Ernesto "
Che"
Guevara (
Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe geˈβaɾa];
June 14,
1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as
El Che or simply
Che, was an
Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author,
intellectual,
guerrilla leader,
diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the
Cuban Revolution. Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous
countercultural symbol and global insigne
within popular culture.
As a
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,
neocolonialism, 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, while living in
Mexico City, he met
Raúl and
Fidel Castro, joined their
26th of July Movement, and travelled to Cuba aboard the yacht,
Granma, with the intention of overthrowing
U.S.-backed Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the
insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime
.
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included instituting
agrarian reform as minister of industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for
Cuba’s armed forces, reviewing the appeals and
firing squads for those convicted as
war criminals during the revolutionary
tribunals,
, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban
socialism. Such positions allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the
Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing to Cuba the
Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles which precipitated the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal
manual on
guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling
memoir about his
youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions, first unsuccessfully in
Congo-Kinshasa and later in
Bolivia, where he was captured by
CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed
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.
Time magazine named him one of the
100 most influential people of the 20th century,
while an
Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled
Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world."
