Che Guevara

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An icon of Cuba

On the T-shirts of tourists, on Cuban banknotes and coins or on numerous propaganda posters on the roadside, the likeness of national hero Che Guevara is omnipresent in Cuba. His life is still polarizing today. One thing is certain: he is one of the most famous people of the 20th century.
It depends on which Che biography you read, which Che film you watch and which political perspective you choose. A romantic hero, naive dreamer, incompetent economic minister or selfless revolutionary, there are many opinions on Che Guevara. His ideas and deeds played a decisive role in the Cuban revolution and motivated many to fight for the country's independence.

Early days, studies and motorcycle diaries

Che Guevara, legal name Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, (born June 14, 1928, Rosario, Argentina, died October 9, 1967, La Higuera, Bolivia), theorist and tactician of guerrilla warfare, prominent communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956-59) and guerrilla leader in South America. Guevara was the eldest of five children in a middle-class family of Spanish-Irish descent and leftist leanings. Although he suffered from asthma, he excelled as an athlete. He completed his medical studies in 1953, but was more interested in economic and social inequality in Central and South America. He interrupted his studies several times to travel extensively through Latin America on a 500 cc Norton.

In particular, his view of the world was changed by a nine-month trip that he began in December 1951, during a break from his medical studies, with his friend Alberto Granado. This journey began on a motorcycle that broke down and was abandoned early, and took them from Argentina through Chile, Peru, Colombia and on to Venezuela, from where Guevara traveled on alone to Miami and returned to Argentina by plane. During the journey, Guevara kept a diary, which was published posthumously under the guidance of his family as The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (2003) and was made into a movie as The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). "This aimless roaming through our vast America changed me more than I thought," he wrote in his travel diary at the end. He blamed the imperialist US policy of the time for most of the problems in Latin America.

After university, Guevara went to Guatemala, where Jacobo Arbenz led a progressive regime that attempted to bring about a social revolution. The overthrow of the Arbenz regime in 1954 in a CIA-backed coup convinced Guevara that the United States would always oppose progressive leftist governments. This became the cornerstone of his plans to bring about socialism through a worldwide revolution. It was in Guatemala that Guevara became a committed Marxist.

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The Cuban revolution

He left Guatemala for Mexico, where he met the Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro. They were in exile and were preparing an armed expedition to Cuba to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. Che joined the group as a doctor. In 1956, a total of 81 men (including Che Guevara) sailed from Mexico to Cuba on the decrepit yacht Granma, which was overloaded with weapons, and disembarked in the province of Oriente.
Almost everything went wrong on the crossing to Cuba. On Cuban soil, the revolutionaries were met by the army of Cuban dictator Batista. Most of the rebels died or were arrested during the escape. Only twelve of the people from the Granma, including Castro, his brother Raúl and Che Guevara, managed to escape into the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.
Che Guevara showed tactical skill in these actions and his role quickly changed from that of a doctor to a direct participant in armed actions. In fact, although trained as a healer, the complex Che also occasionally acted as an executioner (or ordered the execution) of suspected traitors and deserters.
He recorded the two years he spent overthrowing Batista's government in Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (1963; Memoirs of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1968). With the victory against the numerically superior Batista army in Santa Clara, he made himself immortal.

Politics in Cuba

After the triumph of the revolution on January 8, 1959, Che Guevara held various high-ranking ministerial posts in Havana. But first Guevara worked for several months in La Cabaña prison, where he supervised the executions of people who were considered enemies of the revolution. Guevara became a Cuban citizen. He was head of the Industry Department of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, President of the National Bank of Cuba and Minister of Industry. In the early 1960s, he defined Cuba's politics and his own views in many speeches and writings.

Che espoused the vision of a new socialist citizen who would work for the good of society and not for personal profit, an idea he embodied through his own hard work. He often slept in his office, and in support of the volunteer work program he organized, he spent his day off working in a sugar cane field.

Increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the Cuban social experiment and its dependence on the Soviets, Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna began to turn his attention to promoting revolution in other countries.

Congo, Bolivia and the end

In April 1965, he withdrew from public life in Cuba. His movements and whereabouts remained secret for the next two years. It was later learned that he traveled with other Cuban guerrilla fighters to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in a futile attempt to support the revolutionaries there.

In the fall of 1966, Che Guevara went incognito to Bolivia to found and lead a guerrilla group in the Santa Cruz region. After some initial fighting successes, he and his guerrilla group were repeatedly on the run from the Bolivian army.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna, who was wounded in the attack, was captured and shot. Before his body disappeared to be secretly buried, his hands were cut off; they were preserved in formaldehyde so that his fingerprints could be used to confirm his identity.

Monument

Today, the Monumento y Memorial Ernesto Che Guevara is located on the Plaza de la Revolución in Santa Clara. A large bronze statue of Che stands at the center of the 17,500 m² memorial. The square is lined with walls bearing his quotes and memorabilia. The mausoleum with Che's mortal remains and a museum with Che's personal belongings can also be found here.