Che Guevara (1928-67)

Real name ERNESTO GUEVARA (1928-67), Latin American guerrilla leader and revolutionary theorist, who became a hero to the New Left radicals of the 1960s.

Born into a middle-class family in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara received a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953.

Convinced that revolution was the only remedy for Latin America's social inequities, in 1954 he went to Mexico, where he joined exiled Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro.

In the late 1950s, he played an important role in Castro's guerrilla war against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and when Castro came to power, he served as Cuba's minister of industry (1961-65). A strong opponent of U.S. influence in the Third World, he helped guide the Castro regime on its leftward and pro-Communist path.

The author of two books on guerrilla warfare, Guevara advocated peasant-based revolutionary movements in the developing countries. He disappeared from Cuba in 1965, reappearing the following year as an insurgent leader in Bolivia.

He was captured by the Bolivian army and shot near Vallegrande on Oct. 9, 1967.

Guevara, Ernesto

Pronunciation: [Arnes´tO gAvä´rä]

1928–67, Cuban revolutionary and political leader, b. Argentina. Originally trained as a physician at the Univ. of Buenos Aires, he took part (1952) in riots against the dictator Juan Perón in Argentina, joined agitators in Bolivia, and worked in a leper colony.

In 1953 he went to Guatemala, joined the pro-Communist regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and when Arbenz was overthrown (1954) fled to Mexico, where he met Fidel Castro and other Cuban rebels.

“Che” Guevara became Castro's chief lieutenant soon after the rebel invasion of Cuba in 1956. He proved to be a resourceful guerrilla leader and was soon one of Castro's closest and most trusted friends. As president of the national bank after the fall (Jan., 1959) of Fulgencio Batista he was instrumental in cutting Cuba's traditional economic ties with the United States and in directing the flow of trade to the Communist bloc. He served (1961–65) as minister of industry.

At heart a revolutionary rather than an administrator, he left Cuba in 1965 to foster revolutionary activity in other countries. In 1967, while directing a guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded in a clash with government troops, captured, and executed.

He wrote Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Man and Socialism in Cuba (1967), and Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1968).