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Che Guevara Facts

Che Guevara Facts
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an important communist intellectual and guerilla leader in the mid-twentieth century. He traveled extensively and also wrote quite a bit about his travels, political ideas, and tactical theories of guerrilla warfare. Although he died at the early age of thirty-nine attempting to foment a communist revolution in Bolivia, he was extremely influential in Third World Marxist movements during the Cold War and is best known for being one of the leader of the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959. In the decades after his death, Guevara has somewhat ironically become a pop culture icon whose image adorns t-shirts that are often produced by corporations and companies that he no doubt would have opposed. Ernesto Guevara was born June 14, 1928 to Ernesto and Celia Guevara in Rosario, Argentina. Guevara was of Irish and Spanish ancestry. He studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires in the early 1950s, which is also when he embarked on his famous motorcycle journeys across Latin America with his friend and fellow student, Alberto Granado. The journeys were chronicled in the book The Motorcycle Diaries. After earning his medical degree in 1953, Guevara decided to dedicate himself fulltime to liberation ideas, which brought him to Central America where he'd meet Castro. Guevara was married twice and had five children.
Interesting Che Guevara Facts:
Guevara was well-read in all subjects but excelled in the sciences. He was also quite athletic as a young man, despite suffering from asthma.
Guevara first demonstrated his knowledge of military tactics as Castro's 26th of July Movement battled government forces. Once 26th of July Movement came to power, Guevara played a leading role in the first few months of the new Cuban government.
Despite playing a crucial rule in Castro's ascent to power, the Cuban leader sent Guevara on a world tour in the middle of 1959. Guevara, though, would later play a major role in helping solidify Castro's power in Cuba through a number of domestic land reforms and by bringing Cuba closer to the Soviet Union after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
"Che" was actually a nickname. Many of his revolutionary comrades began calling him that because Argentines often inject the meaningless word "Che" in casual conversations.
In the early to mid-1960s, Che visited scores of countries on every continent except Australia and Antarctica in an official capacity as a diplomat of Cuba. He even visited the United Nations in the United States, where he railed against what he said was American imperialism.
In 1965, Che decided to more actively support leftist revolutionary groups around the world. He began by traveling to Belgium rule Congo in Africa on April 24, 1965. He brought a contingent of Cubans of African descent with the plan to organized a Congolese Marxist movement and to teach them guerilla tactics.
After seven months, Che gave up on the Congo revolution, deeming it a failure, and returned to the familiar confines of South America.
Guevara arrived secretly in Bolivia under a false passport on November 3, 1966.
Guevara's band of about fifty Bolivian revolutionaries scored some early victories against the Bolivian Army, but Che was eventually betrayed by one of his men to the American CIA.
Che was captured by Bolivian special forces on October 7, 1967 and was executed two days later by gunshot.


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