Guevara, Che (Ernesto Guevara) (chā gāvä`rä, ārnĕs`tō), 1928–67, Cuban revolutionary and political leader, b. Argentina. Trained as a physician at the Univ. of Buenos Aires, he took part (1952) in riots against the dictator Juan Perón Isabel María Martínez de Perón, 1931–, whom he had married in 1961, was elected vice president though she was widely resented by those devoted to the late Eva Perón. Restored to power, Perón moved sharply to the right.
..... Click the link for more information. in Argentina, joined agitators in Bolivia, and worked in a leper colony. In 1953 he went to Guatemala, joined the leftist regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and when Arbenz was overthrown (1954) fled to Mexico, where he met Fidel Castro Castro, Fidel (Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz) (fēdĕl` käs`trō)
..... Click the link for more information. and other Cuban rebels. Guevara became Castro's chief lieutenant soon after the rebel invasion of Cuba in 1956, in which he proved to be a resourceful guerrilla leader. As president of the national bank after the fall (Jan., 1959) of Fulgencio Batista Batista y Zaldívar, Fulgencio (f
..... Click the link for more information. he was instrumental in cutting Cuba's traditional 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 the Congo and other countries. In 1967, directing an ineffective guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded, captured, and executed by government troops. Guevara wrote Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Man and Socialism in Cuba (1967), Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1968), and The African Dream (2001), a forthright account of the failed Congo rebellion.

Bibliography

See his diaries, ed. by R. Scheer (1968) and by D. James (1968); his speeches and writings, ed. by J. Gerassi (1968) and D. Deutschmann (1987); biography by J. L. Anderson (1997); D. James, Che Guevara (1969); M. Ebon, Che: The Making of a Legend (1969); L. J. González and G. A. Sánchez Salazar, The Great Rebel (tr. 1969); R. Harris, Death of a Revolutionary (1970); L. Sauvage, Che Guevara: The Failure of a Revolutionary (1974).

Guevara, Che

orig. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

Che Guevara.

(credit: Lee Lockwood/Black Star)

(born June 14, 1928, Rosario, Arg.—died October 1967, Bolivia) Theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare and prominent figure in Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba (1956–59). Born to a middle-class family, he completed medical studies in 1953 and subsequently traveled widely in Latin America, eventually settling in Guatemala. The overthrow of Guatemala's Pres. Jacobo Arbenz persuaded him that the U.S. would always oppose leftist governments and that only violent revolution would end the poverty of the Latin American masses. He left Guatemala for Mexico, where he met Castro and joined his cause. After the Cuban revolution he held several key posts as one of Castro's most trusted aides; handsome and charismatic, he served as one of the revolution's most effective voices. He left Cuba in 1965 to organize guerrilla fighters in Congo and later Bolivia. Captured and shot by the Bolivian army, he immediately achieved international fame and the status of a martyred hero among leftists worldwide.