Name:
Guevara, Che (Real name: Guevara, Ernesto) 1928 - 67
Description:
Latin American guerrilla leader and revolutionary theorist, who became a hero to the New Left radicals of the 1960s. He played an important role in Castro’s guerrilla war against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista
Background:
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. Che served as president of Cuba’s national bank and as Cuba’s minister of industry in the period immediately following the Cuban Revolution.
Towards the end of his formal affiliation with the Cuban government, Che came to implicitly criticize Soviet bureacracy. His positions put him at odds with the party line of the Cuban CP and this ultimately led to his resignation and his return to revolutionary work abroad.
In 1965 Che left Cuba to set up guerrilla forces first in the Congo and then later in Bolivia, where he was ultimately captured and killed in October 1967. Accounts of his execution have varied over the years, but many contemprary accounts indicate some degree of collaboration between Bolivia’s government troops and the United States CIA.
Guevara developed a theory of primacy of military struggle. Many of Che’s theories regarding guerilla tactics are articulated in his 1961 work “Guerilla Warfare.”
(this is a cut ´n paste from various scources on the web)
