Most Americans know the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, a photograph that has been printed on millions of T-shirts and dormitory walls and posters, but he is more than just a stoic, mysterious face. Due to the lack of historians to make real records at the time of the Cuban Revolution, resulting in many fictional stories about Che Guevara, it is difficult to separate this person from mythology, but these are the realities as we know them:
Born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara was one of five children in a middle-class family who were united with survivors of the Spanish Civil War. As a young man, he threw himself into the literature of philosophers such as Nietzsche and Freud and learned from Jack London a persistent wanderlust that inspired him to leave the University of Buenos Aires Medical School for the first time during two long motorcycle trips in the southern United States in 1950.
The first trip was in rural Argentina, the second a year later was a nine-year trip to South America, and finally a few weeks of volunteer work at the San Pablo Leprosy Shelter in Peru. Both times plunged Che Guevara into a poverty he never realized existed, prompting him to abandon medicine and devote himself to the Marxist revolution.
In December 1953, Guevara traveled to Guatemala with the intention of shutting down the United Fruit Company, which used Latin American lands to grow agricultural products for North America. At the time, Guatemala was trying to peacefully reform the latifidia system, which allowed the United Fruit Company to hold large amounts of land while the locals had nothing. However, while Che Guevara was in Guatemala, the U.S. military appeared, abandoned propaganda against the Guatemalan government, and dropped several bombs in support of a group of Guatemalan refugees whose mission was to overthrow the current government.
Che Guevara provided medical care during the disaster, but what he really wanted to do was fight back. He found himself unhappy with the government's inaction, and after the establishment of the new regime in Guatemala, Guevara was no longer popular in the country anyway. He fled to Argentina, where he stayed for a few weeks before going to Mexico. Although he was not directly involved in the military coup, he became radicalized by seeing the strong support of the U.S. government for fruit companies.
Upon arriving in Mexico in the fall of 1954, Guevara quickly established himself as a humanitarian among the locals, working a dual job at the Mexican General Hospital and the Infant Hospital while reconnecting with a group of Cuban exiles he met in Guatemala. The following year, he was introduced to Fidel Castro, who was planning the July 26 campaign to overthrow Cuban President Furgenzo Batista. Che Guevara found himself in tune with Castro's ideas and quickly joined the coup, providing field medical services and learning the art of ambushing in the mountains of Mexico.
When Castro and his rebel group marched into Cuba in 1956, Guevara was appointed military adviser to the future dictator and went on to lead his own guerrillas in a coup against Batista. In the early days of the struggle, Che Guevara hid in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he helped the inhabitants of surrounding villages learn to read, build ovens to bake bread, and even built a small factory (whose sole purpose was to make grenades).
During the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara rose to fame for his brutal approach to deserters, allegedly personally executing those who wished to withdraw from the coup or were considered spies. Nevertheless, Che Guevara appeared to his men not so much as a tyrant as a mythical figure who risked himself in disregard of his own happiness. Castro considered Guevara reckless in battle, but those who fought under Guevara admired his ability to leave everything on the battlefield.
After the Castro coup d'état toppled the Batista regime, the next challenge they faced was to establish a new government while eliminating survivors of the Batista regime, who are now considered war criminals. Che Guevara was appointed commander of the La Kawagna Fortress, and over a five-month period he conducted a series of trials mimicking the Post-World War II Nuremberg Trials.
It is unclear how many Cubans favor mass executions. In one video, Castro asked the Cuban people if they wanted to wipe out members of the Batista regime and shouted a resounding "Yes!" "However, both Castro and Guevara are media-savvy, so it could be propaganda. Whatever the circumstances, no one knows how many dissidents Che Guevara executed during his five-month tenure as head of La Catania. Some calculated that it was 55, while others said as many as 105.
By 1965, Che Guevara felt he had done all he could in Cuba. Under Castro's leadership, he held a series of different positions, traveled across Europe and China, learned more about Marxism, and tried to kick-start Cuba's higher education system, but with little success. He found himself in line with Chinese communist sentiments, which were not in line with the Soviet Union, which told Castro that they were not calm and that Che Guevara was his right-hand man. Instead of creating a rift in the Cuban government, Che Guevara left Cuba forever, renouncing his citizenship and resigning from all positions in the Cuban government.
Next, Che Guevara traveled to the Congo to support the Marxist Simba movement. Under the pseudonym Ramón Benítez, he planned to teach Marxist theory and guerrilla warfare to local anti-Mobutu Simba fighters, but this did not go as planned after he contracted dysentery. After seven months in Africa, Che Guevara left the continent to travel back and forth between Prague and Spain while writing his memoirs.
After meeting with former Argentine President Juan Perón, Guevara decided to start a communist revolution in South and Central America, starting in Bolivia. Perón claimed he warned Guevara against the idea, but the revolutionary would not waver once he made up his mind.
Guevara arrived in Bolivia in late 1966 with a shaved head and no beard. He did not want to attract any attention from the local government until he was ready to deal with the conflict. He formed a guerrilla force with only about 50 men by his side, and he succeeded in knocking down so many Bolivian troops that the Bolivian government considered Che Guevara's army to be much larger.
It was a good start, but in 1967 Che Guevara's plan to lead the communist revolution in the region failed. No one traveled to the country to support his army, and locals sided with the government. There was a lot of speculation about Guevara being captured by the Bolivian government, but it is believed that the CIA orchestrated an incident in which Guevara was forced into a canyon by 1800 soldiers. He finally surrendered on October 7, 1967.
Two days later, Bolivian President René Barentos ordered the U.S. government to kill Che Guevara instead of transporting him to Panama. His executioner was ordered to shoot him in such a way that his wounds matched the cover story of his death in an exchange of fire two days earlier, so he was shot nine times in the legs, arms and heart at close range. His last words are said to be "Shoot, coward!" You will only kill one person. ”