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Ernesto Guevara (Serna)

1928-1967

Nationality: Argentinian
Ethnicity: Hispanic
Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002.
Entry Updated : 06/26/2002

"Sidelights"

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was the Marxist revolutionary who served as chief military and ideological adviser to Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution of 1956-59. He was executed after an ill-conceived attempt to start a similar revolution in Bolivia, and thereafter revered by leftists all over the world as a martyr to the cause of third-world revolution. Guevara's near-mythic reputation rests largely on his military exploits and his personal example of courage, self-sacrifice, and idealism, rather than any major original contributions to Marxist theory or revolutionary practice. As a writer of nonfiction, Guevara is best known for the training manual entitled La guerra de guerrillas (Guerrilla Warfare) and his posthumously published El diario de Che en Bolivia (The Diary of Che Guevara). He is also the author of numerous collections of speeches and articles on such wide-ranging topics as socialist morality and economic planning.

Guevara was born in Argentina into an upper middle-class family with leftist sympathies. As a boy, he developed severe asthma, which plagued him throughout his life. This condition contributed to his decision to pursue a career as a doctor. Guevara received his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953 and then traveled around South and Central America. Some of his youthful thoughts and adventures are captured in The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, a posthumously published journal. Eventually, he settled in Guatemala, where he worked as an inspector for the agrarian land redistribution program launched by reformist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

Soon thereafter, a military coup organized and financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the Arbenz government. After fruitless attempts to organize local popular resistance to the military takeover, Guevara took asylum in the Argentine embassy, where he remained for two months before fleeing to Mexico. Guevara's first-hand experience of the coup deepened his anti-American sentiments and helped convince him that armed revolution was necessary for social reforms to occur in Latin America.

In Mexico, Guevara met the exiled Cuban brothers Fidel and Paul Castro, who were organizing a revolutionary movement against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara agreed to join the Castros' "26 of July Movement" as their physician. He thereby became the sole non-Cuban among eighty-three guerrilla fighters who landed in Cuba in December of 1956. The Cuban army crushed the force immediately, but Guevara and the Castros were among the twelve survivors who managed to reach the rugged Sierra Maestra mountain range, where they began organizing the infrastructure for a prolonged guerilla insurgency.

Guevara, nicknamed "Che" by his Cuban comrades, took up arms with the rest of the insurgents and displayed such leadership ability that he was named commander of a second guerrilla column composed of local peasant recruits. He also served as a trusted political advisor to commander-in-chief Fidel Castro, headed the insurgent medical corps, and organized military training camps, a radio station, a weapons plant, and a network of schools in the guerrilla zone of control. In late 1958, Guevara's soldiers routed a much larger and better equipped Cuban army contingent at the decisive battle of Santa Clara, which convinced Batista to resign from office and flee the country. Not long afterward, Guevara led the first rebel force into Havana and sealed the revolutionary victory.

Guevara held a series of important positions in the early years of the new Cuban government, serving first as military commander of Havana's La Cabana fortress and later as a top official of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank of Cuba, and Minister of Industries. In the last two posts, Guevara (who was awarded full citizenship rights by the Castro government) was largely involved in the immensely complex and difficult task of converting a sugar-based, capitalist economy heavily dependent on the United States into a state-run system with a more diversified production and trading base. In 1960, Guevara helped negotiate a historic trading pact with the Soviet Union, exchanging sugar for capital goods; after the United States imposed an economic boycott of the island later in the year, he traveled to other Eastern bloc countries to develop new commercial relations.

Better versed in Marxist economic theory than Castro, Guevara envisioned a socialist outcome for the Cuban Revolution and encouraged the Cuban leader to take the definitive step toward a state-run system by nationalizing virtually all of the country's industry. Determined to break Cuba from its over-reliance on sugar exports, Guevara sought to industrialize the island with support from the Eastern Bloc, which provided generous aid and advantageous sugar prices. He believed, however, that the emergence of a new "socialist morality" among the Cuban people was the most expedient means of developing the island's economy. Consequently, he favored moral rather than material incentives to raise production and advocated voluntary work programs to strengthen revolutionary consciousness and solidarity.

In early 1965, Guevara mysteriously disappeared from public view. Many speculated that he had disagreed with Castro over economic policy and had subsequently been "removed." Castro's official explanation--that Guevara had freely departed Cuba to advance the cause of socialist revolution abroad--was substantiated when Guevara later appeared in Africa with two hundred Cuban troops to assist Congolese rebels. In 1966 he returned to Havana, where he made plans to apply his military theories on guerrilla insurgency in South America. Guevara's ultimate goal was to create "two, three, many Vietnams" to challenge the hegemony of the United States, the country he regarded as his greatest "imperialist" enemy.

With Castro's support, he assembled a force of Cuban and Peruvian revolutionaries who secretly entered Bolivia in late 1966. Joined by Bolivian rebels, the group began its guerrilla campaign in southeastern Bolivia in March of 1967, after its presence was revealed to local peasants. Guevara's far-reaching plans proceeded disastrously, however. Neither the local peasantry nor the Bolivian Communist Party provided the expected support; furthermore, Guevara himself was in poor health, at times being completely incapacitated by severe asthma attacks. He began to commit many serious tactical errors, many of which he had specifically warned against in his own handbook on guerilla warfare. After May of 1967, Castro--apparently embarrassed by Guevara's lack of success--abandoned his old friend to his fate, ignoring all coded messages to sent to Havana from the Bolivian jungle.

Guevara's fatal mistake was to divide his small force into two factions. He intended for them to reunite in a few days, but they were unable to make a successful rendezvous and wandered for months, searching for each other. On August 31, Bolivian troops ambushed and destroyed the larger group. Guevara and his small remaining force were left with no hope of reinforcement. On October 8, 1967, they were surrounded by Bolivian troops in a canyon at Quebrada del Yuro. In the fighting that followed, Guevara was seriously wounded. He was captured, interrogated, and executed the next day, after being positively identified by Cuban agents of the CIA.

Although Castro had turned his back on Guevara during his final struggle, the Cuban leader was quick to embrace the memory of the slain guerrilla and put it to good use in revolutionary propaganda. In fact, Guevara's brooding image quickly became an icon representing revolutionary fervor throughout the world. He was embraced as a secular saint by people from many walks of life--from downtrodden Third World citizens to rebellious, well-to-do young people in the United States, who during the late 1960s and early 1970s held Guevara up as a champion against all established authority.

The stature of Guevara's written works has been greatly elevated by his assassination. His major political treatises reflect his attempt to adapt established Marxist revolutionary principles to Latin America's unique historical and social conditions. He drew on his combat experience in Cuba to write Guerrilla Warfare, a manual of guerrilla strategy, tactics, and logistics that was published in Cuba in 1960. In this work, Guevara openly stated his hope that the Cuban example would trigger similar revolutions elsewhere in Latin America and argued that a dedicated guerrilla force of only a few dozen combatants could successfully initiate an insurgency virtually anywhere in the continent. Guevara's guerrilla manual found a readership not only among revolutionaries, but also within the ranks of the U.S. Army, where strategists were actively seeking solutions to the growing counter-insurgency war in South Vietnam.

Guevara also wrote a series of articles describing his personal experiences in the Cuban insurgency that were published in book form as Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War). Nation reviewer Jose Yglesias found this collection "simple, beautiful, and politically prophetic." The Diary of Che Guevara, however, is considered by many critics his most significant work. Seized by the Bolivian army after the destruction of Guevara's guerrilla force, the manuscript created a media sensation, and publishers in Europe and the United States offered over one hundred thousand dollars in a bidding war for publishing rights. The matter was settled, however, when Fidel Castro acquired the manuscripts and international publishing rights from Bolivia's Minister of the Interior.

Written in a German calendar notebook in a direct, unadorned style, The Diary is an intensely personal document recording Guevara's successes, failures, and frustrations as he attempted to establish the Bolivian guerrilla movement. Guevara summarized the group's activities at the end of each month, analyzing what had gone right as well as what had gone wrong. Scholars agree that the work provides invaluable insights into Marxist revolutionary theory in the field of guerrilla warfare. Guevara also addressed his conception of the socialist "new man" and other political and social issues confronting postcapitalist society in numerous speeches and articles published in Cuban journals. In these pieces, he wrote on such important international economic issues as the problem of third world foreign debt, trade relations between industrialized and less-developed countries, and the controversy over "market socialism" versus centralized planning in the noncapitalist world. Frequently used in studying the philosophical and economic policies of China and the former Soviet Union, many of these articles and speeches have been translated into English and appear in the collections Che Guevara Speaks and Venceremos! Critical reaction to these works generally focuses on Guevara's ideas and not on his literary style and expertise. For example, while commentators point out that Guevara's Diary presents a uniquely personal picture of his life and political idealism during his days as a Bolivian rebel leader, it is his speeches and writings that continue to attract a wide popular and critical readership. Guevara's works are additionally considered key elements in any analysis of the growth and popularity of Marxist-Socialist ideology in Hispanic-American countries.

In 1995, new interest in Guevara was generated when a retired Bolivian general broke a 27-year vow of silence to reveal the whereabouts of the rebel leader's body, the location of which had been shrouded in secrecy for years. The general stated that Guevara's remains had been dumped in a mass grave with those of four other insurgents near the town of Villegrande. This news sparked a series of excavations all around the area. Residents of the small village, most of whom gave Guevara no support during his lifetime, began to say masses for him in the local church, and to claim that he could now perform miracles. That year also saw the publication of The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, Guevara's journal from a youthful tour of South America. Years before hooking up with Castro, while still a medical student in Argentina, twenty-three-year-old Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado spent eight months exploring Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. The object of their mission was to visit leper hospitals, because Granado, a fellow medical student, was specializing in the disease.

"This extraordinary first-person account . . . written with spunk and keen observation, shows us the conditions that formed the adventurous man later known as Che," declared Tom Miller in Los Angeles Times Book Review. On one level, The Motorcycle Diaries is simply an enjoyable tale of two youths on the road, who used their wits to get food and lodging as they traveled from one hospital to the next. Yet on another level the journal illustrates how "Che, the Argentinean, became Che the Latin American in the course of this journey," declared New Statesman & Society contributor Amanda Hopkinson. She noted that while the journalist reveals a certain youthful arrogance and "vestigial racism and sexism," it also shows his deep "humanitarianism," particularly in his treatment of the lepers: "Che breaks with local custom in insisting on touching, speaking and spending time with the patients" at the colonies.

New Yorker reviewer Paul Berman observed: "The barroom tales, hitchhiker episodes, medical adventures, and political ruminations in `The Motorcycle Diaries' make for a bumpy ride. Some of the prose experiments wobble out of control. This is a sketchbook, not a finished work of literature. But there is a pathos in these pages--the pathos of Che himself, ever thoughtful, ever willing to sacrifice all, burning with guilt over his own privileges and suffering continually from severe asthma but never letting his sufferings impede him." Musing that few people could now believe that `Che's beloved Communism could really heal the wounds of the world, Berman still concluded that "it is possible to read these diaries and weep for Che Guevara, and it is possible to weep for the many people who were brave enough to be his followers and who may have harbored a thousand delusions about Communism but who can never be accused of having chosen a less than noble soul as their revolutionary hero."

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Family: Born June 14, 1928, in Rosario, Argentina; executed by the Bolivian army, October 9, 1967, in Higueras, Bolivia; son of Ernesto Rafael Guevara Lynch (an architect) and Celia de la Serna de Guevara; married Hilda Gadea Acosta (a Peruvian revolutionary), May, 1955 (divorced); married Aleida March (a schoolteacher); children: (with Acosta) Hilda, (with March) Ernest, Camilo, Aleida, Celia. Education: University of Buenos Aires Medical School, doctor of medicine and surgery, 1953.

CAREER

Inspector for Guatemalan government agrarian reform agency, 1954; military commander and medical corps director for the 26th of July Movement guerrilla organization in Cuba, 1956-59; commander of La Cabana fortress in Havana, Cuba, 1959; official with the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in Havana, 1959; president of the National Bank of Cuba in Havana, 1959-61; Minister of Industries for the government of Cuba in Havana, 1961-65; commander-in-chief of the National Liberation Army guerrilla organization in Bolivia, 1966-67.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

AS CHE GUEVARA

La guerra de guerrillas, Departamento de Instruccion de MINFAR (Havana), 1960, translation by J. P. Morray published as Guerrilla Warfare, Monthly Review Press (New York City), 1961.
Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria, Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1963, translation published as Episodes of the Revolutionary War, International Publishing (Uniontown, OH), 1968, revised and enlarged translation by Victoria Ortiz published as Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, Monthly Review Press, 1968.
Condiciones para el desarollo economico latinoamericano (title means "The Conditions for Latin American Economic Development"), El Siglo Ilustrado (Montevideo), 1966.
Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings, edited by George Lavan, Grove (New York City), 1967.
Obra revolucionaria (title means "Revolutionary Works"), edited by Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Ediciones Era (Mexico), 1967.
El diario de Che en Bolivia: Noviembre 7, 1966, a octubre 7, 1967, Instituto de Libro, 1968, translation edited by Robert Scheer published as The Diary of Che Guevara; Bolivia: November 7, 1966-October 7, 1967, Bantam (New York City), 1968, enlarged translated edition edited by Daniel James and published as The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents, Stein & Day (Briarcliff Manor, NY), 1968; another translation edited by Mary-Alice Waters and published as The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, Pathfinder (New York City), 1994.
Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, edited, annotated, and introduction by John Gerassi, Macmillan (New York City), 1968.
(Contributor) La economia socialista (title means "The Socialist Economy"), Editorial Nova Terra (Barcelona), 1968.
Escritos economicos de Ernesto Che Guevara (title means "Economic Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara"), Ediciones Pasado y Presente (Cordoba), 1969.
Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara, edited by Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1969.
Che Guevara on Revolution: A Documentary Overview, edited by Jay Mallin, University of Miami Press (Baltimore, MD), 1969.
El libro verde olivo (title means "The Olive Green Book"), Editorial Diogenes (Mexico), 1970.
Obras, 1957-1967 (title means "Works, 1957-1967"), Casa de las Americas (Havana), 1970.
Barro y cenizas: Dialogos con Fidel Castro y el Che Guevara (title means "Clay and Ashes: Dialogues with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara"), Fomento Editorial (Madrid), 1971.
El hombre y el socialismo en Cuba (title means "Socialism and Man in Cuba"), Ediciones Sintesis (Buenos Aires), 1973.
La planificacion socialista y su significado (title means"Socialist Planning and Its Significance"), El Tunel (Buenos Aires), 1973.
La revolucion latinoamericana (title means "The Latin American Revolution"), Editorial Encuadre (Rosario, Argentina), 1973.
El socialismo y el hombre nuevo (title means "Socialism and the New Man"), edited by Jose Arico, Siglo Veintiuno (Mexico), 1977.
Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution: Writings and Speeches of Ernesto Che Guevara, Pathfinder Press/Pacific & Asia (Sydney, Australia), 1987.
A New Society: Reflections for Today's World, edited by David Deutschmann, Ocean Press (Melbourne, Australia), 1991.
Che Guevara, Cuba, and the Road to Socialism, Pathfinder (New York City), 1991.
(With Fidel Castro) To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's "Cold War" against Cuba Doesn't End, Pathfinder, 1992.
Notas de viaje, translation by Ann Wright published as The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, Verso (London), 1995.
The Africal Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, translated by Patrick Camiller, Grove, 2000.