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Outi Foote
From his first meeting with Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1955 to his death in the Bolivian Andes in 1967, Ché Guevara's revolutionary career spanned little more than a decade. Yet the handsome young face, gaze set firmly on the future, has lived on through generations. In today's imagination Ché remains a mythical, romantic hero -- an uncompromising revolutionary, selfless, dedicated, incorruptible, ready to die for his beliefs.
Determined Nature
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna grew up in the shelter of provincial aristocracy in Argentina. His personality was not forged in easy privilege, but by the fierce battle he waged against acute asthma. "He was a very sick boy," his brother later remembered, "but his character and willpower allowed him to overcome it." Guevara came to believe that all life was an act of will. "Any task, no matter how daunting could be solved by dint of enthusiasm, revolutionary fervor and unbending determination."
Cuban Leader
By January 1959, Guevara, along with the Castro brothers, was recognized as one of the three most powerful leaders of the Cuban revolution. He became a Cuban citizen, divorced Hilda Galea, married a beautiful Cuban woman, Aleida March, and began a new family.
Popular But Ineffective
Lacking any managerial training, Ché was nevertheless named head of Cuba's central bank. Later, he became Minister of Industries. He called for the diversification of the Cuban economy, and for the elimination of what he called material incentives. Volunteer work and dedication of workers would drive economic growth. All that was needed was will. Ché led by example. He worked endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane. His good looks, acerbic humor and willingness to point out the revolution's shortcomings earned him the affection of many Cubans. But by 1963, as characterized by a CIA classified report, "Guevara... had brought... the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power."
Critic of the Soviets
Guevara became disillusioned with the Soviet Union, attacking Moscow in every international forum. After Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev removed nuclear missiles from Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis, Guevara questioned Moscow's commitment to international socialism. He was also critical of Soviet insistence that Cuba continue to specialize in sugar. "The socialist countries are, in a way, accomplices of imperialist exploitation," he told a gathering of Third World revolutionaries in Algiers.
Era of World Revolution
Ché's reputation outside of Cuba, among leftist intellectuals and the radical youth that called itself "the new left," grew by leaps and bounds. It was an era of world revolution, and Fidel Castro had declared his readiness to support revolutionaries "in any corner of the world." Ché was the most visible advocate of this commitment. In early 1965 he mysteriously disappeared from view. For six months Fidel kept his silence. Then, in October 1965, he revealed the contents a letter he had kept secret. In an emotional farewell, Ché had renounced all his official posts, given up his Cuban citizenship and left Cuba "to fight imperialism... in new fields of battle." Ché wrote, "I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution... and I say goodbye to you, to the comrades, to your people, who are now mine."
International Agitator
Ché's whereabouts became an international guessing game: The London Timesreported him in Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam; eyewitnesses spotted him in Vietnam. Others announced his death. But Ché was deep in the African Congo, fighting a futile war and barely escaping with his life. Humiliated, he returned secretly to Cuba. Soon, though, Ché decided to return to his native Argentina to bring about revolution. But neither the Argentine Communist Party nor Castro approved of his decision. It was Fidel who suggested that Ché go instead to Bolivia, and try ignite a continental revolution.
Death of a Revolutionary
The Bolivian Rangers captured Ché Guevara on October 8, 1967, at a ravine called El Yuro. The next day he was executed. His body was photographed on a stone slab in a small hut for the whole world to see. On October 12, an American State Department analysis of Ché's death predicted, "Guevara will be eulogized as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death."
Icon
A photograph taken by Alberto Korda in March 1960 soon became one of the century's most recognizable images. Che's portrait was simplified and reproduced on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters, and baseball caps -- and Guevara remains an icon of world revolution.
Influenced by his travels as a young man across Latin America where he witnessed poverty and injustices, Guevara developed a political ideology rooted in communism, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. He believed armed revolution was the answer to overthrowing repressive regimes, and, following his execution in 1967, became a 20th-century icon seen by some as a revolutionary rebel and by others as a ruthless tyrant.
The journey took Guevara through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Miami, Florida, for 20 days,[52] before returning home to Buenos Aires. 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 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.[53][54]
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, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. On 10 December 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his aunt Beatriz from San José, Costa Rica. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing the dominion of the United Fruit Company, a journey which convinced him that the company's capitalist system was disadvantageous to the average citizen.[55] 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, not to rest until these "octopuses have been vanquished".[56] Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala, where President Jacobo Árbenz headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia 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 225,000 acres (91,000 ha) of uncultivated land.[57] 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."[58]
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, 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 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.[79] 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.[80]
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 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.[85] 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.[86]
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, 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 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 diminished, and with an allergy to mosquito bites which resulted in agonizing walnut-sized cysts on his body,[87] Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war".[88]
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.[91] As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness.[92] During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the summary executions of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters, or spies.[93] 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.[94] Such information also allowed Batista's army to burn the homes of peasants sympathetic to the revolution.[94] Upon Guerra's request that they "end his life quickly",[94] 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 [lobe]."[95] His scientific notations and matter-of-fact description, suggested to one biographer a "remarkable detachment to violence" by that point in the war.[95] 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".[95]
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