Nickname "Che" derived from Guevara's habit of punctuating his speech with the

interjection che, a common Argentine expression for a friend or hey!

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina into a middle-class

family of Spanish-Irish descent. Celia de la Serna y Llosa, his mother, had lost her
parents while she was still a child. Celia was raised by her religious aunt and her
older sister, Carmen de la Serna, who married in 1928 the Communist poet Cayetano
Córdova Itúrburu. Guevara's family was liberal, anti-Nazi and anti-Peronist, and not
very religious. With Celia's fortune, the family lived comfortably, although Ernerto
Guevara Lynch, Ernesto's father, managed to spend much of it in his unlucky
business ventures. In his youth Guevara read widely and among his reading list in
the 1940s were Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Ciro Alegría, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He
also kept a philosophical diary and in Africa 1965 Guevara planned to write a
biography of Marx.

In 1953 Guevara graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he was
trained as a doctor. During these years Guevara read Stalin and Mussolini but did not
join radical student organizations. He made long travels in Argentina and in other
Latin America countries. At the same time his critical views about the expanding
economic influence of the United States deepened. In 1952 he made journey with his
motor bike, an old Norton 500 single, around South America. The journey opened
his eyes about the situation of the Indians and was crucial for the awakening of his
social conscience. Like Jack Kerouac later in his book On the Road (1957), Guevara
recorded his impressions in The Motorcycle Diaries. "The person who wrote these
notes died the day he stepped back on Argentine soil," Guevara wrote in his diary.
"Wandering around our 'America with a capital A' has changed me more than I
thought."
After witnessing American intervention in
Guatemala in 1954, Guevara radicalized
and become convinced that the only way to
bring about change was by violent
revolution. He wrote in a letter to home:
"Along the way, I had the opportunity to
pass through the dominions of the United
Fruit, convincing me once again of just
how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I
have sworn before a picture of the old and
mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest
until I see these capitalist octopuses
annihilated." In Guatemala Guevara met
Hilda Gadea. They married 1955 and had
one child. Guevara was arrested with Fidel
Castro in Mexico for a short time. He had
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro
joined Castro's revolutionaries to
overthrow the Batista government. In 1956
they loaded 38-feet long motor yacht
Granma full of guerrillas and weapons and
sailed to Cuba, landing near Cabo Cruz on
December 2.
They made their base in the mountains of
Sierra Maestra, attacking garrisons and
recruiting peasants to the revolutionary
army. In the areas controlled by the
guerrillas, Guevara started land reform
and socializing process. In spite of his
chronic asthma, Guevara enjoyed the
hard conditions and war. Land reform
become the slogan, the "banner and
primary spearhead of our movement" as
Guevara described it in an interview, that
made eventually peasants participate in
Che Guevara taker prisioner in Bolivia. the armed struggle. Guevara was
Few hours before his murder. respected by his men, although
considered violent - he shot Eutimio
Guerra who had cooperated with dictator
Fulgencio Batista's army.

In the mountains Guevara met Aleida

March in 1958, 24-year-old revolutionary
fighter, and she became Guevara's second
wife in 1959. He continued to write his
diary and composed also articles for El
Cubano Libre. A selection of Gurvara's
articles, which he wrote between 1959
and 1964, was published in 1963 as
PASAJES DE LA GUERRA
REVOLUCIONARIA. For the media
Cuba was a hot subject - New York
Times, Paris Match and Latin American
papers sent reporters to the mountains to
make stories of the revolutionaries. At the
same time when Guevara was in the
mountains, his uncle was Ambassador to
Cuba.
Guevara rose to the rank of major and led
one of the forces that invaded central Cuba
in the late 1958. After the conquest of
power in January 1959 Guevara gained
fame as the leading figure in Castro's
government. He attracted much attention
with his speeches against imperialism and
US policy in the Third World. He argued
strongly for centralized planning, and
emphasized creation of the 'new socialist
man'. In his famous article, 'Notes on Man
and Socialism', he argued that "to build Che Guevara's body aften been killed.
communism, you must build new men as
well as the new economic base." The basis
of revolutionary struggle is "the happiness
of people," the the goal of socialism is the
creation of more complete and more
devoped human beings.
In a discussion on September 14, 1961
Guevara opposed the right of dissidents
to make their views known even within
the Communist Party itself. However,
privately Guevara was critical of the
Soviet bloc, but so was also Nikita
Khruschev. When the executions of war
criminals started Guevara acted as the
highest prosecuting authority. The
condemned were soldiers found guilty of
murder, torture and other serious crimes.
Because Guevara was a doctor, one of
Che Guevara´s Monument at La Higuera
his friends once asked how he could
(Bolivia), where he got killed.
work in such a position. Guevara's
answer was like from Western movies:
"Look, in this thing you have to kill
before they kill you." In 1959 Guevara
adopted formally the nickname Che and
was granted honorary Cuban citizenship.
He was visited by such intellectuals as
de Beauvoir, and Sartre who saw in him
the "most complete human being of our
age". The most famous picture of
Guevara was taken by Alberto Diaz
Gutiérrez, known professionally as
Korda. He declined to take royalties
when the picture became worldwide
icon. When a British advertising agency
 appropriated the image for a vodka ad
Korda rejected the idea: he never drank
himself," said the photographer, "and
drink should not be associated with his
immortal memory."
From 1961 to 1965 Guevara was minister for industries, and director of the national
bank, signing the bank notes simply 'Che'. He traveled widely in Russia, India and
Africa, meeting the leading figures of the world, among others Jawaharel Nehru and
Nikita Khruschev. Guevara was also the architect of the close relations between
Cuba and the Soviet Union. Although good relationships with Moscow become the
cornerstone of Castro's foreign policy, Guevara followed the emergence of the
Maoists. In 1965 Guevara made public his disappointments in Algiers and described
the Kremlin as "an accomplice of imperialism". Guevara's dismissal from the
ministry followed immediately on his return from Algiers.

To test his revolutionary theories Guevara resigned from his post as a politician. He
had published highly influential manuals Guerrilla Warfare (1961) and Guerrilla
Warfare: A Method (1963), which were based on his own experiences and partly
chairman Mao Zedong's writings. President John F. Kennedy had Guerrilla Warfare
rapidly translated for him by the CIA. Guevara stated that revolution in Latin
America must come through insurgent forces developed in rural areas with peasant
support. The is no need for right precondition for revolution - guerrilla warfare can
begin the activities. In his last article, 'Vietnam and World Struggle', Guevara
outlined his global perspectice for revolutionary struggle, and stressed the dual role
of hate and love.

"And he did have a saving element of humor. I possess a tape of his appearance on
an early episode of "Meet the Press" in December 1964, where he confronts a
solemn panel of network pundits. When they address him about the "conditions" that
Cuba must meet in order to be permitted the sunshine of American approval, he
smiles as he proposes that there need be no preconditions: "After all, we do not
demand that you abolish racial discrimination…." A person as professionally
skeptical as I.F. Stone so far forgot himself as to write: "He was the first man I ever
met who I thought not just handsome but beautiful. With his curly reddish beard, he
looked like a cross between a faun and a Sunday-school print of Jesus…. He spoke
with that utter sobriety which sometimes masks immense apocalyptic visions."
(Christopher Hitchens in New York Review of Books, July 17, 1997) During his
disappearance from public life Guevara spent some time in Africa organizing the
Lumumba Battalion which took part in the Congo civil war. He was not happy how
Laurent Kabila fought against Joseph Mobutu, although his first impression on
Kabila was positive. "Africa has a long way to go before it reaches real revolutionary
maturity," Guevara concluded in his diary.

In 1966 Guevara turned up incognito in Bolivia where he trained and led a guerrilla
war in the Santa Cruz region. In his manual Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara had stressed
that the guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area, it is an
indispensable condition, but Guevara failed to win the support of the peasants and
his group was surrounded near Vallegrande by American-trained Bolivian troops.
"The decisive moment in a man's life is when he decides to confront death," Guevara
once said. "If he confronts it, he will be a hero whether he succeeds or not. He can be
a good or a bad politician, but if he does not confront death he will never be more
than a politician." After Guevara was captured, Captain Gary Prado Salmón put a
security around him to be sure that nothing happened. Guevara told him, "don't
worry, captain, don't worry. This is the end. It's finished." (from the document film
'Red Chapters,' 1999) Guevara was shot in a schoolhouse in La Higuera on October
9, 1967, by Warrant Officer Mario Terán of the Bolivian Rangers at the request of
Colonel Zenteno. Terán was half-drunk, celebrating his borthday. Guevara's last
words were according to some sources: "Shoot, coward you are only going to kill a
man." In order to make a positive fingerprint comparison with records in Argentina,
Guevara's hand were sawed off and put into a flask of formaldehyde. They were later
returned to Cuba. Guevara's corpse was buried in a ditch at the end of the runway
site of Vallegrande's new airport. "Che considered himself a soldier of this
revolution, with absolutely no concern about surviving it," said Fidel Castro later in
Che: A Memoir.

Che Guevara did have some last words before his death; he allegedly said to his
executioner: "I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going
to kill a man."