Ché (Ernesto) Guevara: 1928-1967: Revolutionary Leader Biography - Childhood Influences, Motorcycled Through South America, Introduced To Marxism, Fidel Castro And The Cuban Revolution
Ché (Ernesto) Guevara: 1928-1967: Revolutionary leader.
Ernesto Guevara, known around the world by his nickname "Ché," was an Argentine doctor turned Marxist revolutionary who became instrumental in the Cuban revolution during the 1950s. Despite his lack of success outside Cuba, his commitment to worldwide revolution by armed revolt and his subsequent execution in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967 made him a martyr for the cause of liberation in South and Central America.
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Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on June 14, 1928, in Rosario, located in the eastern Argentinean province of Santa Fe. The oldest child in the family, Guevara had four younger brothers and sisters. Both his father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, a part-Irish civil engineer, and his mother, Celia de la Serna, came from prominent well-to-do families, and both held left-wing political views. As a toddle…
Despite atypical political views, the family was in many ways typical of the country's upper-middle class, and it was expected that Guevara would attend college and pursue a career. Influenced by his struggle with chronic asthma and his grandmother's death from cancer, Guevara chose medicine as his profession. After graduating from high school with honors at the age of 19, he enrolle…
Guevara submitted a thesis on allergies, passed his qualifying medical examinations, and was awarded his medical degree in the spring of 1953. But the young doctor's focus had been changed by his first-hand experience with the abysmal social conditions in South America. Rather than providing medical services the poor could never afford, Guevara decided to commit his life to assisting the di…
With little hope of effecting further change in Guatemala, in September of 1954 Guevara escaped the country and made his way to Mexico City, where he earned a living as a physician. His wife soon joined him there, and the two had a daughter in February of 1956. Despite his obligations to his family, Guevara was not ready to settle into a domestic lifestyle. In 1955 he was introduced to Cuban rebel…
During the next six months, Guevara organized a group of Cuban guerrillas in preparation for a liberation movement in Bolivia. Guevara's plan was to follow his own guerrilla warfare strategy, as outlined in Guerrilla Warfare. He hoped to use his small army to incite a revolution in Bolivia. Once victory was achieved there, he would establish a base for operations from which he could branch …
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