in Africa and Asia. Sending Guevara from Havana also allowed Castro to appear to be distancing himself from Guevara and his Marxist sympathies, that troubled both the United States and some of Castro's 26th of July Movement members.[51] He spent twelve days in Japan (July 15–27), participati
