Che Guevara

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che or just Che was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, international political figure, author, military theorist, social philosopher, medical physician, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas.

As a young man studying medicine, Guevara travelled rough throughout South America (by motorcycle, boat, horse, and hitchhiking) bringing him into direct contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people (particularly the indigenous peasantry and some lepers ) lived. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to the conclusion that the region's socio-economic inequalities were a result of capitalism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism and thus could only be remedied by socialism through 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. Arbenz's eventual overthrow in 1954, with help of the CIA in Operation PBSUCCESS, partially at the behest of the United Fruit Company, would radically revolutionize the young Ernesto.

Later while in Mexico in 1956, Guevara joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement, which fought a guerrilla war and ultimately seized power from the regime of the U.S. supported Cuban dictator General Fulgencio Batista in 1959. For a few months after the success of the revolution, Guevara was assigned the role of "supreme prosecutor", as understood under revolutionary theory, overseeing the public "revolutionary tribunals" and executions of between 55 and a few hundred suspected war criminals associated with the previous regime. For his part Jon Lee Anderson author of the biography 'Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life' has stated that: "Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason, rape, torture, or murder."

After serving in various important posts in the new government, touring the world and meeting with leaders on behalf of Cuban socialism, 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 military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. Guevara was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.

After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist / marxist revolutionary movements and a cultural icon worldwide. He has since been venerated and reviled in dozens of biographies, memoirs, books, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Che was a prolific writer as well, and from his youthful Motorcycle Diaries, through nine volumes of essays and speeches, to the journal of his fatal Bolivian adventure; he left a voluminous body of work relaying his inner observations, political thought, and personal philosophy. Opinions on Guevara vary from being prayed to as "Saint Ernesto" by some rural peasants in Bolivia where he was executed. to the view of him as a "ruthless killer" by some Cuban exiles.

An Alberto Korda photo of him has received wide distribution and modification, appearing on countless numbers of t-shirts , consumer products , protest banners, personal tattoos , and in many other formats. Jonathan Green director of the UCR California Museum of Photography has postulated that: “Korda’s image has worked its way into languages around the world. It has become an alpha-numeric symbol, a hieroglyph, an instant symbol. It mysteriously reappears whenever there’s a conflict. There isn’t anything else in history that serves in this way.” This fact lead Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman to espouse that: “Deep inside that T-shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience.” Showing the image's ubiquitous nature and wide appeal, the Maryland Institute College of Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century." The V&A Museum also proclaims it "the most reproduced image in the history of photography." Further displaying his personal influence, Time Magazine in 1999 named Ernesto "Che" Guevara one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century under the heading of "heroes and icons."

Family heritage and early life

Birthplace of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Rosario. The building was erected by Enrique Ferrarese and designed by Arq. Bustillo.    Another view.

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(center) with friends as a young child, ca. 1932

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. One of Guevara's forebears, Patrick Lynch, was born in Lydican Castle, County Galway, Ireland, in 1715. As a young man, Patrick left for Bilbao, Spain, and traveled from there to Argentina. Francisco Lynch (Guevara's great-grandfather) was born in Buenos Aires in 1817, and Ana Lynch (his grandmother) was born in California, USA in 1868. When Ana was in her twenties, her parents took their family back to Argentina where Ana soon met and married Roberto Guevara; their son, Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Guevara's father), was born in Buenos Aires in 1900. Guevara Lynch married Celia de la Serna y Llosa in 1927 (one of her non-lineal ancestors was José de la Serna e Hinojosa, Spanish viceroy of Peru), and they had three sons and two daughters.

Growing up in this leftist-leaning déclassé family of aristocratic lineage, Ernesto 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. His personality was forged 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." 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" ("The Raging") and his mother's surname, "Serna" — for his aggressive style of play. Ernesto was nicknamed "Chancho" ("pig") by his schoolmates because he rarely bathed, something he was rather proud of.

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.

Ernesto Guevara Serna (left) with his parents and siblings, ca.1944. Seated beside him, from left to right: Celia (mother), Celia (sister), Roberto, Juan Martín, Ernesto (father) and Ana María.

A motorcycle diary

In 1948 Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. As a student, he spent long periods traveling around Latin America. In January of 1950, Guevara attempts his first voyage. He traverses the northern provinces of Argentina on a bicycle on which he adjusted a small motor. He arrives at San Francisco del Chahar, near Córdoba, where his friend Alberto Granado runs the dispensary of the leper-centre. This experience allows Guevara to have long conversations about their disease with the patients. Additionally, while he continues studying, he works as a male nurse on trading and petroleum ships of the Argentine national shipping-company. This allows him to travel from the south of Argentina to Brazil, Venezuela and Trinidad.

In January of 1952 his older friend, Alberto Granado, a biochemist, and Guevara, decide to take a year off from their medical studies to embark on a trip they had spoke 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  ("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. The journey would take Guevara through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuala, Panama, and to Miami, before returning to Argentina.

In Valparaiso, Chile, Guevara writes in his diary: "We are looking for the bottom part of the town. We talk to many beggars. Our noses inhale attentively the misery." In reference to his experience in Chile, Guevara also writes: "The most important effort that needs to be done is to get rid of the uncomfortable 'Yankee-friend'. It is especially at this moment an immense task, because of the great amount of dollars they have invested here and the convenience of using economical pressure whenever they believe their interests are being threatened." In March of 1952 they both would arrive at the Peruvian Tacna. After a discussion about the poverty in the region, Guevara refers in his notes to the words of Cuban poet José Marti: "I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world." In May they would arrive in Lima, Peru and during this time Guevara would meet doctor Hugo Pesce, a Peruvian scientist, director of the national leprosy program and an important local Marxist. They discuss several nights until the early morning and year's later Che states that these conversations were very important for the change in his attitude towards life and society. In May Guevara and Granado, leave for the leper-centre of San Pablo in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest. They would arrive there in June. During his stay Guevara complains about the miserable way that the people of that region and the sick have to live. He would describe how there were no clothes, almost no food and no medication. After working there for a few weeks, he leaves for Leticia, Colombia via the Amazon River.

While visiting Bogotá, Colombia he would write a letter to his mother on July 6, 1952. In the letter he describes the conditions under the right-wing government of Conservative Laureano Gómez as the following: "There is more repression of individual freedom here than in any country we've been to, the police patrol the streets carrying rifles and demand your papers every few minutes." He also goes on to describe the atmosphere as "tense" and "suffocating" even hypothesizing that a "revolution may be brewing." Guevara would be correct in his prognostication, as a military coup in 1953 would take place, bringing General Gustavo Rojas to power.

Later that month Guevara would arrive in Caracas, Venezuala and from there decide to go back to Buenos Aires to finish his studies in medical science. However prior to his return he travels with a cargo-plane via Miami, where the technical problems with the aero plane give him a delay of one month. To survive, he works as a waiter and washes dishes in a Miami bar. Guevara would narrate 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, directed by Walter Salles.

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 took part in the riots against the dictatorship of Juan Perón and expedited the completion of his medical studies in order to resume his travels in Central and South America. He would receive the diploma accrediting him as a medic 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. In Costa Rica he learns about the domination and exploitation of United Fruit and of the misery that is the result of it. In a letter to his aunt Beatriz he writes: "In El Paso I traversed the vast domains of United Fruit. Once more I was able to convince myself how criminal the capitalistic octopuses are. On a picture of our old and bewailed comrade Stalin, I swore not to rest before these capitalistic octopuses are destroyed." During the final days of December 1953 he arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed the second fully democratic and modern government in the whole Latin-American region 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."

A map showing Che Guevara's movements between 1953 and 1956; including his trip north to Guatemala, his stay in Mexico and his journey east by boat to Cuba with Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries.

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 (IPA: [tʃe]), which is used in much the same way as "hey", "pal", "eh", or "mate" are employed colloquially in various English-speaking countries. Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil (where the interjection is rendered 'tchê' 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. He maintained a distance from any political organization, even though his political thinking at that time manifested a clear sympathy towards communism. Despite Guevara’s financial woes, he rejected an offer to work as a state medic when it transpired that he would have to affiliate himself with the Communist Party of Guatemala. Political events in the country began to move quickly after May 15, 1954 when a shipment of Škoda 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 Czechoslovak weaponry was estimated to be 2000 tons by the CIA though only 2 tons by Jon Lee Anderson.

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. In reference to the coup, Guevara would state "In Guatemala it was necessary to fight but almost no one fought. Resistance had to be put up and almost no one wanted to do it." 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 offered 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

Further information: [[:Che Guevara's involvement in the Cuban Revolution]]

Guerrilla war

After the battle of Santa Clara, 01 January 1959.

Guevara enjoying one of his favorite pastimes - Cigars. "A habitual and extremely important complement in the life of a guerrilla is smoking cigars", he wrote in Guerrilla Warfare, " ... for the smoke that he can expel in moments of relaxation is a great companion to the lonely soldier.”

In his trademark olive green military fatigues, 02 June 1959.

With rebel leader Camilo Cienfuegos and Cuban President Manuel Urrutia, first week of 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. While living in Mexico, Guevara worked in the allergy ward of the General Hospital, taught on the medical faculty of the National University (UNAM), and supplemented his salary as a photographer. It was during this time in June 1955, that 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 dictatorship 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 wrote 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. In Guevara's knapsack he also carried the Spanish edition of an obscure two-volume Soviet manual called "The Clandestine Regional Committee in Action." Written by Aleksei Fyodorov, a World War II Russian guerrilla leader, the book spells out methods for establishing sources of supply as well as discussing such everyday guerrilla problems as how to handle a hard-drinking subordinate, how to check out a supply runner suspected of double-dealing, and how to use propaganda. Guevara would later copy passages from Fyodorov's book as a source of comfort and instruction. 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, he gained a reputation for bravery and military prowess second only to Fidel Castro himself." During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also feared for his ruthlessness, and was responsible for the execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies. In February Guevara is interviewed in front of the microphones of "Radio El Mundo" from Buenos Aires, and he declares: "I'm simply here because I think that the only way to liberate America of the dictators is to defeat them. I'll give all the help I can to make them go down, the sooner the better." In response to the reporter asking whether Guevara feared his intervention would be regarded as a foreign interference, Guevara answered: ""First of all I don’t regard only Argentina as my native country but whole of America. For this I would like to call up to examples such as Martí, and it is exactly on his land of birth that I would make his doctrine come true. Besides you can’t call it interference if I want to give myself personally and totally – up to my blood – to a case that seems right to me and that is completely that of the people. A people that wants to get liberated of a tyranny that on itself cheers the armoured interference of a foreign power with aeroplanes, weapons and military advisors. Up to now not even one country accused the North-American interference in Cuban affairs, not one newspaper accuses the Yankees of helping Batista's slaughtering his people." In March 1958, Guevara was tasked with directing a training camp for new volunteers high in the Sierra Maestra at Minas del Frío, one of a number of military schools set up by the 26th of July Movement. Though wishing to push the battlefront forward and frustrated by his more stationary role, Guevara spent the period developing contacts with sympathetic locals. He also conducted a brief relationship with eighteen-year-old Zoila Rodríguez, the daughter of a local guajiro.

As the war extended throughout eastern Cuba, Guevara and a new column of fighters were dispatched west for the final push towards Havana. 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 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 Oriente — were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leader, fled to the Dominican Republic on January 1, 1959.

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Riding a mule in Las Villas province, Cuba, November 1958.

Driving, with wife Aleida March on their wedding day, 02 June 1959.

With his young daughter Hilda Beatriz, "Hildita", 1960.

On February 7, 1959, the 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. 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" (BRAC), a unit of the secret police known by its Spanish acronym. José Vilasuso, an attorney who worked under Guevara at La Cabaña preparing indictments, said that these were lawless proceedings where "the facts were judged without any consideration to general juridical principles" and the findings were pre-determined by Guevara. It is estimated that between 156 and 550 people were executed on Guevara's extra-judicial orders during this time. Of note, Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson has contended that through his five years of research that he was "unable to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed an innocent." It should be stated, however, that the aforementioned José Vilasuso claims more than one died shouting: ”I am innocent.”

Guevara recorded the two years he spent in overthrowing Batista's regime in a detailed account entitled Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria, individual chapters of which first appeared in Verde Olivo, the official magazine of the Cuban armed forces, beginning in 1961. Pasajes, which was based on the war diary Guevara kept during the guerrilla campaign, came out in book format in 1963, and an English translation was issued in 1968 under the title Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War.

Building the new society

On 12 June 1959, Guevara set out on a three-month tour of fourteen countries, most of them Bandung Pact members in Africa and Asia. He spent twelve days in Japan (15 - 27 July), participating in negotiations aimed at expanding Cuba's trade relations with that nation. While there, he requested that the Japanese government arrange for him to visit the city of Hiroshima, where the American military had detonated an atom-bomb fourteen years earlier. However, the Japanese government refused to give Guevara permission to visit the city in western Japan, which was not listed in the delegation's itinerary. As a result, Guevara defied the Japanese government's wishes and surreptitiously left his Osaka hotel to secretly visit Hiroshima by night train along with his aide Omar Fernández. According to Fernández, who served as the deputy head of the mission, Guevara was "really shocked" at what he saw and by their visit to a hospital where A-bomb survivors were being treated.

From July till August, Guevara also travels as head of an official delegation to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt where he meets with Gamal Abdel Nasser. The trip goes on to India, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, and closes up in Morocco. Upon his return, Che declares to be surprised at discovering the sympathy that the Cuban revolution evoked all over the world.

Later, Guevara became an official at the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and President of the National Bank of Cuba. He signed all Cuban banknotes issued during his fourteen-month presidency with his nickname, "Che". Throughout his time in the Cuban government, Guevara refused his due salaries of office, insisting on drawing only his meager wages as army comandante in order to set a "revolutionary example".

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 when the freighter La Coubre, a French vessel carrying munitions from the port of Antwerp, exploded while it was being unloaded in Havana harbor. A rescue operation immediately ensued but went 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.

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. He called for the diversification of the Cuban economy, and for the elimination of what he called "material incentives". He believed that volunteer work and dedication of workers would drive economic growth, all that was needed was will. To display this Guevara led by example, working endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane. Time was also set aside to write several publications. 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.

Meeting with French philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1960. Along with Spanish, Guevara was also fluent in French Sartre would later refer to Guevara as: "Not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age" and the "era's most perfect man"

Disappearance from Cuba

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Addressing the UN General Assembly
(New York City - 11 December 1964).

Walking through Red Square in Moscow, November 1964

In December 1964 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. He also visited Pyongyang and told the press that North Korea was a model to which revolutionary Cuba should aspire.

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." Guevara also displayed his disillusionment with the Soviet Union, by attacking Moscow and questioning their commitment to international socialism. In his criticism he would declare that: "The socialist countries are, in a way, accomplices of imperialist exploitation." He went on to say that "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.

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 increasingly 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 and the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, and urged the peoples of other developing countries to take up arms and create "100 Vietnams".

Guevara with members of his "reception committee" at Havana airport
(Havana - 14 March 1965).

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 a hand written 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

During his guerrilla expedition in the Congo, 1965.

Listening to a Zenith Trans-Oceanic 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 sources state that Guevara persuaded Castro to back him in this effort, while other sources 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. Guevara previously in August of 1964 laid out why he believed the Congo was a major battleground against imperialism, stating that the North-American monopolies were installing themselves in a battle to "own the Congo", in order to control the copper, radioactive minerals, and strategic raw materials.

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.

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Teaching guerrilla tactics to Congolese forces. His plan was to use the liberated zone on the western shores of Lake Tanganyika as a training ground for the Congolese and fighters from other liberation movements. To his left is Santiago Terry (codename: "Aly"), to his right, Angel Felipe Hernández ("Sitaini").

Although Guevara was thirty-seven 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 foco 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

In rural Bolivia shortly before his death, 1967.

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 (15 km²) 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.

Map of Bolivia showing location of Vallegrande.

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. Miguel Costas, a La Higuera resident described meeting Che on September 26, 1967 to the San Francisco Chronicle on October 9th 2007. Miguel recalls that Che introduced himself as "Commander Che Guevara" and describes Che as follows: "He was a big man - well built. He drank with us and said he was fighting for the poor and the weak."

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 Saldaña, 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

File:Escuela de la higuera 01.jpg

The schoolhouse in La Higuera where Guevara was executed at 1:10 p.m. on 9 October 1967.

Template:EismallThe hunt for Guevara in Bolivia was headed by Félix Rodríguez, a CIA agent, who previously had infiltrated 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. The Bolivian Special Forces were notified of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment by an informant. On 8 October, the guerrillas were outmanoeuvred and their encampment in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine encircled by 1,800 US-trained and armed Bolivian troops . Guevara was captured while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia as they attempted to find out a way out of the Yuro canyon. An Oct. 12, 1970 Time Magazine article reported that: "Che was hit in the left thigh by a bullet and his M-l carbine was shot out of his hands." 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." Bolivian General Gary Prado, the captain of the squad that captured Guevara, would later describe Che as: "disheveled, dirty, dying of hunger and demoralized." Gen. Prado even remarks that: "It made you sorry to see him." Upon hearing of Guevara's capture, Rodríguez relayed the information to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, via CIA stations in various South American nations.

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 honor of killing Guevara broke out among the soldiers. To make the bullet wounds appear consistent with the official story sold to the public, Felix Rodriguez, the CIA asset, ordered the soldier who pulled the trigger to aim carefully to make it appear that Che had been killed in action during a clash with the Bolivian army, and thus to help cover up the official secret assassination. 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 extrajudicial execution.

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Che Guevara, a few hours after being executed.

Moments before Guevara was executed he was asked if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No," replied Che, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution." Che Guevara also had 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". Another alleged comment was "Do you know Who I am? Do you know what I'm worth?" His body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to neighboring Vallegrande where a haunting photograph was shot showing a Christ-like figure lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestro Senor de Malta hospital. The autopsy would cite eight bullet wounds, but none to the face that would soon be flashed across the globe.

A declassified memorandum dated Oct 11 1967 to President Lyndon B. Johnson from his senior adviser, Walt Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara “stupid” but “understandable from a Bolivian standpoint.” After the execution, Rodríguez took several personal items of Guevara's including a Rolex watch, often proudly showing them to reporters during the ensuing years. Today, some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at the CIA. 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.

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.

Photographs taken at that time gave rise to legends such as those of San Ernesto de La Higuera and El Cristo de Vallegrande. Local people came to refer to Guevara as a saint, "San Ernesto de La Higuera", whom they ask for favors. Others claim his ghost walks the area.

Che Guevara's Monument and Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba.

In 1997, the skeletal remains of a handless body were exhumed from beneath an air strip near Vallegrande, identified as those of Guevara by a Cuban forensic team working at the scene, 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 honors in a specially built mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, where he had won the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution.

In a possible twist of irony, The Guardian reported on October 2, 2007 that Che's killer Mario Teran, had his eyesight restored by Cuban doctors sent to provide treatment to poor people across Latin America - referred to as "Operation Miracle." A letter written by Teran's son to the Bolivian newspaper "El Deber", thanked the Cuban doctors for removing his father's cataracts, thus allowing him to see again. Cuba's official newspaper Granma responded by declaring: "Four decades after Mario Teran attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle."

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 re-establish 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.

Literary author, political theorist, and poet

An intellectual and an idealist, able to speak coherently about Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Gide or Faulkner, Guevara also loved poetry, and was equally at home with Keats as with Sara De Ibáñez, his favorite writer. It is also said that he knew Kipling's "If" by heart. For these reasons it is easy to understand why Guevara would have ensured that amongst his supplies as a Guerrilla, were also the materials and books to write his own thoughts on a wide range of literary pursuits. When Guevara reached Bolivia in November 1966, minus his beard and bearing a Uruguayan passport, he carried a supply of notebooks and diaries. During the next eleven months, he would fill them with the cramped handwriting that Castro once described as "the illegible letters of a doctor."

In one of these notebooks Che roughed out the first draft of a short story whose hero Pablo, would share important similarities with Guevara and illustrate his own lifelong obsession with overcoming challenges. Like Guevara, who grew up in a middle-class Buenos Aires family and was asthmatic, Pablo is citified, deracinated and afflicted with a physical handicap: poor sight. In the story, entitled "Prueba Superada" (English: "Passing the Test"), Pablo becomes almost overwhelmed by fear, anxiety and doubt after joining a guerrilla column in an unnamed Latin American country. On one terrible march in the story, his shoes give out, his feet become badly blistered, his rifle jams and he breaks his glasses. In despair, Pablo, who is ignored by the other guerrillas, decides to desert at the first opportunity, but a veteran member of the band finally befriends him. Under the influence of the older guerrilla, Pablo stands his ground in a firefight with the guardia. "Pablo knew now that he would never leave the column," wrote Guevara. "He had passed the test and become a fighter of the people."

On a more serious plane, Guevara wrote in a green spiral notebook the outline for a five-part book on the evolution of political thought from the start of human society to the present. Guevara noted that in his opinion, Marx perceived "by intuition," but never fully foresaw the great changes that happened to capitalism. "Nowadays," said Guevara, "the workers of the imperialistic countries are minor associates in the business." Guevara also sneered at the late sociologist C. Wright Mills for his "stupid anti-Stalinism," describing him as "a clear example of North American leftist intellectuals"; and dismissed New Left ideologue Herbert Marcuse because his concepts "are of little relevance in the national liberation struggle and nation-building as it had to be carried out under Stalin." Guevara intended to end the book with a chapter comparing "the personalities of socialism": Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Tito and Fidel, but he would be killed before completion.

During his last days, Guevara also wrote a poem called "A Memory," which Bolivian authorities allowed St. George to copy from one of his notebooks. The poem went as follows: "Now that we are few, / we move almost like brothers, and like brothers, / we quarrel, sulk and groan. / The struggle is a painful path of curses / But victory a white road glittering / with politeness, with white smiles / on empty white faces with flattery / oiled by endless white lies. / Why, then, in the glittering midst of triumph / Do we remember these sweaty sullen faces / So painfully / why does their memory shine sweeter / than all those white smiles?"

Around one month before Guevara's capture and execution, "Tania" (Guevara's lover at the time) and nine of his fellow Guerrillas walked into a Bolivian army ambush. All but one of them were killed and a later autopsy showed that "Tania" was then four months pregnant, with what could presumably be assumed to be Guevara's child. After Che finally accepted Bolivian radio reports of Tania's death, his diary entries reflected a poem that St. George says, he later found dedicated to her, it went as follows: "To T: / There is dark silence in the jungle's heart of darkness / The people's songs are silent. / She fingers and repacks The little plastic tape rolls. / They too are silent. / What sings in her heart? / Perhaps I shall never know it. / Nor hear the music of the songs that brought her here. / The jungle bush has yielded her no rhythms / Except the Morse code and the rapid beating of hearts / Waiting for the answering signal. / She never sings Nor hums these tunes she loves. / And yet she hears them. / They carry her Forward, across the jungle's deathly silence, / toward A triumphal chant only she can hear."

Legacy

Further information: [[:Che Guevara in popular culture]]

Statue of Che Guevara near the site of his execution in Bolivia.

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In its mid-November (#46) 2005 issue, the German newsweekly Der Spiegel writes about Europe's "peaceful revolutionaries" whom it describes as the heirs of Gandhi and Guevara.

On the 40th anniversary of his execution a diverse assortment of poets and songwriters from around the globe corroborated to produce the compilation: "Che in Verse" which is a collection of 135 poems and songs in tribute to Che Guevara. Celebrated poets such as Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, Julio Cortazar, Nicolas Guillen, Derek Walcott, Al Purdy, Rafael Alberti, Ko Un, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko devoted the aforementioned works to, as the book states in its introduction: "Celebrate the world’s icon of rebellion". In September of 2007, Che was also voted as "Argentina's greatest historical and political figure."

To some he is known as a hero (Nelson Mandela has referred to him as: "An inspiration for every human being who loves freedom") , but to others he is viewed as spokesman of a failing ideology and a ruthless executioner, without normal legal process, of many accused both from his own side and from the opposing side. In reference to such criticisms, Cuban-American academic Uva de Aragon has hypothesized that: "We'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed."

British politician George Galloway has remarked that: "One of the greatest mistakes the US state ever made was to create those pictures of Che's corpse. Its Christ-like poise in death ensured that his appeal would reach way beyond the turbulent university campus and into the hearts of the faithful, flocking to the worldly, fiery sermons of the liberation theologists." The Economist magazine has also pointed out how Che's post death photos resemble Andrea Mantegna's 'The Lamentation over the Dead Christ.' Thus fixing Guevara as a modern saint, the man who risked his life twice in countries that were not his own before giving it in a third, and whose invocation of the “new man”, driven by moral rather than material incentives, smacked of Saint Ignatius of Loyola more than Marx.

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. In Argentina, graphic novelist Héctor Oesterheld published a biography of Che in 1968 that would later be linked to Oesterheld's own politically-motivated disappearance, torture 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”. This rung true in 1968 when among Italy's emerging new breed of Roman Catholic militants, the Jacques Maritain Circle arranged a memorial mass in Che's honor and Catholic services were held for him in several other countries. In addition, in Brazil, mythmakers began to circulate thousands of copies of a photograph of the dead Che captioned: "A Saint of Our Time", while Italian students also took up a similar tone and christened him "Angela della Pace" — "Angel of Peace."

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 Black Panthers, began to style themselves "Che-type" while adopting his trademark black beret, and Arab guerrillas began to name combat operations in his honor. 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 U.S. 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, Trotskyists, and civil libertarians, who consider Guevara an authoritarian, anti-working-class Stalinist, whose legacy was the creation of a more bureaucratic, authoritarian regime. Johann Hari, for example, stated that "...Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people." 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

Monumental image on Cuban Ministry of the Interior, based on Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick's graphic of Alberto Korda's March 1960 photo. During Guevara's tenure as Minister of the Ministry of Industries (MININD) from 1961 to 1965, this building was the MININD's headquarters and his office was on the top floor.

"Guevara remains a beloved national hero in Cuba (almost a secular saint, to many on the Caribbean island) , where he is remembered for promoting unpaid voluntary work by working shirtless on building sites or hauling sacks of sugar. To this day, he appears on a Cuban banknote cutting sugar cane with a machete in the fields."

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 honor throughout the land; adorning school rooms, workplaces, public buildings, billboards, and money with his image. His visage is also on postage stamps and the 3-peso coin beneath the words “Patria o Muerte” — “Homeland or Death.” Moreover, 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!). The University of Havana also possesses an academic concentration in "Che." Guevara's mausoleum in Santa Clara has also 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.

Legacy in Cuban-American Community

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 Cabaña 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 what could be percieved by some as the brutality at the heart of the Cuban revolution. In one scene of the film actor Jsu Garcia as Guevara is shown after an ambush casually shooting a wounded Batista soldier where he lies. Later in the film the Guevara character asks Andy Garcia's character why he "bothers with such scum", in reference to a former Batista officer who was executed that morning for having previously taken part in torture. The film however also depicts Cuban dictator at the time, Fulgencio Batista's "Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities" (BRAC) unit, executing a prisoner at la Cabana and shooting a wounded insurgent who had attempted to storm the Presidential palace during the growing popular rebellion.

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Guerrilla Warfare published by Ocean Books in 2006.

Legacy elsewhere in Latin America

In Latin America, the failures of the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s intensified opposition to the Washington consensus, leading to a resurgence in support for many of Guevara’s political beliefs including Pan-Americanism, support for popular movements in the region, the nationalization of key industries and centralization of government. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, a group with ideological roots in Guevarism were re-elected to government after 16 years. Supporters wore Guevara T-Shirts during the 2006 victory celebrations. Bolivian president Evo Morales has paid many tributes to Guevara including visiting his initial burial site to declare "Che Lives" and installing a portrait of the Argentinean made from local coca leaves in his presidential suite. In 2006, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who has referred to Guevara as as an "infinite revolutionary" and who has been known to address audiences in a Che Guevara T-shirt, accompanied Fidel Castro on a tour of Guevara’s boyhood home in Córdoba, describing the experience as “a real honor”. Awaiting crowds of thousands responded with calls of “We feel it! Guevara is right with us!" Guevara’s daughter Aleida also transcribed an extensive interview with Chávez where he outlined his plans for “The New Latin America”, releasing the interview in book form. Guevara remains a key inspirational figure to the Colombian guerrilla movement, the FARC, and the Mexican Zapatistas led by Subcomandante Marcos.

The "Cult of Che"

On May 17, 1968 Time Magazine declared that: "In the seven months since his death, the Che legend has given rise to a cult of almost religious hero worship among radical intellectuals, workers and students across much of the Western world. Placards proclaiming such slogans as "Che Is Alive" dot anti-Viet Nam and other student protest demonstrations, and portraits of Che have been carried in practically every student riot in Europe this spring. Guevara-style beards have become a fad around Milan, and students in Florence have adopted Che's dark blue Basque beret as a trademark. Handkerchiefs, sweatshirts and blouses decorated with his shaggy countenance are popular in half a dozen countries. French schoolgirls hang his photo in their boudoirs alongside those of movie idols, and students at the London School of Economics now greet each other with the salutation "Che." Peruvian grammar-school children hold hands, dance in a circle and chant a new nursery rhyme: "With a knife and a spoon, long live Che Guevara."

Despite the controversies, Guevara's status as a popular icon has continued throughout the world, leading commentators to speak of a global "cult of Che". Writers from Graham Greene to Susan Sontag have extolled him, while West German playwright Peter Weiss has even compared him to "a Christ taken down from the Cross." A photograph of Guevara taken by photographer Alberto Korda has become 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, cigarettes, coffee mugs, and baseball caps largely for profit. This fact led Argentine business analyst Martin Krauze to postulate that: “The admiration for El Che no longer extends to his politics and ideology. It’s a romantic idea of one man going to battle against the windmills, he’s a Quixote.” While British journalist Sean O’Hagan has described Che as “more Lennon than Lenin”. Taking the opposite hypothesis, Mexican commentator and Che Biographer Jorge Castaneda has proclaimed that: “Che can be found just where he belongs in the niches reserved for cultural icons, for symbols of social uprisings that filter down deep into the soil of society.” The saying "Viva la revolucion!" has also become very popular and synonymous with Guevara.

In North America, Western Europe and many regions outside Latin America, 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 the United States, a country often the focus of Guevara-inspired protests in the hemisphere, his image was removed from a CD carrying case after public opposition pressure from Cuban-American groups and others. Miguel Saavedra, founder of the (sometimes violent) anti-Castro group Vigilia Mambisa, told The Miami Herald: "The stores don't have pictures of Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler, it's disrespectful to the Cuban community." For their part, retail group Target Corporation issued a public apology for producing the item. Che Guevara as a cultural icon also re-emerged in the news in October of 2007, when 61 year old Texas bookstore owner and collector of 60's memorabilia Bill Butler, paid $ 119,500 (US) dollars for a lock of the late Che Guevara's hair. The hair was trimmed from Guevara’s corpse by Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban-born C.I.A. operative who helped Bolivian troops capture him in 1967, and was accompanied by a sheaf of historical documents (map, photos, & fingerprints) related to his capture. For historical comparison earlier in 2007, a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair only drew a winning bid of $ 21,510 (US) dollars.

American, Latin American and European writers, Jon Lee Anderson, Régis Debray, Jorge G. Castañeda and others contributed to demystify the image of Guevara via articles and biographies, which detailed his life and legacy in more unidealistic terms; and, in the case of Octavio Paz, was accompanied by a critical indictment of the Marxism espoused by many in the Latin American left. Political writer Paul Berman went further, asserting that the "modern-day cult of Che" obscures the work of dissidents and what he believes is a "tremendous social struggle" currently taking place in Cuba. Author Christopher Hitchens, who was a socialist and a supporter of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s but has since changed his views, summarised Guevara's legacy thus: "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." Taking the opposing view, Richard Gott a Guardian journalist in Vallegrande, sent a dispatch on the day of Guevara's death stating the following: "It was difficult to recall that this man had once been one of the great figures of Latin America. It was not just that he was a great guerrilla leader; he had been a friend of Presidents as well as revolutionaries. His voice had been heard and appreciated in inter-American councils as well as in the jungle. He was a doctor, an amateur economist, once Minister of Industries in revolutionary Cuba, and Castro's right-hand man. He may well go down in history as the greatest continental figure since Bolivar. Legends will be created around his name."

Guevara's authored works

In English

• Argentine, by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2008, ISBN 1920888934

• A song written by Che for Fidel Castro (flyer), by Ernesto Guevara, FreeThought Publications, 2000, ASIN B0006RP426

• Back on the Road: A Journey Through Latin America, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara & Alberto Granado, Grove Press, 2002, ISBN 0802139426

• Che Guevara, Cuba, and the Road to Socialism, by Ernesto Guevara, Pathfinder Press, 1991, ISBN 0873486439

• Che Guevara on Global Justice, by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2002, ISBN 1876175451

• Che Guevara: Radical Writings on Guerrilla Warfare, Politics and Revolution, by Ernesto Che Guevara, Filiquarian Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1599869993

• Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings, by Ernesto Guevara, Pathfinder Press (NY), 1980, ISBN 0873486021

• Che Guevara Talks to Young People, by Ernesto Guevara, Pathfinder, (2000), ISBN 087348911X

• Colonialism is Doomed, by Che Guevara, Ministry of External Relations: Republic of Cuba, 1964, ASIN B0010AAN1K

• Critical Notes on Political Economy: A Revolutionary Humanist Approach to Marxist Economics, by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2008, ISBN 1876175559

• Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58, by Ernesto Guevara, Pathfinder Press (NY), 1996, ISBN 0873488245

• Guerrilla Warfare: Authorized Edition , by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2006, ISBN 1920888284

• London Bulletin Number 7, Che's Diarys(sic), by Che Guevara, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 1968, ASIN B000LARAC0

• Manifesto: Three Classic Essays on How to Change the World, by Ernesto Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, & Rosa Luxemburg, Ocean Press (NY), 2005, ISBN 1876175982

• Marx & Engels: An Introduction, by Che Guevara, Ocean Press, 2007, ISBN 1920888926

• Our America And Theirs: Kennedy And The Alliance For Progress, by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press, 2006, ISBN 1876175818

• Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War: Authorized Edition, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2005, ISBN 1920888330

• Self Portrait Che Guevara, by Ernesto Guevara & Victor Casaus, Ocean Press (AU), 2004, ISBN 1876175826

• Socialism and Man in Cuba, by Ernesto Guevara & Fidel Castro, Pathfinder Press (NY), 1989, ISBN 0873485777

• The African Dream: The diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Grove Press, 2001, ISBN 0802138349

• The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Pathfinder Press, 1994 ISBN 0873487664

• The Che Guevara Reader, by Ernesto Guevara, Ocean Press (AU), 2003, ISBN 1876175699

• The Diary of Che Guevara: Bolivia: November 7, 1966-October 7, 1967, by Che Guevara, Bantam Extra, 1968, ASIN B000BD037G

• The Diary of Che Guevara: The Secret Papers of a Revolutionary, by Che Guevara, Amereon Ltd, ISBN 0891902244

• The Great Debate on Political Economy, by Che Guevara, Ocean Press, 2006, ISBN 1876175540

• The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America, by Ernesto Che Guevara, Verso, 1996, ISBN 1857023994

• The Role of Foreign Aid in the Deveopment of Cuba", by Che Guevara, Editorial en Marcha, 1962, ASIN B001159NRO

• To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's "Cold War" Against Cuba Doesn't End, by Ernesto Guevara & Fidel Castro, Pathfinder, 1993, ISBN 0873486331

Further reading

Directly related

• Analysis of the Military Strategies and Warfare Principles of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro During the Cuban Revolution, by Monte H Callen, Air Command and Staff College, 1985, ASIN B0006YU47Y

• At the Side of Che Guevara: Interviews With Harry Villegas, by Harry Villegas, Pathfinder Press, 1997, ISBN 0873488555

• Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, by Patrick Symmes, Vintage, 2000, ISBN 0375702652

• Che: A Memoir, by Fidel Castro, Ocean Press (AU), 2006, ISBN 192088825X

• Che Guevara, by Andrew Sinclair, Viking, 1970, ASIN B000UD0VRE

• Che Guevara, by David Sandison, St. Martin's Griffin, 1998, ISBN 0312182732

• Che Guevara: A Biography, by Daniel James, Stein & Day Pub, 1969, ISBN 0812813480

• Che Guevara: An Anthology, by Joseph Hart, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004, ISBN 1560255196

• Che Guevara: An Epilogue, by Robert D Hagan, Naval War College, 1969, ASIN B0007HM7UC

• Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, by Mike Gonzalez, Bookmarks, 2004, ISBN 1898876452

• Che Guervara and the FBI: The U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary, by Michael Ratner, Ocean Press (AU), 1997, ISBN 1875284761

• Che Guevara and the Fight for Socialism Today: Cuba Confronts the World Crisis of the '90s, by Mary-Alice Waters, Pathfinder Press (NY), 1992, ISBN 0873487605

• Che Guevara and the Incurable Disease, by Felix M.D. Fernandez-Madrid, Dorrance Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0805940871

• Che Guevara And the Latin American Revolution, by Manuel Barbarroja Pineiro, Ocean Press (AU), 2006, ISBN 1920888462

• Che Guevara and the Imperialist Reality, by Mary-Alice Water, Pathfinder Press, 1998, ISBN 0873488997

• Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, by Jon Lee Anderson, Grove Press, 1998, ISBN 0802135587

• Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism, by Carlos Tablada, Pathfinder Press (NY), 1998, ISBN 0873488768

• Che Guevara, Firebrand Revolutionary (The Twentieth Century's Most Influential: Hispanics), by Michael V. Uschan, Lucent Books, 2006, ISBN 1590189701

• Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, by David Kunzle, UCLA, 1997, ISBN 0930741595

• Che Guevara: In Search of Revolution, (Library Binding Grades 7 and up) by Calvin Craig Miller, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1931798931

• Che Guevara (Leading Lives), by David Downing, Heinemann Library, 2003, ISBN 140343493X

• "Che" Guevara on Revolution: A Documentary Overview, by Jay Mallin, University of Miami Press, 1969

• Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution, by Peter McLaren, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, ISBN 0847695336

• Che Guevara: Symbol of Struggle, by Tony Saunois, Socialist Books, 2005, ISBN 1870958349 --> Read Online

• Che in Verse, edited by Gavin O’Toole and Georgina Jiménez, Aflame Books, 2007, ISBN 095523395X

• Che: The making of a legend, by Martin Ebon, Universe books, 1969, ISBN 0876631006

• Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, by Jorge G. Castaneda, 1st Vintage Books, 1998, ISBN 0679759409

• Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission (updated edition), by Richard L. Harris, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, ISBN 039333094X

• Ernesto Che Guevara, by I. Lavretsky, Progress Publishers, 1976, ASIN B000B9V7AW

• "Evocation", by Aleida March (Che's Widow), TBR in 2008

• Fidel Castro's tribute to Che Guevara, by Fidel Castro, Merit ,1967, ASIN B0007ERDSG

• From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution, by Victor Dreke, Pathfinder Press, 2002, ISBN 0873489470

• Great Rebel: Che Guevara in Bolivia, by Luis J. Gonzales, Grove Press, 1969, ISBN 039417156X

• Guevara, Also Known as Che, by Paco Ignacio Taibo, St. Martin's Griffin, 1999, ISBN 0312206526

• My Friend Che, by Ricardo Rojo, Dial Press, 1968, ASIN B0006BTUEU

• Pombo: A Man With Che Guevara in Bolivia 1966-68, by Harry Villegas, Pathfinder Press, 1997, ISBN 0873488334

• Tania: Undercover With Che Guevara in Bolivia, by Ulises Estrada, Ocean Press (AU), 2005, ISBN 1876175435

• The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Independent Institute, 2006, ISBN 1598130056

• The Che Handbook, by Gareth Jenkins, MQ Publications Ltd, 2003, ISBN 1840725028

• The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, and Other Captured Documents, by Daniel James, Cooper Square Press, 2000, ISBN 0815410565

• The Cuba Project: CIA Covert Operations 1959-62, by Fabian Escalante Font, Ocean Press (AU), 2004, ISBN 1876175990

• The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy, by Marifeli Perez-Stable, Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0195127498

• The Defeat of Che Guevara: Military response to Guerilla Challenge in Bolivia, by Gary Prado Salmon, John Deredita, & Lawrence H. Hall, Praeger Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0275932117

• The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats, by Henry Butterfield Ryan, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0195131002

• The First and Second Declarations of Havana: Manifestos of revolutionary struggle in the Americas adopted by the Cuban people, by Mary-Alice Waters, Pathfinder Press, 2007, ISBN 0873488695

• The Latin American Revolution;: Politics and Strategy from Apro-Marxism to Guevarism, by Donald Clark Hodges, W. Morrow, 1974, ISBN 068800315X

• The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare, by Michael Lwy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007, ISBN 0742539032

• The New Man in Cuba: Culture and Identity in the Revolution, by Ana Serra, University Press of Florida, 2007, ISBN 0813030722

• The Revolution Will Not Be Capitalized: Che Guevara, by Charles Carreon, American Buddha, Amazon Digital Services, 2008, ASIN B0013ENSJC

• The Young Che: Memories of Che Guevara, by Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Vintage Books, 2007, ISBN 1845950739

• Third World Series, Viva Che, by Marianne Alexandre, Lorrimer, 1969, ASIN B000LAN6T6

• To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's "Cold War" Against Cuba Doesn't End, by Ernesto Guevara & Fidel Castro, Pathfinder, 1993, ISBN 0873486331

• Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary, by Alberto Granado, Newmarket Press, 2004, ISBN 1557046395

• Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara, by John Gerassi, London. Weidenfeld, 1968, ISBN 0297764381

• Viva Che!: The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara, by Andrew Sinclair, Sutton Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0750943106

Novels

• A Girl Like Che Guevara, by Teresa De LA Caridad Doval, Soho Press, 2005, ISBN 1569473978

• Blood Red Square, by Pat Mullan, LBF Books, 2007, ISBN 0977308251

• I, Che Guevara: A Novel, by John Blackthorn, William Morrow & Company, 2000, ISBN 0688167608

• Killing Che: A Novel, by Chuck Pfarrer, Random House, 2007, ISBN 1400063930

• Loving Che, by Ana Menendez, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003, ISBN 0871139081

• See you Later Alligator, by William F. Buckley Jr., Doubleday, 1988, ISBN 0385194420

• Special Ops, A Brotherhood of War Novel, 2002, Jove Fiction, ISBN 0-515-13248-9

• The Death of Che Guevara, by Jay Cantor, Vintage, 2005, ISBN 0375713832

Videography

Video of Che Guevara speaking

• Che Reciting a Poem, (0:58), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Showing Support for Fidel Castro, (0:21), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Speaking about Labor, (0:27), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Speaking about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, (0:17), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Speaking at the United Nations, 1964, (1:28), Español, Video Clip

• Che Speaking on the U.S. Presidency, (0:32), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Speaking out Against Imperialism, (1:19), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend - Kultur Video 2001, Video Clip

• Che Speaking to Santa Clara, Cuba Sugar Workers, March 28 1961, (6:59), Español, Video Clip

• Che Speaking French: L'interview de Che Guevara, 1964, (9:43), Français, Video Clip

Documentaries

• Aleida Guevara Remembers Her Father, Che, 2006 (34 min). Ocean Press (AU), Starring Aleida Guevara.

• Biography: Che Guevara Restless, A & E Home Video, 2000, (50 min).

• Che, Discovery Networks Europe, 1995 (50 min). Directed by Anthony Geffen. "Watch Here"

• Che Guevara As You Have Never Seen Him Before, 2007 (55 min). Directed by Manuel Perez Paredes.

• Che Guevara: Guerrilla to the End, 1998 (45 min). Journeyman Pictures. "Watch Here"

• Che Guevara: Hasta La Victoria Siempre, (54 min).

• Che Guevara: Kordavision, 2008 (87 min). Directed by Hector Cruz Sandoval.

• Che Guevara: The Body And The Legend, (52 min). Directed by Stefano Missio Writers: Raffaele Brunetti and Stefano Missio.

• Che Guevara: Where You'D Never Imagine Him, 2004 (55 min). Directed by Manuel Pérez.

• Che: Love, Politics, and Rebelry, Mundo Latino, 1995 (45 min). Directed by Teresita Gomez

• Che: Rise And Fall, 2007 (55 min).

• Cuba: An African Odyssey, ARTE, 2008, (190 min).

• Cuban Story, All Day Ent, 2002, (50 min). Made with Errol Flynn's 1959 personal footage.

• Democracy Now: Che Guevara Episode, 2007 (33 min). Hosted by Amy Goodman.

• El Che, Cinétévé, 1997, (96 min). Directed by Maurice Dugowson.

• El Che And Tracing Che, Castle Home Video, 2004 (187 min). Directed by Lawrence Elman.

• El Che: Investigating a Legend, Kultur Video, 1991 (95 min).

• El Che Guevara, Dutch Film Works, 2006 (96 min). Directed by Aníbal Di Salvo.

• Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Diary, 1996 (94 min). Directed by Richard Dindo.

• Fidel, Lions Gate, 2002, (206 min). Directed by David Attwood.

• Fidel: The Untold Story, First Run Features, 2001, (91 min). A Documentary Film by Estela Bravo.

• Hasta Siempre, Rice n Peas, 2005, (58 min). Directed by Ishmail Blagrove Jr.

• People's Century - Guerrilla Wars: Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, BBC, 1998, (60 min). Directed by Bill Treharne Jones.

• Sacrificio: Who Betrayed Che Guevara, 2004 (60 min). By Jon Lee Anderson.

• 638 Ways to Kill Castro, Eclipse, 2007, (78 min). Directed by Dollan Cannell.

• The Hands of Che Guevara, 2006 (59 min). Directed by Peter De Kock. site

• The True Story of Che Guevara, The History Channel, 2007 (90 min). Directed by Maria Wye Berry. "Watch Here"

• Who Betrayed Che Guevara ?, (57 min). Swedish journalist's Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh. Some Subtitles.

• With or Without Fidel, Rice n Peas, 2007, (59 min). Directed by Ishmahil Blagrove Jr..

Theatrical films

• Che!, 1969, (96 min), Directed by Richard Fleischer.

• CHE, release TBA, Directed by Josh Evans & Starring Eduardo Noriega as "Che" Trailer

• Fidel & Che, Showtime, 2005, (204 min). Directed by David Attwood.

• The Motorcycle Diaries (film), 2004, (126 min), Spanish with subtitles. Directed by Walter Salles. Trailer

• Guerrilla (film), Release Date 2008, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Starring Benicio del Toro as "Che", Focus Features.

• The Argentine, Possible Release Date of 2009, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Starring Benicio del Toro as "Che", Focus Features.

• The Lost City (2005 film) directed by Andy Garcia.

Additional materials

Miscellaneous items of relevance

• (Art/Poetry Compilation) --- America, My Brother, My Blood: A Latin American Song of Suffering and Resistance, Poetry by Pablo Neruda and Art by Oswaldo Guayasamín, Ocean Press (AU), 2006, ISBN 192088873X

• (Comic Book) --- Che: A Graphic Biography, by Spain Rodriguez, Verso, May 2008, ISBN 1844671682

• (Photo Biography) --- Che: Images of a Revolutionary, by Oscar Sola, Pluto Press, 2000, ISBN 0745317006

• (Audio CD) --- Che Guevara, by Thomas Thieme, Der Audio Verlag, 2004, ASIN B00022GI66

• (Audio Cassette) --- Che Guevara: A Concise Biography, by Andrew Strelner, ISIS Audio Books, 2000, ISBN 0753106418

• (Audio CD) --- Che Guevara: A Dream of Land and Freedom, by Up Bustle & Out, Ninja Tune, 1997, ASIN B000003S8P

• (Travelogue) --- Che Guevara and the Mountain of Silver: By Bicycle and Train through South America, by Anne Mustoe, Virgin Books, 2008, ISBN 0753512742

• (Calendar) --- Che Guevara Calendar 2008, by Aleida Guevara March, Ocean Press (AU), 2007, ISBN 1920888918

• (Audio CD) --- Che Guevara: Lucha por La Vida, by Various Artists, Wea International, 2007, ASIN B000V7UMTG

• (Photo Book) --- Che Guevara Por Los Fotografos de la Revolucion Cubana, -(Español)- by Alberto Granado, Ediciones Cubanas, 2006, ISBN 8460795489

• (Travelogue) --- Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile: On the Road in Cuba, by Richard Schweid, University of North Carolina Press, 2008, ISBN 0807858870

• (Travel Map) --- Che's Route: Ernesto Che Guevara Trip Across South America, by de Dios Editores, 2004, ISBN 9879445295

• (Audio Cassette) --- Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, by Jorge Castaneda, Books on Tape, 2000, ASIN B0011DJZR4

• (Photo Biography) --- Che: The Photobiography of Che Guevara, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1998, ISBN 1560251875

• (Audio CD) --- Commandante Che Guevara, by Nicholas Menheim & Le Super Sabador, Popular African Music, 2002, ASIN B00007K23X

• (Audio CD) --- El Che Vive: A Tribute to Che Guevera, by Various Artists, Last Call Records, 1997, ASIN B0000049Z2

• (Audio CD) --- Fall of Che Guevara, by Ryan Henry Butterfield, Blackstone Audio Inc., 2006, ISBN 0786160845

• (Photo Biography) --- Fidel's Cuba: A Revolution in Pictures, by Osvaldo Salas, Atria Books, 1999, ISBN 1560252456

• (Audio CD) --- Hasta Siempre Comandante: 30 Anos Después, by Various Artists, Tumi Records, 1997, ASIN B00004TKPC

• (Travelogue) --- Looking for Mr. Guevara: A Journey through South America, by Barbara Brodman, iUniverse, 2001 ISBN 0595180698

• (Audio CD) --- "Quinteto Rebelde, Bis Music, 2001 site

• (Art Book) --- Revolucion!: Cuban Poster Art, by Lincoln Cushing, Chronicle Books, 2003, ISBN 0811835820

• (Travelogue) --- Roll Over Che Guevara: Travels of a Radical Reporter, by Mark Cooper, Verso, 1996, ISBN 1859840655

• (Audio CD) --- Romono Che Guevara, by Michael Hametner, 2007, ASIN B000L43OP8

• (Audio CD) --- Tribute to Che Guevara, 2008, ASIN B00125ZILI

See also

• Anti-imperialism
• Anti-globalization
• The Argentine (film)
• Che Guevara in popular culture
• Che Guevara (photo)
• Che Guevara's involvement in the Cuban Revolution
• Communism

• Critique of capitalism
• Eutimio Guerra
• Fidel Castro
• Foco
• Guerrilla warfare
• Guerrilla (film)
• Guevarism
• Marxism

• Marxist philosophy
• The Motorcycle Diaries (film)
• Neocolonialism
• New Left
• Socialism
• Subcomandante Marcos

Content notes

• ^ rough: (Definition: "To live without the usual comforts and conveniences")

During his youthful travels, Guevara carried a minimal amount of money and tried to spend it only on food. While making their 1952 trip, he and Alberto Granado received along the way several "collections" given to them by local people and/or other travellers who were concerned about their apparent destitution. It is hoped that the following lists will cast further light on the circumstances in which they made this trip and the meaning of the phrase travelling rough.

• Conveyances used: motorcycle "La Poderosa II" (broke down completely and was abandoned in Santiago de Chile on 2 March 1952); various launches; steamboat; freighter (as stowaways); taxi; bus; various trucks (hitch-hiking); Land-Rover (lent by a friend); train; horse; riverboat; raft "Mambo Tango"; Indian dugout canoe; sea plane; armored police van; cargo plane
• Nights spent in: houses of friends, acquaintances and strangers; hospital rooms; police sentry box; shack; shed; jail cell; outside "under the stars"; garage; lean-to; kitchen of forest ranger's cabin; hayloft; police barracks; boathouse; hut; fire station attic; derelict ("haunted") house; cab of truck; Centre for the Prevention of Yellow Fever; police headquarters; forest ranger sentry post; railroad station; Chilean National Guard barracks; bus station; boarding house; guest house room; "dump"; municipal parks (in Miami)

Additionally, in 1950 Guevara made a solo tour of the northern provinces of Argentina on his motorized bike "Micrón" (1950); in that same year, he also travelled up and down the eastern coast of South America aboard petrol tankers and other ships while working as a nurse in the Argentine Merchant Marine and visited many port cities along their routes.

• ^ Basque: Re origin of the surname Guevara — "Basque: Castilianized form of Basque Gebara, a habitational name from a place in the Basque province of Araba. The origin and meaning of the place name are uncertain; it is recorded in the form Gebala by the geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd century ad. This is a rare name in Spain." Dictionary of American Family Names, Patrick Hanks, ed., London: 2003, Oxford University Press. His mother, Celia de la Serna, had also inherited Basque blood through her father, Juan Martín de la Serna Ugalde. One of Celia's collateral ancestors was the last Viceroy of Perú, General José de la Serna e Hinojosa, who was likewise of documented Basque origin.
  

• ^ Galway: The Lynch family was one of the famous 14 Tribes of Galway. Patrick travelled extensively around South America before finally settling in Argentina where he became a prosperous merchant. His descendants include the Chilean rear admiral Patricio Lynch Zaldívar (1824-1886), and the distinguished Argentine writers Benito Lynch (1882-1951) and Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999). The misconception exists that Ana María Isabel Lynch was born in Ireland, whereas she was actually born (1868) in San Francisco, California, USA where her father, Francisco Lynch, had traveled from Argentina during the Gold Rush years. Francisco had married a young Californian widow, Eloísa Ortiz, ca. 1860 and they had several other American-born children in addition to Ana Isabel. The man Ana Isabel would eventually marry, Roberto Guevara Castro, had also been born in California, USA of an Argentine father and a Californian mother who was the grand-daughter of the Spanish aristocrat Don Luís María Peralta who had been given large land grants (including 44,800 acres (181 km²) encompassing the East Bay region of California) by the King of Spain. Despite the fact that they were both born in the Bay area of California, Ana Isabel and Roberto did not meet until after their respective families had returned to Argentina in the 1880s. During Che Guevara's childhood, listening to his Grandmother Ana Isabel's tales of frontier life in California was one of his greatest delights.
  

• ^ Diploma: While commonly referred to as a doctor, the medical degree conferred was of a medic, a lower degree of the time. Also note, the below sources show record of a medic education, but then identify it as a "doctor", confused with the fact that medical education of the time could lead to two outcomes, that of a medic, or after clinical training that of a doctor.

The University de Buenos Aires has no record of him receiving a medical degree or a medic degree, though it is likely his educational records were lost or destroyed.

Employed as a medic because he was unable to get his clinical internship years (i.e. the required clinical years to become a doctor; medical studies could be completed to become either a medic (sans clinical training) or a doctor (with clinical years)

"In March (1953), he passed his finals and obtained his diploma as a physician. His specialty was dermatology. A few months later he went back on the road, never to return to Argentina until he had become the world-famous Comandante Che Guevara."

"In June (1953), Ernesto received a copy of his doctor's degree, and a few days later he celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday"

12 de junio de 1953.- La Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad de Buenos Aires le expide a Ernesto Guevara de la Serna el certificado de haber concluido la carrera de medicina. Esto se refleja en el legajo 1058, registro 1116, folio 153. Después participa en una fiesta de despedida que sus compañeros de la Clínica del doctor Salvador Pisani le hacen en la hacienda de la señora Amalia María Gómez Macías de Duhau.

"One year later, having completed his medical degree, he left Argentina for good."

"He received a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953."

"he completed medical studies in 1953" (as a medic)

• ^ Ibero-America: In a brief speech at the San Pablo leprosarium in Peru on the occasion of his 24th birthday, Guevara said: "Although we're too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only served to confirm this belief, that the division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race with remarkable ethnographical similarities, from Mexico down to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to break free from all narrow-minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a United America."
  

• ^ non-Cubans: "There were four non-Cubans on board -- Guevara, from Argentina; Gino Doné, an Italian; Guillén, a Mexican; and the pilot Ramón Mejía del Castillo ('Pichirilo'), a Dominican who had been on the abortive Cayo Confites expedition."
  

• ^ Knapsack: Quizás esa fue la primera vez que tuve planteado prácticamente ante mí el dilema de mi dedicación a la medicina o a mi deber de soldado revolucionario. Tenía delante de mí una mochila llena de medicamentos y una caja de balas, las dos eran mucho peso para transportarlas juntas; tomé la caja de balas, dejando la mochila ... (English: "Perhaps this was the first time I was confronted with the real-life dilemma of having to choose between my devotion to medicine and my duty as a revolutionary soldier. Lying at my feet were a knapsack full of medicine and a box of ammunition. They were too heavy for me to carry both of them. I grabbed the box of ammunition, leaving the medicine behind ...".)
  

• ^ Children: 

With Hilda Gadea (married 18 August 1955; divorced 22 May 1959):

• Hilda Beatriz Guevara Gadea, born 15 February 1956 in Mexico City; died 21 August 1995 in Havana, Cuba.

With Aleida March (married 2 June 1959):

• Aleida Guevara March, born 24 November 1960 in Havana, Cuba
• Camilo Guevara March, born 20 May 1962 in Havana, Cuba
• Celia Guevara March, born 14 June 1963 in Havana, Cuba
• Ernesto Guevara March, born 24 February 1965 in Havana, Cuba

With Lilia Rosa López (extramarital):

• Omar Pérez, born 19 March 1964 in Havana, Cuba
  

• ^ INRA: Appointed Director of the Industrialization Department of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform on October 7 1959.
  

• ^ BNC: Appointed President of the National Bank of Cuba on November 26 1959.
  

• ^ Signature: "If my way of signing is not typical of bank presidents ... this does not signify, by any means, that I am minimizing the importance of the document — but that the revolutionary process is not yet over and, besides, that we must change our scale of values." — Ernesto Guevara
  

• ^ MININD: appointed Minister of Industries on February 23 1961.
  

• ^ Algeria: In September 1962, Algeria asked Cuba for assistance when Morocco declared war on it over their dispute concerning the territory formerly known as the Spanish Sahara. Cuba responded by sending a contingent of Cuban officers and troops totalling 686 men and some 60 tanks to support the Algerian forces. Shortly after news of the landing of the Cuban troops at Oran leaked to the press, King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to sign a cease-fire with President Ben Bella of Algeria. The Cuban expeditionary force remained in Algeria for six months, during which time they set up the military equipment they had brought and trained their Algerian counterparts in its use. Guevara played a major role in organizing and executing the Cuban deployment.
  

• ^ Kabila: In May 1997, Laurent-Désiré Kabila overthrew the government of Mobutu Sese Seko and became President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He held that position until his assassination on January 16, 2001 and was succeeded in the presidency by his son, Joseph Kabila.
  

• ^ NSA: "The intercept operators knew that Dar-es-Salaam was serving as a communications center for the fighters, receiving messages from Castro in Cuba and relaying them on to the guerrillas deep in the bush. Guevara transmitted his progress reports and requests for supplies back through that same channel. Every day at 8:00 A.M., 2:30 P.M., and 7:00 P.M., one of Guevara's radio operators would also make contact with the jungle base at Kigoma."
  

• ^ Camp: The purchase of the acreage in the Ñancahuazú region was in direct contravention of Guevara's directive that the land for the camp should be purchased in the Alto Beni region. When presented with the fait accompli that the Bolivian Communists had acquired land in the Ñancahuazú region instead, he at first complained but eventually decided to utilize it in order not to lose time while waiting for them to purchase a parcel in the Alto Beni.
  

• ^ USMilitary: "U.S. military personnel in Bolivia never exceeded 53 advisors, including a sixteen-man Mobile Training Team (MTT) from the 8th Special Forces Group based at Fort Gulick, Panama Canal Zone. Commanded by Major Ralph ('Pappy') Shelton, the MTT set up a training camp near Santa Cruz. The advisors arrived on April 29 and instituted a 19 week counter-insurgency training program for the Bolivian 2nd Ranger Battalion. The intensive course included training in weapons, individual combat, squad and platoon tactics, patrolling, and counter-insurgency. The Bolivians responded well to the training and quickly developed into a spirited, confident, and effective counter guerrilla unit."
  

• ^ Message: For example, on August 31 1967 Che wrote in his diary "Hay mensaje de Manila pero no se pudo copiar.", i.e. "There is a (coded radio) message from Manila ('Manila' being the code name for Havana) but we couldn't copy it." The content of this message has not been revealed, but it may have been of critical importance since by then Castro and the other Cubans who were directing the guerrillas' support network from Havana had to be aware of their dire straits.
  

• ^ Barrientos: Although Barrientos never revealed his motives for ordering the summary execution of Guevara, some of his associates have suggested that he took this decision primarily in order to avoid the spectacle of a "show trial" that would have brought unwelcome international attention to Bolivia, and that he was also concerned that, had Guevara been sentenced to a lengthy term in a Bolivian prison, he might have escaped or eventually been released (as in Fidel Castro's case), and subsequently resumed his guerrilla activities.
  

• ^ Amputation: Castañeda, Jorge G., Che Guevara: Compañero, New York: 1998, Random House, pp. xiii - xiv; pp. 401–402. Guevara's amputated hands, preserved in formaldehyde, turned up in the possession of Fidel Castro a few months later. Castro reportedly wanted to put them on public display but was dissuaded from doing so by the vehement protests of members of Guevara's family.
  

• ^ Mausoleum: On December 30 1998 the remains of ten more guerrillas who had fought alongside Guevara in Bolivia and whose secret burial sites there had been recently discovered by Cuban forensic investigators were placed inside the "Che Guevara Mausoleum" in Santa Clara. Also inside the mausoleum is the original letter Guevara wrote to Castro in which he stated that he was leaving Cuba to fight abroad for the cause of the revolution, resigned all his party, military and governmental posts, and renounced his Cuban citizenship.
  

External links

News articles

• BBC: "Che Guevara Legacy Lives on in Bolivia", Aug 24 2004
• BBC: "Che: The Icon and the Ad", Oct 5 2007
• BBC: "Guevara's Image Saved from Drink", Sept 15 2000
• BBC: On This Day: October 9th
• BBC: "Retracing Che Guevara's Congo Footsteps", Nov 25 2004
• CARE International: "Che Guevara Trail" = Nominated for Travel Award
• CNN: "Argentines Reviving the Legend of Che Guevara", August 15 1997
• CNN: "Bones of Cuban Activist 'Che' Guevara to get Hero's Burial", October 11 1997
• CNN: "Marxist Revolutionary Seizes Marketplace from Beyond Grave", July 24 1997
• Economist: A Modern Saint and Sinner, Oct 13 2007
• Harpers Magazine: Six Questions for Greg Grandin on Che’s Legacy
• Independent: Memories of Che: A Revolutionary Son of Ireland, March 21 2002
• Intl Herald Tribune: "On the Motorcycle Behind My Father, Che Guevara", by Aleida Guevara, Oct 12 2004
• LA Times: "Che Guevara's Legacy Looms Larger than Ever in Latin America"
• NY Times: A Revolutionary Icon, and Now, a Bikini, Oct 9 2007
• NY Times: "Letter From the Americas: Che Today? More Easy Rider Than Revolutionary", By Larry Rohter, May 2 2004
• NY Times: "Lone Bidder Buys Strands of Che’s Hair for $100,000 at U.S. Auction" October 26 2007
• NY Times: "U.S. Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports", September 9 2006
• The Baltimore Sun: "One, Two, Che-Che-Che in Film, Print and on Stage", March 7 2004
• The Independent: Rediscovering Che Guevara: the Romantic Revolutionary, Sep 13 2007
• The Guardian: "Cuban Doctors Restore Sight of Che's Killer", October 2 2007
• The Guardian: Aleida Guevara: "Che, My Father", May 3 2002
• The Guardian: "Time to Act, not Just Talk", by Aleida Guevara, October 13 2004
• The Scotsman: The Night Che Guevara came to Limerick, December 28 2003
• The Observer: "The Final Triumph of Saint Che", September 23 2007
• TIME 100: Che Guevara
• Washington Post: "Che Guevara's Iconic Image Endures", September 23 2006
• Washington Post: Childhood, Youth, and Asthma in Argentina, By Jorge G. Castaneda

Photos/various forms of interactive media

• ABC News: Life and Death of Che Guevara
• BBC Audio: CIA Man Recounts Che Death, Oct 8 2007
• BBC Video: Castro Visits Home of Che Guevara, Jul 23 2006
• BBC Video: Che Remembered 40 Years On, Oct 8 2007
• BBC: Your Che Guevara Images Set 1 --- Set 2
• Che Guevara - page with an array of articles and information
• CHE-LIVES.com
• Che Tribe Net Forum
• Democracy Now: The Life & Legacy of Latin American Revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara: Forty Years After His Death
• DeviantART: Che Guevara
• Exposition of Photos by Guevara
• Gallery of Che Photos
• MSNBC Slideshow: In Cuba, Che Still Sells Revolution
• NY Daily News: Photos of Che and his Wife (Alieda March)
• NY Times Interactive Gallery: A Revolutionary Afterlife
• Photo Gallery of Che Images
• Reuters Slideshow: "Honoring Che"
• RevLeft: ~ Che Forum
• Revolution and Commerce: The Legacy of Korda's Portrait of Che Guevara - at the California Museum of Photography
• Smithsonian Global Sound: Che Guevara Speaks
• Speaking tour of Britain / Spring 2008 - "Cuban Socialism into the 21st century"
• The Che Guevara internet archive - written works, pictures, and speeches
• THE CHE TRAIL - in BOLIVIA
• Thinkexist.com - Che Guevara Quotes
• V&A ~ Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon - Art Exhibit
• Videos, Speeches, & Music about Che Guevara

Editorialized opinion/analysis

• Che Guevara - A Legacy of Struggle by Daniel Waldron in Socialist View, No. 13 Winter 2004.
• Che Guevara: an image that keeps the spirit of revolution alive
• Che Guevara: Cuban revolutionary or puppy-eating serial murderer? - A comparison of 2 essays
• Che Guevara Hero File @ Moreorless.au.com
• Che Guevara's profile at Discoverthenetworks.org
• 'Che Guevara: The Revolutionary of Love'
• CompaneroChe.com - The Truth about Ernesto Che Guevara
• "Che Guevara's legacy lives on in Latin America", by Stuart Munckton, Oct 6 2007
• Discussion on Paul Berman's contention that: "We should not Love Che Guevara"
• Guevara, Ernesto "Che": A critical biography
• "Guevara's Daughter has a Cause, in the Image of her Father", June 28 2003
• "How can you not be a Trotskyist in the Cuban Revolution!", by David Rey, El Militante Argentina
• Italo Calvino on Che Guevara
• "Journey Around My Father" - by Che's Daughter, July 2 2003
• "Latin America - Marxism or Guerrillaism ?"
• Learning from Che Guevara: Revolution Guided by Feelings of Great Love
• My Left Wing: Che Guevara Smacks Bush !
• "Originality and Relevance of the Cuban Revolution"
• Separating Fact from Fiction - Cuba's Revolutionary Tribunals
• Subcomandante Marcos Pays Homage to Che Guevara and Praises Cuba
• The Dark Truth behind Che Guevara by John Triggs, The Daily Express, October 10 2007.
• The Importance of being Ernesto by Joe Rayment.
• The Militant: "Che Continues To Instill Fear In The Oppressors", October 20 1997
• The Nation: "The Martyrdom of Che Guevara" by Robert Scheer, October 10, 2007
• The People's Guide to Che Guevara
• The Real Che by Anthony Daniels
• The Resurrections of Che Guevara
• The Victims of Che Guevara
• Template:PDFlink by Armando M. Lago
• Who was Che Guevara ?
• 'Why I killed Che'

Potential reference material

• "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life", by Jon Lee Anderson
• Che's Farewell Letter to Fidel Castro
• Che Guevara's Family Tree at Rodovid - pedigree and genealogical information about Guevara.
• Che Guevara Library of Texts
• Che Guevara Monument and Mausoleum in Santa Clara in EcoSur magazine, October 2005.
• Che Guevara: Symbol of Struggle -by Tony Saunois
• Che Guevara: The Biography Project
• Che's Habanos - Cigar Aficionado
• "Colonialism is Doomed" ~ by Che Guevara - Speech delivered before the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 11 1964
• Ernesto Che Guevara: Bibliography of Writings and Speeches - by Ocean Books
• HDR Japan: Aide reveals Che Guevara's secret trip to Hiroshima, Oct 14 2007
• In Memory of Ernesto Che Guevara
• Interview with Camilo Guevara (Che's Son)
• Members of Che's Guerrilla Movement in Bolivia
• Monthly Review: Cuba and the U.S.- September 1961 Interview with Che Guevara
• Monthly Review: "On Revolutionary Medicine", by Che Guevara, Jan 2005
• Ocean Book Press --> Che Guevara Items
• Pathfinder Press --> Books about Che Guevara
• PBS: Che Guevara
• "Socialism and Man in Cuba" ~ by Che Guevara (March, 1965) Full Text
• TheCheStore.com - Biography, Speeches and Writings
• The Militant: "Che Guevara, Cuba, And The Algerian Revolution", Feb 1998
• The Militant: Che Guevara Describes `Baptism Of Fire', December 25 1995
• The Militant: "Firsthand Account of the Battles that Led to Triumph", By Che Guevara
• The Militant: "Guevara: 'Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams'", October 14 1996
• The Militant: "Pombo' Speaks On Che's Leadership In Africa", December 29 1997
• "What A Young Communist Should Be" - Speech by Che Guevara, Oct 23 1962