Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[4] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[5]
As a young
medical student, Guevara traveled throughout
South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.
[6] 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, whose eventual
CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the
United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.
[6] Later, in
Mexico City, he met
Raúl and
Fidel Castro, 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.
[7] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the
insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
[8]
Following the
Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and
firing squads for those convicted as
war criminals during the
revolutionary tribunals,
[9] instituting
agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide
literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for
Cuba's armed forces, 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[10] and bringing the
Sovietnuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis.
[11] Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal
manual on
guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling
memoir about
his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of
Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the
Third World's
underdevelopment and
dependence was an intrinsic result of
imperialism,
neocolonialism, and
monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being
proletarian internationalism and
world revolution.
[12][13] Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first
unsuccessfully in
Congo-Kinshasa and later
in Bolivia, where he was captured by
CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and
summarily executed.
[14]
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, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various
leftist-inspired movements.
Time magazine named him one of the
100 most influential people of the 20th century,
[15] while an
Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled
Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the
Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".
[16]
