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Che Guevara

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                        Ernesto Guevara de la Serna
   Alberto Korda Diaz's famous image of Guevara taken at the memorial
   service for the victims of the explosion of the ship La Coubre, March
   5, 1960
   Born June 14, 1928
        Rosario, Argentina
   Died October 9, 1967
        La Higuera, Bolivia

   Ernesto Guevara de la Serna ( June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967),
   commonly known as Che Guevara or el Che, was an Argentine-born Marxist
   revolutionary, political figure, and leader of Cuban and
   internationalist guerrillas. As a young man studying medicine, Guevara
   traveled rough throughout Latin America, bringing him into direct
   contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people lived.
   His experiences and observations during these trips led him to the
   conclusion that the region's socioeconomic inequalities could only be
   remedied by revolution, prompting him to intensify his study of Marxism
   and travel to Guatemala to learn about the reforms being implemented
   there by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

   Some time later, Guevara joined Fidel Castro's paramilitary 26th of
   July Movement, which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving in
   various important posts in the new government and writing a number of
   articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare,
   Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of fomenting revolutions
   first in Congo-Kinshasa, and then in Bolivia, where he was captured in
   a CIA/ U.S. Army Special Forces-organized military operation. Guevara
   was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in La Higuera near
   Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.

   After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary
   movements worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of him (shown) has received
   wide distribution and modification. The Maryland Institute College of
   Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a
   symbol of the 20th century."

Family heritage and early life

   Birthplace of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Rosario    Another view
   Enlarge
   Birthplace of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Rosario     Another view

   Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest
   of five children in a family of Spanish and Irish descent; both his
   father and mother were of Basque ancestry. The date of birth recorded
   on his birth certificate was June 14, 1928, although one tertiary
   source (Julia Constenla, quoted by Jon Lee Anderson) asserts that he
   was actually born on May 14 of that year (Constenla alleges that she
   was told by an unidentified astrologer that his mother, Celia de la
   Serna, was already pregnant when she and Ernesto Guevara Lynch were
   married and that the birthdate of their son was forged a month later
   than the actual date to avoid scandal). One of Guevara's forebears,
   Patrick Lynch, was born in Galway, Ireland, in 1715. He left for
   Bilbao, Spain, and traveled from there to Argentina. Francisco Lynch
   (Guevara's great-grandfather) was born in 1817, and Ana Lynch (his
   beloved grandmother) in 1868 Her son, Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Guevara's
   father) was born in 1900. Guevara Lynch married Celia de la Serna y
   Llosa in 1927, and they had three sons and two daughters.

   Growing up in this upper-class family with leftist leanings, Guevara
   became known for his dynamic personality and radical perspective even
   as a boy. He idolized Francisco Pizarro and yearned to have been one of
   his soldiers. 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 despite his handicap and earned himself
   the nickname "Fuser" — a contraction of "El Furibundo" (English: "The
   Raging") and his mother's surname, "Serna" — for his aggressive style
   of play.
   Guevara on a burro at the age of 3
   Enlarge
   Guevara on a burro at the age of 3

   Guevara learned chess from his father and began participating in local
   tournaments by the age of 12. During his adolescence he became
   passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda. Guevara, as
   is common practice among Latin Americans of his class, also wrote poems
   throughout his life. He was an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with
   interests ranging from adventure classics by Jack London, Emilio
   Salgari and Jules Verne to essays on sexuality by Sigmund Freud and
   treatises on social philosophy by Bertrand Russell. In his late teens,
   he developed a keen interest in photography and spent many hours
   photographing people, places and, during later travels, archaeological
   sites.

   In 1948 Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study
   medicine. While a student, he spent long periods traveling around Latin
   America. In 1951 his older friend, Alberto Granado, a biochemist,
   suggested that Guevara take a year off from his medical studies to
   embark on a trip they had talked of making for years, traversing South
   America. Guevara and the 29-year-old Granado soon set off from their
   hometown of Alta Gracia astride a 1939 Norton 500 cc motorcycle they
   named La Poderosa II (English: "the Mighty One, the Second") with the
   idea of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo Leper colony
   in Peru on the banks of the Amazon River. Guevara narrated this journey
   in The Motorcycle Diaries, which was translated into English in 1996
   and used in 2004 as the basis for a motion picture of the same name.

   Witnessing the widespread poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement
   throughout Latin America, and influenced by his readings of Marxist
   literature, Guevara decided that the only solution for the region’s
   inequalities was armed revolution. His travels and readings also led
   him to view Latin America not as a group of separate nations but as a
   single entity requiring a continent-wide strategy for liberation. His
   conception of a borderless, united Ibero-America sharing a common
   'mestizo' culture was a theme that would prominently recur during his
   later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he
   expedited the completion of his medical studies in order to resume his
   travels in Central and South America and received his diploma on 12
   June 1953.

Guatemala

   On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru,
   Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.
   During the final days of December 1953 he arrived in Guatemala where
   leftist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed a populist government
   that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to
   bring an end to the U.S.-dominated latifundia system. In a
   contemporaneous letter to his Aunt Beatriz, Guevara explained his
   motivation for settling down for a time in Guatemala: "In Guatemala",
   he wrote, "I will perfect myself and accomplish whatever may be
   necessary in order to become a true revolutionary."

   Shortly after reaching Guatemala City, Guevara acted upon the
   suggestion of a mutual friend that he seek out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a
   Peruvian economist who was living and working there. Gadea, whom he
   would later marry, was well-connected politically as a result of her
   membership in the socialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
   (APRA) led by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, and she introduced Guevara
   to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. He also
   re-established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel
   Castro whom he had initially met in Costa Rica; among them was Antonio
   "Ñico" López, associated with the attack on the "Carlos Manuel de
   Céspedes" barracks in Bayamo in the Cuban province of Oriente, and who
   would die at Ojo del Toro bridge soon after the Granma landed in Cuba.
   Guevara joined these " moncadistas" in the sale of religious objects
   related to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, and he also assisted two
   Venezuelan malaria specialists at a local hospital. It was during this
   period that he acquired his famous nickname, "Che", due to his frequent
   use of the Argentine interjection Che ( pronounced /tʃe/), which is
   utilized in much the same way as "hey", "pal", "eh", or "mate" are
   employed colloquially in various English-speaking countries. Argentina,
   Uruguay, and southern Brazil (where the interjection is rendered 'chê'
   or 'ché' in written Portuguese) are the only areas where this
   expression is used, making it a trademark of the Rioplatense region.

   Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and
   his economic situation was often precarious, leading him to pawn some
   of Hilda's jewelry. Political events in the country began to move
   quickly after May 15, 1954 when a shipment of Skoda infantry and light
   artillery weapons sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz
   Government arrived in Puerto Barrios aboard the Swedish ship Alfhem.
   The amount of Czech weaponry was estimated to be 2000 tons by the CIA
   though only 2 tons by Jon Lee Anderson. (Anderson's tonnage estimate is
   thought to be a typographical error due to how few scholarly sources
   support it.) Guevara briefly left Guatemala for El Salvador to pick up
   a new visa, then returned to Guatemala only a few days before the
   CIA-sponsored coup attempt led by Carlos Castillo Armas began. The
   anti-Arbenz forces tried, but failed, to stop the trans-shipment of the
   Czechoslovak weapons by train. However, after pausing to regroup and
   recover energy, Castillo Armas' column seized the initiative and,
   apparently with the assistance of US air support, started to gain
   ground. 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 his
   efforts were thwarted when Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy
   and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. After Gadea was
   arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate
   where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks
   later. At that point, he turned down a free seat on a flight back to
   Argentina that was proffered to him by the Embassy, preferring instead
   to make his way to Mexico.

   The overthrow of the Arbenz regime by a coup d'état backed by the
   Central Intelligence Agency cemented Guevara's view of the United
   States as an imperialist power that would implacably 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 socialism achieved through armed
   struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify
   such conditions.

Cuba

   After the battle of Santa Clara.The tank is a Sherman with a 76 mm
   cannon. [2](1 January 1959)
   Enlarge
   After the battle of Santa Clara.
   The tank is a Sherman with a 76 mm cannon.
   (1 January 1959)

   Guevara arrived in Mexico City in early September 1954, and shortly
   thereafter renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban
   exiles whom he had known in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced
   him to Raúl Castro. Several weeks later, Fidel Castro arrived in Mexico
   City after having been amnestied from prison in Cuba, and on the
   evening of 8 July 1955 Raúl introduced Guevara to the older Castro
   brother. During a fervid overnight conversation, Guevara became
   convinced that Fidel was the inspirational revolutionary leader for
   whom he had been searching, and he immediately joined the " 26th of
   July Movement" that intended to overthrow the government of Fulgencio
   Batista. Although it was planned that he would be the group's medic,
   Guevara participated in the military training alongside the other
   members of the 26J Movement, and at the end of the course was singled
   out by their instructor, Col. Alberto Bayo, as his most outstanding
   student. Meanwhile, Hilda Gadea had arrived from Guatemala and she and
   Guevara resumed their relationship. In the summer of 1955 she informed
   him that she was pregnant and he immediately suggested that they marry.
   The wedding took place on August 18, 1955, and their daughter, whom
   they named Hilda Beatríz, was born on February 15, 1956.

   When the cabin cruiser Granma set out from Tuxpan, Veracruz for Cuba on
   November 25, 1956, Guevara was one of only four non-Cubans aboard.
   Attacked by Batista's military soon after landing, about half of the
   expeditionaries were killed or executed upon capture. Guevara writes
   that it was during this confrontation that he laid down his knapsack
   containing medical supplies in order to pick up a box of ammunition
   dropped by a fleeing comrade, a moment which he later recalled as
   marking his transition from physician to combatant. Only 15–20 rebels
   survived as a battered fighting force; they re-grouped and fled into
   the mountains of the Sierra Maestra to wage guerrilla warfare against
   the Batista regime.

   Guevara became a leader among the rebels, a Comandante (English
   translation: Major), respected by his comrades in arms for his courage
   and military prowess, and feared for what some have described as
   ruthlessness: He was responsible for the execution of many men accused
   of being informers, deserters or spies. In the final days of December
   1958, he directed his " suicide squad" (which undertook the most
   dangerous tasks in the rebel army) in the attack on Santa Clara that
   turned out to be one of the decisive events of the revolution, although
   the bloody series of ambushes first during la ofensiva in the heights
   of the Sierra Maestra, then at Guisa, and the whole Cauto Plains
   campaign that followed probably had more military significance.
   Batista, upon learning that his generals — especially General Cantillo,
   who had visited Castro at the inactive sugar mill "Central America" —
   were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leader, fled to the
   Dominican Republic on January 1, 1959.

   On February 7, 1959, the victorious government proclaimed Guevara "a
   Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph of
   the revolutionary forces. Shortly thereafter, he initiated divorce
   proceedings to put a formal end to his marriage with Gadea, from whom
   he had been separated since before leaving Mexico on the Granma, and 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.

   He was appointed commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison, and during
   his five-month tenure in that post ( January 2 through June 12, 1959),
   he oversaw the trial and execution of many people, among whom were
   former Batista regime officials and members of the "Bureau for the
   Repression of Communist Activities" (a unit of the secret police know
   by its Spanish acronym BRAC). According to José Vilasuso, an attorney
   who worked under Guevara at La Cabaña preparing indictments, these were
   lawless proceedings where "the facts were judged without any
   consideration to general juridical principles" and the findings were
   pre-determined by Guevara.

   Later, Guevara became an official at the National Institute of Agrarian
   Reform, and President of the National Bank of Cuba (somewhat
   ironically, as he often condemned money, favored its abolition, and
   showed his disdain by signing Cuban banknotes with his nickname,
   "Che"). It is sometimes said that Guevara ended up in this position
   because Fidel Castro asked if there were any economists in the room and
   Che, thinking Castro had asked for Communists, put his hand up.

   During this time his fondness for chess was rekindled, and he attended
   and participated in most national and international tournaments held in
   Cuba. He was particularly eager to encourage young Cubans to take up
   the game, and organized various activities designed to stimulate their
   interest in it.

   Even as early as 1959, Guevara helped organize revolutionary
   expeditions overseas, all of which failed. The first attempt was made
   in Panama; another in the Dominican Republic (led by Henry Fuerte, also
   known as "El Argelino", and Enrique Jiménez Moya) took place on 14 June
   of that same year.

   In 1960 Guevara provided first aid to victims during the La Coubre arms
   shipment rescue operation that went further awry when a second
   explosion occurred, resulting in well over a hundred dead. It was at
   the memorial service for the victims of this explosion that Alberto
   Korda took the most famous photograph of him. Whether La Coubre was
   sabotaged or merely exploded by accident is not clear. Those who favour
   the sabotage theory sometimes attribute this to the Central
   Intelligence Agency and sometimes name William Alexander Morgan, a
   former rival of Guevara's in the anti-Batista forces of the central
   provinces and later a putative CIA agent, as the perpetrator. Cuban
   exiles have put forth the theory that it was done by Guevara's
   USSR-loyalist rivals.

   Guevara later served as Minister of Industries, in which post he helped
   formulate Cuban socialism, and became one of the country's most
   prominent figures. In his book Guerrilla Warfare, he advocated
   replicating the Cuban model of revolution initiated by a small group (
   foco) of guerrillas without the need for broad organizations to precede
   armed insurrection. His essay El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba (1965)
   (Man and Socialism in Cuba) advocates the need to shape a "new man"
   (hombre nuevo) in conjunction with a socialist state. Some saw Guevara
   as the simultaneously glamorous and austere model of that "new man."

   During the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion Guevara did not participate in the
   fighting, having been ordered by Castro to a command post in Cuba's
   westernmost Pinar del Río province where he was involved in fending off
   a decoy force. He did, however, suffer a bullet wound to the face
   during this deployment, which he said had been caused by the accidental
   discharge of his own gun.

   Guevara played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed
   ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in
   October 1962. During an interview with the British newspaper Daily
   Worker some weeks later, he stated that, if the missiles had been under
   Cuban control, they would have fired them against major U.S. cities.

Disappearance from Cuba

   Che Guevara addressing the UN General Assembly (New York City - 11
   December 1964)
   Enlarge
   Che Guevara addressing the UN General Assembly
   (New York City - 11 December 1964)

   In December 1964 Che Guevara traveled to New York City as the head of
   the Cuban delegation to speak at the UN ( listen, requires RealPlayer;
   or read). He also appeared on the CBS Sunday news program Face the
   Nation, met with a gamut of individuals and groups including U.S.
   Senator Eugene McCarthy, several associates of Malcolm X, and Canadian
   radical Michelle Duclos, and dined at the home of the Rockefellers. On
   17 December, he flew to Paris and from there embarked on a three-month
   international tour during which he visited the People's Republic of
   China, the United Arab Republic (Egypt), Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali,
   Dahomey, Congo-Brazzaville and Tanzania, with stops in Ireland, Paris
   and Prague. In Algiers on 24 February 1965, he made what turned out to
   be his last public appearance on the international stage when he
   delivered a speech to the "Second Economic Seminar on Afro-Asian
   Solidarity" in which he declared, "There are no frontiers in this
   struggle to the death. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of what
   occurs in any part of the world. A victory for any country against
   imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is our
   defeat." He then astonished his audience by proclaiming, "The socialist
   countries have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity
   with the exploiting countries of the West." He proceeded to outline a
   number of measures which he said the communist-bloc countries should
   implement in order to accomplish this objective. 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.

   Two weeks later, Guevara dropped out of public life and then vanished
   altogether. His whereabouts were the great mystery of 1965 in Cuba, as
   he was generally regarded as second in power to Castro himself. His
   disappearance was variously attributed to the relative failure of the
   industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industry,
   to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials disapproving of
   Guevara's pro- Chinese Communist bent as the Sino-Soviet split grew
   more pronounced, and to serious differences between Guevara and the
   Cuban leadership regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological
   line. Others suggested that Castro had grown increasingly wary of
   Guevara's popularity and considered him a potential threat. Castro's
   critics sometimes say his explanations for Guevara's disappearance have
   always been suspect (see below), and many found it surprising that
   Guevara never announced his intentions publicly, but only through an
   undated and uncharacteristically obsequious letter to Castro.

   The coincidence of Guevara's views with those expounded by the Chinese
   Communist leadership had become increasingly problematic for Cuba as
   the nation's economic dependence on the Soviet Union deepened. Since
   the early days of the Cuban revolution, Guevara had been considered by
   many an advocate of Maoist strategy in Latin America and the originator
   of a plan for the rapid industrialization of Cuba which was frequently
   compared to China's " Great Leap Forward". According to Western
   "observers" of the Cuban situation, the fact that Guevara was opposed
   to Soviet conditions and recommendations that Castro seemed obliged to
   accept might have been the reason for his disappearance. However, both
   Guevara and Castro were supportive of the idea of a "united
   anti-imperialist front" intended to include both the Soviet Union and
   China, and had made several unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the
   feuding parties.
   Guevara with members of his "reception committee" at Havana
   airport (Havana - 14 March 1965)
   Enlarge
   Guevara with members of his "reception committee" at Havana airport
   (Havana - 14 March 1965)

   Following the Cuban Missile Crisis and what he perceived as a Soviet
   betrayal of Cuba when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles from
   Cuban territory without consulting Castro, Guevara had grown more
   skeptical of the Soviet Union. As revealed in his last speech in
   Algiers, he had come to view the Northern Hemisphere, 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 in
   the Vietnam War, and urged the peoples of other developing countries to
   take up arms and create "many Vietnams".

   Pressed by international speculation regarding Guevara's fate, Castro
   stated on 16 June 1965, that the people would be informed about Guevara
   when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Numerous rumors about his
   disappearance spread both inside and outside Cuba. On 3 October of that
   year, Castro revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by
   Guevara some months earlier in which Guevara reaffirmed his enduring
   solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but declared his intention to
   leave Cuba to fight abroad for the cause of the revolution. He
   explained that "Other nations of the world summon my modest efforts,"
   and that he had therefore decided to go and fight as a guerrilla "on
   new battlefields". In the letter Guevara announced his resignation from
   all his positions in the government, in the party, and in the Army, and
   renounced his Cuban citizenship, which had been granted to him in 1959
   in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the revolution.

   During an interview with four foreign correspondents on 1 November,
   Castro remarked that he knew where Guevara was but would not disclose
   his location, and added, denying reports that his former
   comrade-in-arms was dead, that "he is in the best of health." Despite
   Castro's assurances, Guevara's fate remained a mystery at the end of
   1965 and his movements and whereabouts continued to be a closely held
   secret for the next two years.

Congo

Expedition

   Listening to a Zenith "TransOceanic" shortwave receiver are (seated
   from the left) Rogelio Oliva, José María Martínez Tamayo (known as
   "Mbili" in the Congo and "Ricardo" in Bolivia), and Guevara. Standing
   behind them is Roberto Sánchez ("Lawton" in Cuba and "Changa" in the
   Congo).
   Enlarge
   Listening to a Zenith "TransOceanic" shortwave receiver are (seated
   from the left) Rogelio Oliva, José María Martínez Tamayo (known as
   "Mbili" in the Congo and "Ricardo" in Bolivia), and Guevara. Standing
   behind them is Roberto Sánchez ("Lawton" in Cuba and "Changa" in the
   Congo).

   During their all-night meeting on March 14– March 15, 1965, Guevara and
   Castro had agreed that the former would personally lead Cuba's first
   military action in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some usually reliable sources
   state that Guevara persuaded Castro to back him in this effort, while
   other sources of equal reliability maintain that Castro convinced
   Guevara to undertake the mission, arguing that conditions in the
   various Latin American countries that had been under consideration for
   the possible establishment of guerrilla focos were not yet optimal.
   Castro himself has said the latter is true. According to Ahmed Ben
   Bella, who was president of Algeria at the time and had recently held
   extended conversations with Guevara, "The situation prevailing in
   Africa, which seemed to have enormous revolutionary potential, led Che
   to the conclusion that Africa was imperialism’s weak link. It was to
   Africa that he now decided to devote his efforts."

   The Cuban operation was to be carried out in support of the pro-
   Patrice Lumumba Marxist Simba movement in the Congo-Kinshasa (formerly
   Belgian Congo, later Zaire and currently the Democratic Republic of the
   Congo). Guevara, his second-in-command Victor Dreke, and twelve of the
   Cuban expeditionaries arrived in the Congo on 24 April 1965; a
   contingent of approximately 100 Afro-Cubans joined them soon
   afterwards. They collaborated for a time with guerrilla leader
   Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who helped Lumumba supporters lead a revolt that
   was suppressed in November of that same year by the Congolese army.
   Guevara dismissed Kabila as insignificant. "Nothing leads me to believe
   he is the man of the hour," Guevara wrote.

   Although Guevara was 37 at the time and had no formal military
   training, he had the experiences of the Cuban revolution, including his
   successful march on Santa Clara, which was central to Batista finally
   being overthrown by Castro's forces. His asthma had prevented him from
   being drafted into military service in Argentina, a fact of which he
   was proud given his opposition to Perón's government.

   South African mercenaries including Mike Hoare and Cuban exiles worked
   with the Congolese army to thwart Guevara. They were able to monitor
   his communications, arrange to ambush the rebels and the Cubans
   whenever they attempted to attack, and interdict his supply lines.
   Despite the fact that Guevara sought to conceal his presence in the
   Congo, the U.S. government was fully aware of his location and
   activities: The National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting all of
   his incoming and outgoing transmissions via equipment aboard the USNS
   Valdez, a floating listening post which continuously cruised the Indian
   Ocean off Dar-es-Salaam for that purpose.

   Guevara's aim was to export the Cuban Revolution by instructing local
   Simba fighters in communist ideology and strategies of guerrilla
   warfare. In his Congo Diary, he cites the incompetence, intransigence,
   and infighting of the local Congolese forces as the key reasons for the
   revolt's failure. Later that same year, ill with dysentery, suffering
   from his asthma, and disheartened after seven months of frustrations,
   Guevara left the Congo with the Cuban survivors (six members of his
   column had died). At one point Guevara had considered sending the
   wounded back to Cuba, then standing alone and fighting until the end in
   the Congo as a revolutionary example; however, after being urged by his
   comrades in arms and pressured by two emissaries sent by Castro, at the
   last moment he reluctantly agreed to leave the Congo. A few weeks
   later, when writing the preface to the diary he had kept during the
   Congo venture, he began it with the words: "This is the history of a
   failure."

Interlude

   Because Castro had made public Guevara's "farewell letter" to him — a
   letter Guevara had intended should only be revealed in case of his
   death — wherein he had written that he was severing all ties to Cuba in
   order to devote himself to revolutionary activities in other parts of
   the world, he felt that he could not return to Cuba with the other
   surviving combatants for moral reasons, and he spent the next six
   months living clandestinely in Dar-es-Salaam, and Prague. During this
   time he compiled his memoirs of the Congo experience, and wrote the
   drafts of two more books, one on philosophy and the other on economics.
   He also visited several countries in Western Europe in order to "test"
   a new false identity and the corresponding documentation (passport,
   etc.) created for him by Cuban Intelligence that he planned to use to
   travel to South America. Throughout this period Castro continued to
   importune him to return to Cuba, but Guevara only agreed to do so when
   it was understood that he would be there on a strictly temporary basis
   for the few months needed to prepare a new revolutionary effort
   somewhere in Latin America, and that his presence on the island would
   be cloaked in the tightest secrecy.

Bolivia

Insurgent

   Speculation on Guevara's whereabouts continued throughout 1966 and into
   1967. Representatives of the Mozambican independence movement FRELIMO
   reported meeting with Guevara in late 1966 or early 1967 in Dar es
   Salaam, at which point they rejected his offer of aid in their
   revolutionary project. In a speech at the 1967 May Day rally in Havana,
   the Acting Minister of the armed forces, Major Juan Almeida, announced
   that Guevara was "serving the revolution somewhere in Latin America".
   The persistent reports that he was leading the guerrillas in Bolivia
   were eventually shown to be true.

   At Castro's behest, a 3,700 acre parcel of jungle land in the remote
   Ñancahuazú region had been purchased by native Bolivian Communists for
   Guevara to use as a training area and base camp . The evidence suggests
   that the training at this camp in the Ñancahuazú valley was more
   hazardous than combat to Guevara and the Cubans accompanying him.
   Little was accomplished in the way of building a guerrilla army. Former
   Stasi operative Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, better known by her nom de
   guerre "Tania", who had been installed as his primary agent in La Paz,
   was reportedly also working for the KGB and is widely inferred to have
   unwittingly served Soviet interests by leading Bolivian authorities to
   Guevara's trail. The numerous photographs taken by and of Guevara and
   other members of his guerrilla group that they left behind at their
   base camp after the initial clash with the Bolivian army in March 1967
   provided President René Barrientos with the first proof of his presence
   in Bolivia; after viewing them, Barrientos allegedly stated that he
   wanted Guevara's head displayed on a pike in downtown La Paz. He
   thereupon ordered the Bolivian Army to hunt Guevara and his followers
   down.

   Guevara's guerrilla force, numbering about 50 and operating as the ELN
   (Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia; English: " National
   Liberation Army of Bolivia"), was well equipped and scored a number of
   early successes against Bolivian regulars in the difficult terrain of
   the mountainous Camiri region. In September, however, the Army managed
   to eliminate two guerrilla groups, reportedly killing one of the
   leaders.

   Despite the violent nature of the conflict, Guevara gave medical
   attention to all of the wounded Bolivian soldiers whom the guerrillas
   took prisoner, and subsequently released them. Even after his last
   battle at the Quebrada del Yuro, in which he had been wounded, when he
   was taken to a temporary holding location and saw there a number of
   Bolivian soldiers who had also been wounded in the fighting, he offered
   to give them medical care. (His offer was turned down by the Bolivian
   officer in charge.)

   Guevara's plan for fomenting revolution in Bolivia appears to have been
   based upon a number of misconceptions:
     * He had expected to deal only with the country's military government
       and its poorly trained and equipped army. However, after the U.S.
       government learned of his location, CIA and other operatives were
       sent into Bolivia to aid the anti-insurrection effort. The Bolivian
       Army was being trained and supplied by U.S. Army Special Forces
       advisors, including a recently organized elite battalion of Rangers
       trained in jungle warfare that set up camp in La Esperanza, a small
       settlement close to the guerrillas' zone of operations.

     * Guevara had expected assistance and cooperation from the local
       dissidents. He did not receive it; and Bolivia's Communist Party,
       under the leadership of Mario Monje, was oriented towards Moscow
       rather than Havana and did not aid him, despite having promised to
       do so. (Some members of the Bolivian Communist Party did
       join/support him, such as Coco and Inti Peredo, Rodolfo Saldaňa,
       Serapio Aquino Tudela, and Antonio Jiménez Tardio, against the
       Party leadership's wishes.)
     * He had expected to remain in radio contact with Havana. However,
       the two shortwave transmitters provided to him by Cuba were faulty,
       so that the guerrillas were unable to communicate with Havana. (In
       this, and in many other respects, Manuel Piñeiro, the man to whom
       Castro had assigned the task of coordinating support for Guevara's
       operations in Bolivia, performed abysmally.) To further complicate
       matters, some months into the campaign, the tape recorder that the
       guerrillas used to record and decipher the one-time pad-encoded
       radio messages sent to them from Havana was lost while crossing a
       river, making de-coding such messages more difficult.

   In addition, his penchant for confrontation rather than compromise
   appears to have contributed to his inability to develop successful
   working relationships with local leaders in Bolivia, just as it had in
   the Congo. This tendency had surfaced during his guerrilla warfare
   campaign in Cuba as well, but had been kept in check there by the
   timely interventions and guidance of Castro.

Capture and execution

   Rodríguez with the captured Che Guevara(La Higuera, Bolivia - 9 October
   1967)
   Enlarge
   Rodríguez with the captured Che Guevara
   (La Higuera, Bolivia - 9 October 1967)
   The schoolhouse in La Higuera where Che Guevara was executed at 1:10
   p.m. on 9 October 1967.
   Enlarge
   The schoolhouse in La Higuera where Che Guevara was executed at 1:10
   p.m. on 9 October 1967.

   The Bolivian Special Forces were notified of the location of Guevara's
   guerrilla encampment by an informant. On 8 October, the encampment was
   encircled, and Guevara was captured while leading a detachment with
   Simeón Cuba Sarabia in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine. He offered to
   surrender after being wounded in the legs and having his rifle
   destroyed by a bullet. (His pistol was lacking an ammunition magazine.)
   According to some soldiers present at the capture, during the skirmish
   as they approached Guevara, he allegedly shouted, "Do not shoot! I am
   Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead."

   Barrientos promptly ordered his execution upon being informed of his
   capture. Guevara was taken to a dilapidated schoolhouse in the nearby
   village of La Higuera where he was held overnight. Early the next
   afternoon he was executed. The executioner was Mario Terán, a Sergeant
   in the Bolivian army who had drawn a short straw after arguments over
   who got the honour of killing Guevara broke out among the soldiers.
   Guevara received multiple shots to the legs, so as to avoid maiming his
   face for identification purposes and simulate combat wounds in an
   attempt to conceal his execution. Che Guevara did have some last words
   before his death; he allegedly said to his executioner, "I know you are
   here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man." His
   body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to
   neighboring Vallegrande where it was laid out on a laundry tub in the
   local hospital and displayed to the press. Photographs taken at that
   time gave rise to legends such as those of San Ernesto de La Higuera
   and El Cristo de Vallegrande. After a military doctor surgically
   amputated his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's
   cadaver to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his
   remains had been buried or cremated.

   The hunt for Guevara in Bolivia was headed by Félix Rodríguez, a CIA
   agent, who previously had infiltrated into Cuba to prepare contacts
   with the rebels in the Escambray Mountains and the anti-Castro
   underground in Havana prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion, and had been
   successfully extracted from Cuba afterwards. Upon hearing of Guevara's
   capture, Rodríguez relayed the information to CIA headquarters at
   Langley, Virginia, via CIA stations in various South American nations.
   After the execution, Rodríguez took Guevara's Rolex watch and several
   other personal items, often proudly showing them to reporters during
   the ensuing years. Today, some of these belongings, including his
   flashlight, are on display at the CIA.

   On October 15, Castro acknowledged that Guevara was dead and proclaimed
   three days of public mourning throughout Cuba. The death of Guevara was
   regarded as a severe blow to the socialist revolutionary movements in
   Latin America and the rest of the third world.
   Che Guevara's Monument and Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba
   Enlarge
   Che Guevara's Monument and Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba

   In 1997, the skeletal remains of Guevara's handless body were exhumed
   from beneath an air strip near Vallegrande, positively identified by
   DNA matching, and returned to Cuba. On 17 October 1997, his remains,
   along with those of six of his fellow combatants killed during the
   guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, were laid to rest with full military
   honours in a specially built mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara,
   where he had won the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution.

The Bolivian Diary

   Also removed when Guevara was captured was his diary, which documented
   events of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia. The first entry is on
   November 7, 1966 shortly after his arrival at the farm in Ñancahuazú,
   and the last entry is on October 7, 1967, the day before his capture.
   The diary tells how the guerrillas were forced to begin operations
   prematurely due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, explains Guevara's
   decision to divide the column into two units that were subsequently
   unable to reestablish contact, and describes their overall failure. It
   records the rift between Guevara and the Bolivian Communist Party that
   resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally
   anticipated. It shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty
   recruiting from the local populace, due in part to the fact that the
   guerrilla group had learned Quechua rather than the local language
   which was Tupí-Guaraní. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close,
   Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from 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 and circulated around the world. There are at least four
   additional diaries in existence — those of Israel Reyes Zayas (Alias
   "Braulio"), Harry Villegas Tamayo ("Pombo"), Eliseo Reyes Rodriguez
   ("Rolando") and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez ("Benigno") — each of which
   reveals additional aspects of the events in question.

Legacy and criticisms

   While pictures of Guevara's dead body were being circulated and the
   circumstances of his death debated, his legend began to spread.
   Demonstrations in protest against his execution occurred throughout the
   world, and articles, tributes, songs and poems were written about his
   life and death. Latin America specialists advising the U.S. State
   Department immediately recognized the importance of the demise of “the
   most glamorous and reportedly most successful revolutionary”, noting
   that Guevara would be eulogized by communists and other leftists as
   “the model revolutionary who met a heroic death”.

   Such predictions gained increasing credibility as Guevara became a
   potent symbol of rebellion and revolution during the global student
   protests of the late 1960s. 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 socialist
   ideals. The slogan 'Che lives!' began to appear on walls throughout the
   west, while Jean-Paul Sartre, a leading figure in the movement,
   encouraged the adulation by describing Guevara as "the most complete
   human being of our age".

   Typically, responses to Guevara's legacy followed partisan lines. The
   US State Department was advised that his death would come as a relief
   to non-leftist Latin Americans, who had feared possible insurgencies in
   their own countries. Subsequent analysts have also shed light on
   aspects of cruelty in Guevara’s methods, and analysed what Fidel Castro
   described as Guevara’s “excessively aggressive quality”. Studies
   addressing problematic characteristics of Guevara's life have cited his
   principal role in setting up Cuba's first post-revolutionary labor
   camps, his unsympathetic treatment of captured fighters during various
   guerrilla campaigns, and his frequent humiliations of those deemed his
   intellectual inferiors. Though much opposition to Guevara's methods has
   come from the political right, critical evaluation has also come from
   groups such as anarchists and civil libertarians, some of whom consider
   Guevara an authoritarian, anti-working-class Stalinist, whose legacy
   was the creation of a more bureaucratic, authoritarian regime.
   Detractors have also theorized that in much of Latin America,
   Che-inspired revolutions had the practical result of reinforcing brutal
   militarism for many years.

Legacy in Cuba

   In Cuba, Guevara’s death precipitated the abandonment of guerrilla
   warfare as an instrument of foreign policy, ushering in a rapprochement
   with the Soviet Union, and the reformation of the government along
   Soviet lines. When Cuban troops returned to Africa in the 1970s, it was
   as part of a large-scale military expedition, and support for
   insurrection movements in Latin America and the Caribbean became
   logistical and organizational rather than overt. Cuba also abandoned
   Guevara's plans for economic diversification and rapid
   industrialization which had ultimately proved to be impracticable in
   view of the country's incorporation into the COMECON system.

   As early as 1965, the Yugoslav communist journal Borba observed the
   many half-completed or empty factories in Cuba, a legacy of Guevara's
   tenure as Minister of Industries, "standing like sad memories of the
   conflict between pretension and reality".

   The Cuban state continued to cultivate Guevara’s cult of personality,
   constructing numerous statues and artworks in his honour throughout the
   land; adorning school rooms, workplaces, public buildings, billboards,
   and money with his image. Children across the country begin each school
   day with the chant "¡Pioneros por el Comunismo, Seremos como el Che!"
   (English: Pioneers for Communism, We will be like Che!). Guevara's
   mausoleum in Santa Clara has become a site of almost religious
   significance to many Cubans, while the nation’s burgeoning tourist
   industry has benefited greatly from the ongoing international interest
   in Guevara's life. Some 205,832 people visited the mausoleum during
   2004, of whom 127,597 were foreigners.

   Reverence among Cubans for Guevara's memory is by no means universal.
   Many Cuban exiles have spoken of Guevara in less than favorable terms,
   and he is remembered by some as the "The Butcher of la Cabaña", a
   reference to Guevara’s post-revolutionary role as “supreme prosecutor”
   at the Cabana fortress. The epithet was repeated by Cuban-born musician
   Paquito D'Rivera, who wrote an open letter castigating fellow musician
   Carlos Santana, for wearing a T-shirt displaying Guevara’s image to the
   2005 Academy Awards ceremony. Similar sentiments have been shared by
   Cuban-American actor and director Andy Garcia, who stated in 2004 that
   "Che has been romanticized over the years, but there is a darker side
   to his story. He looks like a rock star, but he executed a lot of
   people without trial or defense." Garcia’s 2005 film The Lost City,
   which was reportedly banned in several Latin American countries,
   portrayed a ruthless brutality at the heart of the Cuban revolution.
   Actor Jsu Garcia as Guevara is shown casually shooting wounded Batista
   foot soldiers where they lie.

The "Cult of Che"

   Despite this, Guevara's status as a popular icon has continued
   throughout the world, leading commentators to speak of a global "cult
   of Che". A photograph of Guevara taken by photographer Alberto Korda
   has became one of the century's most ubiquitous images, and the
   portrait, transformed into a monochrome graphic, is reproduced
   endlessly on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters,
   coffee mugs, and baseball caps. The image had been likened to a global
   brand, long since shedding its ideological or political connotations,
   and the obsession with Guevara has been dismissed by some as merely
   "adolescent revolutionary romanticism". In addition, political writer
   Paul Berman believes that the "modern-day cult of Che" obscures the
   work of dissidents and the "tremendous social struggle" currently
   taking place in Cuba. Author Christopher Hitchens commented, "Che's
   iconic status was assured because he failed, His story was one of
   defeat and isolation, and that's why it is so seductive. Had he lived,
   the myth of Che would have long since died."

Timeline

   Che Guevara Timeline

   [USEMAP:20904.png]

Guevara's published works

   In English (translations)
     * Back on the Road: A Journey to Central America (Harvill Panther
       S.), The Harvill Press, paperback, ISBN 0-8021-3942-6.
     * Bolivian Diary, Pimlico, paperback, ISBN 0-7126-6457-2
     * Che Guevara: Radical Writings on Guerrilla Warfare, Politics and
       Revolution, Filiquarian Publishing LLC, paperback, ISBN
       1-59986-999-3.
     * Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Guerrilla Warfare, Politics and
       History, Ocean Press, paperback
     * Che Guevara Speaks, Pathfinder, paperback
     * Che Guevara Talks to Young People, Pathfinder, paperback
     * Critical Notes on Political Economy, Ocean Press, paperback
     * Guerrilla Warfare, Souvenir Press Ltd, paperback, ISBN
       0-285-63680-4.
     * Our America and Theirs, Ocean Press (AU), paperback, ISBN
       1-876175-81-8.
     * Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, Monthly Review Press,
       paperback, 1998
     * Self-Portrait: Che Guevara, Ocean Press, 320pp, paperback, 2005
     * Socialism and Man in Cuba: Also Fidel Castro on the Twentieth
       Anniversary of Guevara's Death, Monad, paperback
     * The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the
       Congo, Grove Press, paperback.
     * The Diary of Che Guevara, Amereon Ltd,
     * The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey,
       Perennial Press, ISBN 0-00-718222-8.

   In Spanish
     * Cuadernos de Praga – Guevara's notebooks written during his
       clandestine stay in Prague in 1966 ( PDF)
     * Diario del Che en Bolivia – Guevara's diary of the guerrilla war in
       Bolivia
     * Obras Escogidas – Guevara's selected works in Spanish, including
       his most important speeches ( PDF)
     * Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria: Congo – Guevara's complete
       Congo Diary in Spanish, ( PDF)
     * Pensamiento y acción – A selection of Guevara's writings in
       Spanish, including El socialismo y el hombre nuevo ( PDF)

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