Che Guevara

Recently, there has been a tremendous increase in the using of Che Guevara images on many things for instance, T-shirts, Mugs and used the name on coffee shops. However, who is Che-Guevara? And why he grabbed the attention of most people, especially youth.

   “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist, the people liberate themselves” by his words, and actions Ernesto iRafael Guevara de la serna became an icon of Revolution and Liberation. Ernesto Guevara, who was later given “Che” as a nickname while he was studying ,and it means “friend” in south America, not only became a myth in his own life time ,and an international martyr-figure upon his death, but also he was a revolutionary fighter, a military strategist, a social philosopher ,an economist and a doctor.

   Raised into a Middle-class family of Spanish and Irish descent, Che was born on My 14, 1928 in a city called Rosario in Argentina; he was the eldest of five children. His early diagnosed with chronic asthma was behind his decision to study medicine to find a cure for his own asthma condition. Guevara’s life has changed after the journey he made with his friend Alberto Cranado on his 1939 Norton 500 CC motorcycle, around South America. He witnessed the poverty, oppression and powerlessness of the people, and a revolution from his perspective was the only solution for Latin America’s economic and social inequities

    After his graduation from the university of Buenos Aires medical school in 1953, Che moved to Guatemala where its president Jacobo Arbenz headed a populist government that through various reforms to bring about a social revolution. However, in 1954 the CIA overthrows the Arbenz government. At    this point Che viewed the United States as an imperialist power, and he became more convinced that socialism was the only solution. 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”

    Guevara met Fidel Castro in Mexico City who was exiled from Cuba; Castro was preparing an expeditionary force to overthrow Cuba’s president Fulgencio Batista. In 1956 they loaded 38-feet long motor yacht cranma full of guerrillas and weapons, and sailed to Cuba, landing near Cabo Cruz on December 2. However, it failed and the remaining rebels fled to into the mountains of the sierra Maestra, where they slowly grew in strength, seizing weapons and wining support from peasants in rural areas and intellectuals and workers in urban areas.

After their success in entering the capital of Havana, Che was declared a Cuban citizen by birth, and divorced his Peruvian wife, Hilda Cadea, with whom he had one daughter and married Aleida March which was a member of Castro’s Army. From 1961 to 1965 Guevara was minister or industries and director of the national bank, however he was interested more in testing his revolutionary theories, and as a result he resigned from his post as a politician and wrote a book about Guerrilla Warfare.

In 1966 Che led a Guerrilla war in Bolivia, and he had stressed that the Guerrilla fighter needs full help and support from the people of the area. However, luck was not by his side and he was surrounded near Vallegrande by American-trained Bolivian troops. Che was a brave man he once said” The decisive moment in a man’s life is when he decides to confront death. If he confronts it, he will be a hero whether he succeeds or not. He can be a good or bad politican, but if he does not confront death he will never be more than a politician”.

He was captures and was shot in a school house in La Higuera on October9, 1967.His last words were” Shoot, coward you are only going to kill a man.”