CheGuevara he is known for having been an Argentine revolutionary who played a fundamental role in the Cuban Revolution of 1959, reaching important positions in the government of that country. Che Guevara also participated in revolutionary struggles in Congo and Bolivia.
In addition to his trajectory as a revolutionary, Che Guevara's personal history can be said to have originated in an Argentine family in good condition. financial, studied and graduated in Medicine, traveled throughout South America, and was eventually killed after being captured by the Bolivian army in 1967.
Accessalso: Cold War: understand the historical context in which Che Guevara was involved
Origins
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. He was the oldest child of a total of five children who ErnestoGuevaraLynch and Celia de la Serna had together. Che Guevara's brothers were Celia (1929), Roberto (1932), Ana María (1934) and Juan Martín (1943).
THE Che Guevara's family was in good financial condition, and so, when Che was still very young, his parents decided to move from Buenos Aires to High Grace because of the respiratory problems he had. In this small town on the outskirts of Cordoba, Che spent his entire childhood and adolescence, studying at local schools.
Since he was a child he had a great interest in reading, and after he finished his basic studies he moved to his maternal grandmother's house in Buenos Aires. In the Argentine capital, Che joined the Medicine course at the University of Buenos Aires. This was a difficult time in his life because his family was facing financial problems and his parents had divorced.
two trips
A well-known part of Che Guevara's life is the two trips he took in Latin America, the first with AlbertoGranado and the second with CarlosFerrer. Both were made with little resources, and the first one even turned into a movie known as motorcycle diaries. What we know of Che's trip came from testimonies and journals written by him.
Before these two trips, Che Guevara had already made others through Argentine territory. In one of them, in 1950, he explored the north of his country on a motorbike, traveling about 4500 km, a feat that made him be called to star in an advertisement for the brand of bicycle. Che Guevara also traveled as a doctor on an oil tanker in 1951.
In 1952, Che Guevara started his famous firsttravel across South America. He was accompanied by his childhood friend Alberto Granado. Che and Granado traveled on a Norton motorcycle and passed through Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. During this journey, Che Guevara was shocked by the poverty of the population, and, added to the readings he had made in recent years, this experience had a great influence on his revolutionary visions.
This first trip lasted seven months, and when he returned, in July 1952, to Buenos Aires, he quickly sought to complete his course, receiving, in April 1953, the title of doctor. In July 1953, he and another childhood friend, Carlos Ferrer, left Buenos Aires, starting the Mondaytravel.
During the journey, they passed the Bolivia, a South American country that was going through a progressive and revolutionary experience. The progressive government tried to implement agrarian reform, reforms in the army and education, and tried to invest in Bolivian economic development.
As a result, they still went through Peru and Ecuador, where Che Guevara and Carlos Ferrer parted ways. Che decided to go to Guatemala, a country in Central America that had a progressive government and was trying to carry out agrarian reform. He spent nine months in Guatemala and, during his time there, was able to deepen his revolutionary ideas.
Guevara decided to leave that country after it suffered a US-backed military coup. People who had contact with communism and socialism were persecuted by the government, and Che decided to go to Mexico. There he was introduced to RaulCastro and FidelCastro, the two leaders of the Cuban Revolution.
read more: Sandinista Revolution - understand the revolutionary process initiated in Nicaragua in the 20th century
Participation in the Cuban Revolution
In Mexico, Che was persuaded to join the July 26th Movement, who fought against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He accepted the invitation made by the Cubans and was one of the 82 revolutionaries who were part of the yachtgranma on the return to Cuba. After an attack by the Cuban army, the revolutionaries had to rebuild their forces.
This reassembly took place in a mountainous region of Cuba called sierrateacher, and in it Che Guevara led and trainedtroopsguerrillas for the fight against Fulgencio Batista. Over time, the revolutionaries gained strength and the Batista dictatorship lost legitimacy. On January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, making the revolutionary movement victorious.
From 1959 to 1965, Che Guevara held several positions in the new Cuban government, participated in the trial of people accused of committing crimes during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, was army commander Cuban, chaired the National Bank, led the Ministry of Industry, encouraged literacy campaigns, etc.
In order to occupy these positions, Che Guevara guaranteed Cuban nationality, and, in the first years of government after the victory of the revolution, openly defended Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union, since he feared direct US intervention in Cuba to overthrow the revolutionary government.
This alignment ended up taking place in 1961, when the United States organized a attempted invasion of Cuba, in the Bay of Pigs. The convergence between Cuba and the Soviet Union led the United States to carry out reprisals to harm the Cuban economy. The following year, Cuba was the scene of one of the biggest crises of the Cold War: the Missile Crisis.
Nela Che favored the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba and was angry when the Soviets decided to withdraw the missiles from there. Che Guevara was still a reason for political dispute in Brazil because the president Jânio Quadros he decided to decorate it in 1961, which angered members of his conservative UDN party. If you want to know more about the movement that brought Fidel Castro to power, read: Cuban revolution.
death
After 1965, Che Guevara decided abandon your duties in the Cuban government and return to revolutionary struggle. He wanted to take the principles of the Cuban Revolution to other places, and tried to develop a guerrilla in Argentina, but was unsuccessful. Then he left for the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in Africa.
The revolutionary experiment in Congo took place between 1965 and 1966, but it failed, and Che returned to the American continent. In 1966, he went to Bolivia to, again, develop a revolutionary project in this country dominated by a dictatorship since 1964.
In Bolivia he was also unsuccessful, and on October 8, 1967, he was ambushed and wounded in an attack by the Bolivian army. The next day he was killed. Che Guevara's remains were found in Bolivia in 1997 and are currently in a memorial in Cuba.
Image credits
[1] Personal archive/Daniel Neves
[2] spatuletail and Shutterstock
