Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War

Ernesto Che Guevara was born into a middle-class family in Argentina in 1928 and trained as a doctor, but became radicalized by the poverty and hunger he witnessed in South America. He played a key role in the Cuban revolution and served in Fidel Castro's government. He then travelled to Congo to support the rebellion there, and finally to Bolivia, where with a small, committed group he initiated a revolutionary movement and was captured and executed by Bolivian and US military forces in 1967.

ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA DE LA SERNA was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. While studying for a medical degree in Buenos Aires, he took a trip with his friend Alberto Granado on an old Norton motorcycle through all of Latin America, the basis for The Motorcycle Diaries. During his travels he witnessed the Bolivian revolution in 1953; and, in Guatemala in 1954, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz by US-backed forces. Forced to leave Guatemala, he went to Mexico City, where he linked up with exiled Cuban revolutionaries and met Fidel Castro in 1955. Che joined their expedition to Cuba, where the revolutionary war began in the Sierra Maestra mountains. At first Che was the troop doctor, and later became Rebel Army commander in July 1957.  Following the rebels’ victory on January 1, 1959, he was a key leader of the new revolutionary government and also of the political organization that in 1965 became the Communist Party of Cuba.