Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che Guevara, was a Cuban revolutionary, otherwise a doctor from Argentina.
Ernesto Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, one of the largest Argentine cities, into a well-to-do family. Although the family was of aristocratic origin, it preferred socialist ideas.
Young Ernesto suffered from asthma and read a lot, and as a young man and medical student he set out with a friend on a long motorcycle trip, on which he witnessed the poverty that then reigned in South America. Che Guevara later described the experience in ‘Motorcycle Diaries’, in which he also explained the birth of his revolutionary consciousness.
After years of various attempts, including a stay in Guatemala and mostly in Mexico, Che finally realized his revolutionary dream with Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1960. Even then, Che developed into a charismatic guerrilla fighter and leader, excelling in his unscrupulous fanaticism in achieving his goals. Like any man who becomes a myth, Che came to this position through the corpses of many, which has always served his critics as an argument against it. Although many newspaper articles and several books have already been written that convincingly deconstruct the myth of Guevara, shedding light on his callousness, his symbolic value has remained unchanged.
Guevara joined Castro’s “July 26” movement and played a key role in the eventual success of the guerrilla war against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro overthrew Batista in 1959 and took power in Cuba. From 1959-1961 Guevara was the president of the National Bank of Cuba and then the minister of industry. In that place, he traveled the world as an ambassador of Cuba. At home, he implemented plans for land redistribution and nationalization of the industry.
A strong opponent of the United States, he led the Castro regime towards joining the Soviet Union. The Cuban economy has faltered due to US trade sanctions and failed reforms. During this difficult time, Guevara began to quarrel with other Cuban leaders. He later expressed a desire to spread the revolution to other parts of the developing world, and in 1965 Castro announced that Guevara had left Cuba.
Guevara then spent several months in Africa, especially in Congo, trying to train rebel forces in guerrilla warfare. His efforts failed and in 1966 he secretly returned to Cuba. From Cuba, he traveled to Bolivia to lead rebel forces against the government of René Barrientos Ortuño.
With U.S. help, the Bolivian military captured Che and his remaining fighters because they failed to win the favor of the local population. There is a theory that former Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie also took part in the operation to capture Che Guevara in Bolivia.
The Bolivians sent 1,800 troops to the location where Che Guevara was, with the aim of capturing him. Che and his guerrillas were in the area of central Bolivia, not far from the town of La Higuera. It is a fairly sparsely populated and hilly area, largely inhabited by the Guarani Indian people. Guevara was captured and wounded. He was imprisoned in a school building in nearby La Higueri, and the next day he was executed, and his body was buried in a secret place. In 1997, his remains were discovered, exhumed and returned to Cuba, where he was reburied.
