Che Guevara

Che Guevara, real name Ernesto Guevara (1928-1967), South American revolutionary and political leader whose refusal to espouse either capitalism or orthodox Communism made him a hero to the New Left radicals of the 1960s. Born into a middle-class family in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara received a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953. Convinced that violent revolution was the only remedy for South America's social inequities, in 1954 he went to Mexico, where he joined exiled Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro. In the late 1950s, he played an important role in Castro's guerrilla war (1956-1959) against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. After Castro came to power in Cuba (1959), Guevara was appointed minister of industry (1961-1965). A strong opponent of United States influence in the so-called Third World, he influenced the Castro regime in its movement towards the political left and the transfer of traditional economic ties from the United States to the Communist bloc. The author of two books on guerrilla warfare, Guevara advocated peasant-based revolutionary movements in the developing countries. He disappeared from Cuba in 1965, and, with a band of Cuban volunteers, spent several months in secret in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an unsuccessful attempt to foment a guerrilla rebellion in the remote eastern part of the country. In late 1966 he reappeared in Bolivia as an insurgent leader of the Bolivian peasants and tin-miners against the military government. He was captured by the Bolivian army and shot near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967. In July 1997 the bodies of Guevara and some of his companions were exhumed from their communal grave in Vallegrande and returned to Cuba.