Che Guevara

Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity.
- Man and Socialism in Cuba

Real name ERNESTO GUEVARA (1928-67), Latin American guerrilla leader and revolutionary theorist, who became a hero to the New Left radicals of the 1960s.

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. A strong opponent of U.S. influence in the Third World, he helped guide the Castro regime on its leftward and pro-Communist path.

At heart a revolutionary rather than an administrator, he left Cuba in 1965 to foster revolutionary activity in other countries. In 1967, while directing a guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded in a clash with government troops, captured, and later executed.

Che teaches the lesson of hope and dedication. Throughout struggles with adversity, like his lifelong asthma, to the military campaigns in Guatemala, Cuba, the Congo and finally Bolivia, Che always kept his goal in front of him, he was ever optimistic and single-minded in his purpose. Che became a legend and an idol for the revolutionary- and even the merely discontented- youth of the later 1960s and early 70's a focus for the kind of desperate revolutionary action which seemed to millions of young people the only hope of destroying the world of bourgeois industrial capitalism.


Che: A true renaissance man