Che Guevara: The Final Years – 1960 - 1967

In January 1959 Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista government and became Cuba’s new leader. Che Guevara had been a prominent figure in that revolution and was one of the few surviving guerrillas who had been with Castro from the start. With victory achieved, Che now had to decide on his future direction.

His contribution to Castro’s cause had undoubtedly won him the favor of Cuba’s new leader and assured him of a position among the country’s ruling elite. As the decade went on, however, it became clear that Che had different ideas about his role and future, not just in Cuba but in the wider world. He went on to make a very strange mix of choices in the last years of his life, and those final seven years would be a concoction of bewilderment, excitement and tragedy.

Steve Prout explains.

You can read part 1 on Che’s early years here, and part 2 on the his path to being a Marxist revolutionary here.

Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Source: Public domain, Museo Che Guevara, available here.

Cuba 1960-1964

The Che Guevara of 1959 was a completely different man. He was no longer the “young Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.” He was now a high-ranking official in the new Cuban administration with close access to its leader, Fidel Castro. Over the next few years he would hold several posts: commander of the La Cabaña fortress, where he oversaw the revolutionary tribunals that purged the army of Batista sympathizers; president of the National Bank of Cuba; and Minister of Industries. He had few successes in these roles, and it was at La Cabaña that he acquired his fearsome and ruthless reputation. In the first months after the revolution, Che presided over dozens, and by some accounts hundreds, of executions.

It is a matter of debate whether Che was any more ruthless than other members of the new Cuban government. Neither Che’s own comments nor those of his comrades at the time paint a merciful picture. Asked about Che’s part in the legal process, fellow prosecutor Miguel Ángel Duque de Estrada said simply that “he [Che] was in charge… his word was final.” In the first hundred days of Che’s tenure, no fewer than fifty-five executions were carried out.

His role at La Cabaña, and the vigor with which he applied himself to it, revealed a major change in Che’s personality and moral code. Only six years before the revolution, in 1953, Che had qualified as a doctor, a profession dedicated to the betterment and prolonging of life. By the time he took charge of the tribunals he had clearly abandoned that commitment, privately admitting to his father: “As for my medical career, I can tell you that I deserted it a long time ago.” Perhaps we have our answer. Che could have refused the role, but ambition persuaded him otherwise.

However, the Cuban people were also in a vengeful, unforgiving mood toward the former government, and sought reprisals against those who had supported and carried out the Batista regime’s atrocities. Public demand aside, there was another important reason: Castro needed to ensure that no dissent remained that could undermine his victory in those early, vulnerable days. Che remembered the events that had toppled Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, which he had witnessed first-hand during his second journey through Latin America. In Che’s view, Árbenz had failed to purge his army of dissenters, and they ultimately removed him from power. That mistake could not be allowed to happen in Cuba.

In 1959 the new Cuban government faced a hostile diplomatic environment. The United States was growing increasingly wary of the revolution’s radical direction, and much of Latin America was under heavy US influence. In June 1959 Castro sent Che abroad as an ambassador on a three-month goodwill tour. Like his later tour of 1964–65, it focused on non-aligned countries, which on this occasion included Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia and Yugoslavia. The priority was to win trade and ease Cuba’s economic vulnerability.

To achieve this, Cuba urgently needed to sell its one major commodity: sugar. Cuba produced around six million tons a year, of which roughly three million tons were sold to the United States under a quota system, a quota the US would cut in July 1960 as relations collapsed. The tour achieved little. It laid some groundwork for trade with Egypt and produced a rice-for-sugar arrangement with Burma, but no major new customers. Some of the fault lay with Che himself. His lack of knowledge of economics and trade put him on the back foot in negotiations, and the outcome was hardly surprising. In short, he was unsuited to the task, though in fairness many others in Castro’s government were probably equally lacking. Cuba would soon turn to the Soviet bloc instead, signing its first major trade agreement with the USSR in February 1960.

On a personal front, Che divorced his wife, Hilda Gadea, and shortly afterwards, in June 1959, married Aleida March de la Torre, whom he had met during the fighting. His marriage to Hilda had been under strain since before the revolutionary campaign in Cuba, and the situation was no doubt exacerbated by Che’s restless ambition. That ambition was undimmed; indeed, he was now heavily focused on a new task: taking revolution to the wider world.

Exporting Revolution

Cuba’s policy of exporting revolution was both a defensive and an offensive strategy. Havana feared that the United States was planning retaliation for Castro’s overthrow of Batista. The US was seeking compensation for American property nationalized by Cuba, valued at around $1.8 billion at the time, and it now had a communist state on its southern flank, an anathema to American ideology. In Castro’s mind, an invasion was only a matter of time, a fear borne out by the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.

In theory at least, exporting revolution was an alternative to the impossible task of taking direct action against the United States. The plan was to create distractions in other countries that would tie up the time and military resources of Cuba’s potential enemies—or, in Che’s later words, to create “two, three, many Vietnams.” If this produced regime changes friendly to Cuba, so much the better. Cuba became a training ground for several clandestine guerrilla organizations preparing to take up arms across the developing world, and it was here that Che believed he had found his new calling.

Between 1960 and 1964 Cuba was actively planning several clandestine operations in Latin America, and those in Argentina and Guatemala reached an advanced stage. From 1962, large numbers of would-be guerrillas from across Latin America arrived in Cuba to train, mentored by Che, seasoned Cuban guerrilla veterans and Eastern Bloc advisers, for example from Czechoslovakia. Che also used the resources available to him at the National Bank of Cuba to fund guerrilla movements in Central America, advancing $20,000 to the Nicaraguans Tomás Borge and Rodolfo Romero, two guerrilla leaders heavily involved in the region.

Argentina was particularly close to Che’s heart as his homeland and the home of his family. Again without Che being present, a Cuban-backed guerrilla force led by the Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti was gradually established in Bolivia in preparation for an incursion into northern Argentina. After President Arturo Frondizi was removed by the military in 1962, Che saw an opportunity for such an operation.

By the time the operation began in earnest, however, the political climate in Argentina had changed. The military-dominated interim government had given way to elections in 1963, which brought the centrist Arturo Illia to the presidency, lowering the political temperature and the appetite for revolution. Che’s own opportunity for personal involvement in a campaign was coming, but not close to home. It would be in post-colonial Africa.

The Congo and the Disappearance of Che Guevara

In 1965 Cuba backed the Congo’s various rebel movements against the central government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose army was commanded by Joseph Mobutu. Civil conflict had erupted almost immediately after the country gained independence from Belgium in June 1960, beginning with an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga. The newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was unable to contain the unrest. When Belgium sent in troops, Lumumba saw this as a stealthy attempt to preserve its imperial grip on its former colony. He appealed to the United Nations, which sent a peacekeeping force, but when the UN refused to help him end the Katangan secession he turned to the USSR, asking Nikita Khrushchev for assistance, and Soviet aid and advisers were dispatched to the Congo. The Cold War had arrived in Africa, and given the country’s vast mineral wealth—cobalt, copper and much else—this was unacceptable to the West. Lumumba was deposed in September 1960 in a coup led by Mobutu with Belgian and CIA support. After his capture he was handed over to his political rival Moïse Tshombe’s Katangan authorities and brutally murdered in January 1961.

Watching from the sidelines, Cuba believed that the Congo offered an opening for successful regime change. Successes outside the Cuban revolution itself had so far been non-existent, so this time the operation would receive the personal attention of Che Guevara himself. In April 1965 Che was secretly inserted into the country to begin his work. There is little value in recounting the many chaotic engagements of the seven unsuccessful months that followed. Che opened his account of the campaign with the blunt admission, “This is the history of a failure,” and his presence had little or no impact. The diary and other witnesses describe multiple disadvantages: absent leaders, uncommitted fighters, poor logistics, language barriers and insurmountable odds, including Mobutu’s considerable army, supported by the CIA and by elite mercenary units led by the infamous Mike Hoare. Che’s first personal attempt to export revolution had been an abject failure. It was not an auspicious start.

Before his arrival, Che had been given plenty of advice and warnings by African leaders that his venture was highly likely to fail. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser advised him against becoming “a Tarzan, a white man among blacks, leading and protecting them,” as Africa had had enough of white rule and interference. Nasser warned, prophetically, that it would end “badly.”

Nor did his plans convince the African revolutionaries to whom he presented them in detail in Dar es Salaam. The consensus was that they were too ambitious and naive. In Che’s words, the meeting ended “coldly and dismissively,” with his guests “courteously saying goodbye.” His costly idea of using the Congo as an anti-imperialist springboard for guerrilla struggles in neighboring countries was not the kind of revolution that the Congolese, or Africans more widely, desired. He proceeded regardless, and it would not be the last time Che failed to heed advice and warnings.

Che arrived in the Congo in April 1965 and by November had withdrawn to neighboring Tanzania, where he wrote his account of the campaign in Dar es Salaam. If nothing else, it served as a “lessons learned” log for future operations. He was undeterred by the failure and still vehemently supported the idea of exporting guerrilla warfare, but he needed another opportunity. He would get one in Bolivia a year later, but he failed to heed his own lessons, failures and experiences before embarking on that venture.

Mobutu, meanwhile, seized power in a coup in November 1965, just as Che was leaving, and ruled the country (renamed Zaire in 1971) until 1997.

Diplomatic Blunders and a Rumored Rift with Castro

In February 1965, before leaving for the Congo, Che made a public address in Algiers to delegates from across Asia and Africa. The speech was so inflammatory that it riled Cuba’s principal ally, the USSR. In it Che made a series of catastrophic blunders, once again proving that diplomacy was not among his skills.

In the speech Che delivered a clear criticism, if not a rebuke, of the Soviet bloc. He argued that its “mutually beneficial” trade with developing countries was no better than the West’s, and that socialist countries trading at world-market prices were, to a degree, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. By implication he sided with China over the USSR, suggesting that the Chinese displayed a truer socialist morality than the Soviets. Moscow noted his closeness to China and came to see him as “China’s man,” which was unacceptable to the Kremlin.

This rebuke enraged the Soviets, and the ramifications reached Fidel Castro. What was he to do with Che? As it turned out, Che’s own actions provided the solution. Many still wonder whether it was a stroke of good fortune or some stealthy maneuvering behind the scenes that removed Che from Cuban affairs. Che would later regret his actions.

Before Che’s disappearance into the Congo there were rumors of a rift between him and Castro over his open criticism of Moscow. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the events that followed are suspicious. The rift, if there was one, was driven by a mixture of Che’s loose, tactless tongue and his ardent Marxist beliefs, which put him firmly on China’s side of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Castro shared some of Che’s frustration with Moscow but kept a quiet restraint.

“The Letter” to Castro and the People of Cuba

On April 1, 1965, while preparing for his insertion into the Congo, Che wrote a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. That letter, in Che’s typically flowery prose, would soon work to his detriment. When Castro read it out in public in October 1965 to explain Che’s absence, it effectively detached Che from his comrades: he had renounced all his government titles and his Cuban citizenship, erasing everything he had worked for. In one short letter he had lost his own stage at a time when he arguably needed its support most.

Extracts from the letter read as follows:

“I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I now take my leave of you, the compañeros, your people who are now mine.”

If that was not clear enough, he elaborated in true “Che prose”:

“I formally resign my responsibilities in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank as commander and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legally ties me to Cuba.”

The letter perhaps alludes to tensions with Castro when Che writes: “My only serious failing was not having more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and revolutionary.” (The Sierra Maestra mountains were the refuge of Castro and his depleted band in the early stages of the insurgency.) There were suggestions that Fidel had begun to view Che’s activities and position as a diplomatic liability, especially after the Algiers speech angered Moscow. That speech put Castro in a difficult position: although he privately shared some of Che’s reservations about the USSR, it was nonetheless a vital, if not the only, ally on which Cuba depended during its continued international isolation.

Che added, “with a mixture of joy and sorrow,” that “other nations of the world call for my modest efforts” and that he would “carry to new battlefronts” the faith Castro had taught him, to “fight against imperialism wherever it may be.” These hints of grandiosity and egotism show how far Che’s transformation, and perhaps a growing self-delusion, had developed.

The letter was a baffling act, and it leaves readers wondering whether it was driven by an inflated ego, by the fact that Che, given his catalog of failures, was running out of “proverbial rope” as an ambassador and official of the Cuban government, or by both.

Bolivia and the fate of Che Guevara

Cuba was planning a guerrilla operation in Bolivia while Che was busy managing the disaster in the Congo. Cuba had originally planned an operation in Argentina, beginning with small incursions into the north of the country from across the Bolivian border, but the idea had been abandoned after Masetti’s failed attempt of 1963–64 and the change of government in Argentina. By the time Che returned secretly to Cuba in mid-1966, after months in Tanzania and Prague, he had decided to join the new venture. Still smarting from his failure in the Congo, he needed to repair his damaged reputation, both in his own eyes and in those of his peers. He was still traveling incognito and was effectively stateless. The Cuban public was unaware of his return, and his “disappearance” from Cuban life continued.

An advance team of Cuban and Bolivian communists had already established a secret base in Bolivia, on a farm near the Ñancahuazú River. All Che had to do was get into the country, which was no easy task, as his activities and whereabouts were now of great interest to the CIA. Traveling on false papers under an assumed name, Adolfo Mena González, he arrived in Bolivia in November 1966. Little did he know that he was beginning another fruitless and impossible campaign that would end in his capture and death. Masetti himself had disappeared in 1964 and is presumed to have died in the jungle of Argentina’s Salta province, and the authorities were by now aware of Cuban activity in the border regions.

The Bolivian failure

Before Che’s arrival, approaches had already been made to various Marxist groups within Bolivia with a view to creating a united front, but the Bolivian Communist Party did not share the Cuban belief in armed revolution. Che also reportedly received warnings against the whole idea from Argentina’s exiled former president Juan Perón in Madrid. Perón was candid, urging Che to “suspend that plan” and adding: “You will not survive. Search for alternatives.” Once again, however, Che failed to learn from the Congo and proceeded regardless.

Che arrived secretly in Bolivia in November 1966. The Cubans needed the success that had so far eluded them, though it was unclear what form that success would take: outright victory over “US-backed imperialism” or distractions sufficient to tie down US military resources. In the event, the campaign did nothing to slow US efforts against Cuba and Che; if anything, it was an irritation. The USSR, meanwhile, was distancing itself, preferring peaceful coexistence with the West. Cuba’s targets were not ready for revolution, and support for, and belief in, its ambitions were dwindling.

By mid-1967 the situation in Bolivia already looked hopeless. Che and his band were being pursued relentlessly by superior forces—the Bolivian Army, US-trained Bolivian Rangers and their US advisers. His force had dwindled from around fifty men to just over twenty. The local population gave them no support, nor did other communist-aligned groups. Che had no hope of success, and he admitted in his diary that support from the population was non-existent. Of the Bolivian peasants for whom he claimed to be fighting, he wrote: “Talking to these peasants is like talking to statues. They do not give us any help. Worse still, many of them are turning into informants.” Bolivia had already had its own revolution in 1952, which brought land reform and the nationalization of the tin mines, and it wanted any further change to come by peaceful, electoral means, an approach supported even by its own Marxist and communist groups.

The campaign was reminiscent of the Congo in many ways. Che and his small band spent days on the move with little to show for it, and the whole campaign produced no more than a handful of minor victories against small Bolivian patrols, none of which posed any threat to the government. For those interested in every detail, his Bolivian Diary provides it, but it adds little to this article. The Bolivian military redoubled its efforts to eliminate this troublesome individual and his exhausted guerrillas, and to set an example to any would-be imitators.

The Death of Che

On October 8, 1967, after a relentless pursuit, Che was captured by Bolivian forces in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine. A local peasant had revealed the guerrillas’ whereabouts to the army. Che and a handful of his men were taken alive to the nearby village of La Higuera, where he was held under heavy guard, tightly bound, on the mud floor of the village schoolhouse. His captors debated what to do with him as they awaited orders from their superiors. His end would come swiftly.

There are contradictory accounts of Che’s last moments. One is that he died bravely, looking his executioner in the eye in the La Higuera schoolhouse and daring him with the words, “Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”

Another account concerns his capture the previous day: that he surrendered, calling out to his captors that he was “worth more to you alive than dead.” We will never know the full truth of his final hours. Certainly, photographs taken after his capture show a man visibly shaken and exhausted by his physical ordeal, a far cry from the self-assured diplomat who had graced the world stage.

The last images of him alive unsurprisingly show him dirty, bloodied and barefoot. According to witnesses, including Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban-born CIA officer working alongside the Bolivian Army, Che was disillusioned but unrepentant. He blamed the “provincial mindset of the Bolivian Communist Party” for his failure and hinted that the Bolivian venture had been a mistake. His spirit was not entirely broken: he resisted interrogation and, to the very end, refused to denounce Castro or renounce his beliefs.

Che’s end could have been different. According to Rodríguez, there is credible evidence that the CIA wanted Che taken alive and flown out of Bolivia to Panama for interrogation. This makes sense: Che’s death risked creating a martyr for the communist cause and giving a boost to growing left-wing movements at home and abroad, whereas his capture and imprisonment would have been a significant setback to the revolutionary cause.

The US did not make the final, fateful decision. According to Rodríguez, it was the Bolivian president, René Barrientos, who ordered Che’s execution, which was promptly carried out. Barrientos was determined to deliver a stark warning to other revolutionary groups. Che was executed on October 9, 1967. His bullet-riddled body was flown to Vallegrande and photographed before being buried in a secret location, where it lay undiscovered until 1997. His hands had been cut off for identification purposes. In a sense, this was not the end of Che Guevara. A man of that name had been killed on October 9, 1967, but in his place an iconic image had been born, one that would prove impossible to erase from history.

Assessing Che: Conclusion

It goes without saying that Che’s death immortalized him, and myth and fact soon became blurred. He remains a polarizing historical figure, a dubious honor that comes with a wide mix of supporters, worshippers and critics.

Che Guevara was undoubtedly a remarkable man, but also a restless one. He never appeared to have a life plan beyond seeking greatness and personal triumph. He achieved this, in the enduring image of the anti-imperialist Marxist, on the back of Fidel Castro’s success, almost as if he had simply stumbled upon the opportunities presented to him.

He rarely stayed in any profession or vocation for long. He abandoned his hard-earned medical qualification for the revolutionary adventure with Fidel Castro in Cuba, a country that was not his birthplace. After the fighting, the revolution led him into government and diplomacy, for which he was ill-suited, and his record of achievement there is unimpressive. His two personal attempts at “exporting revolution,” in the Congo and in Bolivia, failed disastrously, the second leading to his death.

We must also never overlook one vital fact: Che was committed to the Marxist cause and closer to the Chinese model of communism, seeing the Soviet version as a diluted form of the doctrine. Whatever its rhetoric, Che’s and Cuba’s anti-imperialism did not deliver freedom: it meant supporting regimes, Cuba’s own included, that were themselves oppressive. The image some retain of Che as a Third World freedom fighter deserves some reflection.

Now, read our highly-rated, fast-paced book on the Cold War here.

Sources

I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervour – Ernesto Che Guevara – Collected letters 1947-1967 – Penguin Modern Classics

Che Guevara – A Revolutionary Life – Jon Lee Anderson – Penguin – 1997

Back on the Road – A Journey into Central America - Che Guevara – 2000 – Vintage Uk

Revolution in the Air – Max Elbaum – 2018 – Verso

The African Dream – Che Guevara – 1999 – Harvill Press

Bolivian Diary – Che Guevara – 2004 – Pimlico

Che Guevara: The Path to Marxist Revolutionary - 1951-1959

In 1951 Che Guevara was still known as Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. To his friends and family, he was a restless young man, still undecided about his life's direction, who constantly craved adventure and excitement. At this point, he was a medical student with a considerable number of examinations to complete, but he decided instead to travel the length of South America. In this period, we see the transition from Ernesto the restless student and man of letters to the man who would become Che.

Steve Prout explains.

You can read part 1 on Che’s early years here.

Che Guevara in Caballete de Casas, Cuba, 1958. Source: Museo Che Guevara, Public domain, available here.

The Motorcycle Diaries

This first journey began in January 1952 with his trusted friend Alberto Granado and temperamental motorcycle “La Poderosa II.” The two left Argentina for a tortuous adventure around his home continent recorded in the infamous book “The Motorcycle Diaries.” This first journey was very much two friends on a backpacking tour surviving on their wits and lack of money. To go into finite detail will offer no valuable insights as far as the focus of this article is concerned. The reader will be best served going straight to the actual book for more detail. Instead, we pick up after Ernesto’s return from his first trip and his plans changed once again. In the second of these articles, this will follow Che Guevara's life up until his involvement in the successful Cuban Revolution in 1959.

To summarize the first trip the two comrades began in January and February of 1952 working their way through Argentina before they spent the next two months in Chile. The duo then moved through Peru in March of that year before visiting Colombia and Venezuela in the summer months of June and July 1952. The trip finished with a visit to Miami before returning to Buenos Aires. There, Ernesto planned to finish his professional studies.

Introducing Doctor Guevara

In July 1952, Ernesto returned to Buenos Aires. This time it was to finish his medical studies, to which he applied himself in earnest, passing thirteen of his medical exams in November and December 1952. Allegedly according to his father beforehand, Ernesto succumbed to infection after experimenting on human remains required by his studies. Stubbornness had won the day and that same resolve would be applied to later life. One more exam remained in 1953, and he then officially became Dr Ernesto Guevara. He told his father by telephone the good news before then telling them to their dismay that he was going to embark on further travelling. This second trip would change his life. Che Guevara’s story now gathers pace.

Back on the Road, 1953

In July 1953, he set out on his second journey. This time his journey again began in Argentina with his friend Carlos Ferrer, crossing part into Chilean territory and then into Bolivia. At first his journalling and its content was reminiscent of his first trip with the usual privations of his travels such as the limitations caused by his asthma, mechanical breakdowns, and border issues. Eventually in 1953 he reached Central America. The tail end of this journey sent him to Guatemala and then ultimately Mexico, where he had his fateful meeting with Fidel Castro.

Guatemala, 1954

Everything in Ernesto's life would change with his stay in Guatemala. Ernesto had travelled through the region at a tense time. Guatemala, or rather the administration headed by the nation's leader Jacobo Arbenz (1951–1954), had its fair share of problems with the USA and its neighbors. The President had introduced some sweeping reforms in the country during the “Ten Year Guatemalan Revolution” from 1944 to 1954. The reforms improved the lives of over half a million people and the agrarian reforms improved the lot of the agricultural community. The policy of Arbenz’s reforms was for the government to seize idle and uncultivated land and redistribute it to its people. This was a policy that a growing Marxist like young Ernesto would approve of. Ernesto became a staunch supporter of Arbenz in his time in Guatemala.

This did not sit well with the USA and corporations resident in that country such as the United Fruit Company. Those corporations lobbied President Eisenhower and the hawkish John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State to remove Arbenz via the CIA and military action. At the same time, the two US statesmen also feared the growth or strong influence of communism in Guatemala and feared for the financial stakes they had made. They could not let Arbenz continue or allow his ideas to spread throughout the rest of South America.

Ernesto, although intending to travel and fund himself through casual work within the medical profession, found himself caught up in the political furor, which he did not find unpleasant. He was keen to fight on the side of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by a communist group. Once the bombing began, he tried to organize this group to perform a number of supporting roles such as guarding the capital and arms negotiations to other resistance. It was all in vain and temporary; after expressing frustration with the lack of action in the group, he abandoned this idea and returned to his medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican embassy, and his control of his country was lost. All foreign supporters were urgently advised by him to leave Guatemala. Due to their support and involvement with Arbenz, Ernesto had now been targeted by the authorities. However, Ernesto showed no signs of being perturbed by these dangers at all.

In his letters to his mother, he confessed that being around the chaos made him feel a “little ashamed for having as much fun as a monkey” and that had felt “a magic sensation of inviolability” that led him to “lick his lips in pleasure.” This was now a man who had acquired an addiction to adrenaline and danger. His growing penchant for adventure had now been raised to higher and more dangerous levels.

Ernesto met Hilda Gadea, a Peruvian woman whom he later married in the late summer of 1955 in Mexico. Hilda was also a political activist before she met Ernesto, and her work had led her to be expelled from Peru in 1948. This did not help her during her time in Guatemala: swept up in the political turmoil alongside Ernesto, she was incarcerated in a Guatemalan prison on multiple occasions, gaining release each time only after hunger striking. The two seemed very intellectual and politically compatible, but the marriage had underlying issues that would later surface. Ernesto, it has been suggested, initially courted her as she was convenient to him on many levels such as financial support, a useful contact, a roof over his head and more so for “transactional motives” (Che’s actual words from his memoirs cannot be used here).

Meanwhile President Arbenz fled his country and was replaced by a US/Honduran-backed government headed by Castillo Armas. The new President was clamping down on any suspected communist sympathizers and supporters of its former leader. The couple therefore had to leave Guatemala amid the bombings, invasions and the new government clampdowns and headed for Mexico. The couple would both leave and arrive in Mexico separately.

In 1954, Ernesto was still nothing more than a “young Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.” He had acquired a taste for danger, and all that seemed to be needed now was a cause and a leader to cross his path.

Mexico and Fidel Castro, 1955

Even as late as 1955, Ernesto still had his heart set on his travels. His letters home still talked of travelling to Europe and India specifically, which were no doubt genuine, and he could change his mind at “the drop of the proverbial hat.” In a letter to his mother in November 1954, he wrote that he is “desperate to travel around Europe” and in that same letter “as for the United States I have not lost an ounce of hostility.” In explaining how he would still like to visit New York he adds “I’ll leave just as anti-Yankee as when I arrive”. His experiences in Guatemala had clearly affected him as he makes other political observations.

His views on Mexico were interesting. In a letter written in March 1955, shortly after he arrived, it is clear that his anti-Americanism followed him. He blames the upheavals going on in the country as being US instigated when he said, “Mexico has been completely handed over to the Americans.” He adds that the “FBI is much more dangerous than the Mexican police, here they act as they please and arrest anyone without a pretext.” In the meantime, his letters home talked of the struggles of finding work and political commentary.

In reality, much more was going on under the surface. Ernesto pretended in his letters to be pursuing an academic career and falsely claimed to be working on various research projects and pursuing professorships in various educational establishments. His letters up to July 1956 were those of a man with continued wanderlust, various bouts of casual jobbing, and thoughts of establishing a medical career. In truth he was preparing himself for Fidel Castro’s planned invasion and coup of Cuba. In his letter to his mother on 6th July 1956 from Miguel Schultz Prison, which he described as his “delightful mansion,” he admitted “I’ve spent much time stumbling around looking for my truth, having finding my way, and with a draught to perpetuate me, I feel I have closed the cycle”. He refers to his decision to join the cause and support Fidel Castro.

Ernesto in that letter of 6th July 1956 makes further admissions from Miguel Schultz Prison, in which he stated “over the past few months I have maintained the cover of saying I had a job as a professor, whereas in fact I have been dedicating myself to the physical training who must one day set foot again in Cuba”. Che mentions in that same letter Fidel Castro’s arrest, which implicated Ernesto himself thus ending up in prison. He further reveals, “I see my future tied to the Cuban Revolution.” So how did the two men meet and bond?

Ernesto's initial attempts at establishing contact with Castro were tentative, but he eventually met him through mutual associates. At first, on these occasions, Ernesto sat in silence and at a distance, offering little, as if he were in awe of Castro or intimidated by Castro’s overwhelming personality. It was in fact Hilda who asked Castro the bold questions about his exile. Ernesto at this point was far from the future right-hand man of the movement, but he realized that if he were going to make a mark on this world and make a name for himself, he would need Fidel Castro and to be part of his plans for the Cuban revolution.

The beginnings of a revolutionary

Ernesto committed himself wholeheartedly to the cause with a new zeal. His marriage became secondary to his new efforts. He applied strict daily discipline to his diet and gymnasium work. He also conditioned his mind with economic works, Mao and Soviet texts and regularly attended secret meetings of the Mexican Communist Party to discuss the situation in Latin America. All this was in preparation for Fidel’s Cuban assault plans. All this had to be clandestine as the FBI, CIA and Mexican authorities were always fast to swoop down on any communist activity. The danger no doubt appealed to the adventure-seeking Ernesto.

These efforts came to the attention of Castro, who rebuked his small group of forty fellow revolutionaries for not displaying the same zeal as Ernesto. Eventually his colleagues warmed to him and his disciplinarian ways, earning him a leadership title within the small ranks but that would take time, a lot of time. Ernesto immediately sought a remote and safe location to further develop training which he did successfully. He acquired a ranch in Chalco in Mexico. As he left to join his comrades there, he warned Hilda that he might not return.

Ernesto was still to be properly accepted by Castro’s group. He was still seen by this exclusive group as an interloper or a foreigner who had no business in Cuban affairs, much less organize them. He was seen as a scruffy oddball, too self-righteous and altogether disagreeable. Some commented on his lack of hygiene, in particular washing, but instead Ernesto was trying to condition himself and his colleagues for the harsh conditions of guerrilla warfare that would take place once they arrived in Cuba.  In one incident, a member refused to obey Ernesto's orders, and a court martial was instigated by Castro in his support for the man who had now been named by his colleagues as Che (Ernesto will now be referred to as Che).

Che carried on his routines with his characteristic discipline while Fidel Castro left to intensify funding and arms supplies from sympathizers in Cuba and the USA, but he was seized by the authorities in July 1956 and the whole operation looked as if it were about to be derailed... Hilda and other members were detained and charged with plotting a coup and assassination of Batista. Che was ordered by Castro to volunteer his arrest. The whole event made the national news in Mexico. Che was now coming to public prominence as a new article reported on a certain “Dr Guevara as an active member of the Instituto Intercambio Cultural Mexicano-Ruso” who was “the principal link between the Cuban plotters and certain communist organizations.”  These were serious charges and accusations, and Che was now facing the full legal and political backlash in the glare of the world’s media. He was no longer the vagabond in the background. Castro’s contacts had to arrange legal defense and representation and with that came media attention. Che then admitted his involvement with the Cuban revolutionary movement to his parents in the letter of 6th July (as detailed above). Guevara was interrogated several times as the authorities were now concerned over Che’s communist connections.

It gave his family cause for concern, rightfully so, but in a letter to his mother, who expressed worry, he simply replied “I am all the contrary of a Christ. I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other men dead…” he went on in a veiled rebuke of his mother’s natural concern “what terrifies me is your lack of comprehension in all of this and your advice about moderation, egotism, etc.”. It appears she had struck a nerve, but Ernesto, now Che, was fully focused.

Whilst incarcerated, Che did not acquit himself well with Castro. Che spoke too openly, carelessly, and too freely on Marxist theories and intentions that he held to his interrogators. He shared loudly his Marxist views on Latin America and the need for armed revolutionary struggle. Castro was furious with this unwanted attention and needless risk that could jeopardize his operation. He had previously denied publicly any association with communist movements and now this was being undermined by Che Guevara. Che's outspokenness was rumored to be a source of quiet frustration for Castro.

Meanwhile, Che started a series of hunger strikes whilst incarcerated. He was one of the last two of Castro’s group to be released. After his release, Che, along with Castro’s group of revolutionaries, went underground in Mexico to continue planning their assault on Cuba and Batista.

Cuba, Guerrilla Warfare and Revolution

The plans did not go well at first. The small band of men had to move around Mexico in a clandestine manner, out of view of the Mexican authorities, US and Cuban agents. Che had effectively left the marital home, warning Hilda again that he might not return. The next time the couple would meet was in 1959 after achieving victory in Cuba where Che would admit an affair and seek a divorce.

Meanwhile Castro had to overcome many financial and logistical problems while the team trained themselves. He needed money for a boat; he needed arms and more committed men. He only had forty at this time. After secretive visits to the USA, he secured $50,000, a boat and forty more men. He would eventually assault Cuba with an initial force of eighty-two men. The landings needed to be coordinated with planned uprisings in Cuba.

In November 1956, with the odds stacked against them, Castro, Che and the rest of the eighty-two men embarked for Cuba. Of those men, only twenty-two remained after most were killed almost immediately in the early stage of the assault, which was going unfavorably for Castro and favorably for Batista. The rebels sought refuge in the mountains.

Morale was low, and while they took stock and sought refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains under miserable conditions, Che took a different approach to winning over hearts and minds. This is where his intellect was of better use than his weakened physical situation aggravated by asthma and mosquito infection. His next actions secured his promotion and elevation in the ranks. During his time in the mountains, he lived among the poor subsistence farmers. The living conditions were very grim for everyone: there were no schools, no electricity, minimal access to healthcare, and many of the adults were illiterate. Che suggested an alternative but longer path to win over the population: a strategy of “competence, diplomacy and patience".

Che set up infrastructure to serve the needs of the local population and the guerrillas. He set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, and organized schools to teach illiterate campesinos to read and write. Alongside this makeshift community, he established health clinics, workshops to teach military tactics, and a newspaper to disseminate information. Che was promoted by Castro to the rank of Comandante of a second army column. Che would acquit himself well in the battles that were to come.

Che the Comandante

Although in combat conditions, Che was never far from his intellectual pursuits. It was something he demanded of his men. An educated guerrilla force was more effective than an illiterate one. He expected higher standards of everyone, which was certainly a trait he displayed consistently in his many roles. He was also known for his ruthlessness and had no compunction in executing traitors, a matter that is still hotly debated by historians today as to whether he was a tyrant or not.

Castro on Comandante Guevara

Castro described Guevara as intelligent, daring, and an exemplary leader who "had great moral authority over his troops” but also a man who took too many risks that bordered on a "tendency toward foolhardiness". The two in public always appeared united, but Che had attracted Castro's disapproval many times, and this would not be the last. We will assess in the final article whether Castro saw him in the post-revolutionary period as a liability.

Che and Guerrilla Warfare

Che took part in a number of battles in the two years up to victory. Not all the battles Che participated in will be recounted, but one in particular stands out. In July 1958, Guevara played a critical role in the Battle of Las Mercedes. His column halted an attacking force of 1,500 men called up by Batista's General Cantillo, whose mission was to surround and destroy Castro's forces. It involved a series of hit-and-run tactics that some military experts praise as evidence of Che's ingenuity. It was a tactic he utilized successfully multiple times. It became an essential part of his book Guerrilla Warfare, published in 1961.

The war was approaching its end. In December 1958, one of the final battles required Che to take the Las Villas province, dividing the island and its opposing forces. Using his guerrilla tactics, he soon took control of the area except the capital, Santa Clara, which required a new approach, as Che was outnumbered by government forces ten to one. He was successful in taking the capital.

On 2nd January 1959, Che entered Havana to take control of the capital. Castro followed some days afterward. This would be the last occasion Che would be successful in combat or in any theatre he became involved in. Castro had won the war, Batista fled, and Che had now achieved iconic status.

Conclusion

In 1959, Che was in the spotlight on the international stage. He had also fallen for Aleida March, a fellow revolutionary he had fought alongside, and was divorced from Hilda soon after. He was now firmly ensconced in a number of government roles to settle Cuba's internal affairs and help complete its revolution. This, however, was not enough. He wanted a stage to himself. His ideas and dreams had grown.

The next article will finish on the post-revolutionary life, a critique of Che's character, his ideas, successes and failures.

Now, read the final part on Che Guevara later years here.

And listen to our podcast on Fidel Castro here.

Sources

I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervour – Ernesto Che Guevara – Collected letters 1947-1967 – Penguin Modern Classics

The Motorcycle Diaries – Che Guevara – 1995 -Fourth Estate Paper Backs

Che Guevara – A Revolutionary Life – Jon Lee Anderson – Penguin – 1997

Back on the Road – A Journey into Central America - Che Guevara – 2000 – Vintage Uk

Guerrilla Warfare – Che Guevara – 1961 – Souvenir Press

Che Guevara: Life Before Becoming Che and a Marxist Revolutionary

In the first of three articles we will focus on the life of one of South America’s most famous historical personalities, Ernesto Guevara, who later became more widely known as the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. He was, and remains, a polemic figure in the political arena, every bit as divisive now as during his time in the Cuban Revolution and the Cold War of the 1960s. He has also become an unlikely fashion icon, his face appearing on millions of T-shirts worn by generation after generation. He has been portrayed on screen by famous actors, most notably Omar Sharif and Benicio Del Toro. His impact and legacy have divided students of history and politics alike, who view him as either a symbol of freedom or an oppressive, communist-driven tyrant. Some laud his achievements; others argue that his legend is largely a construction of propaganda and myth.

Che’s revolutionary period will be covered in a later article, but what of his life before that? We will begin with his formative years, up to the point where he set out on his first extensive travels — the journey made famous in the book “The Motorcycle Diaries.” The young man you will read about below appears very different from the figure who would later accompany Castro in the Cuban Revolution.

Steve Prout explains.

Ernesto Guevara (on the right) and Alberto Granado (left) on the "Mambo-Tango" raft on the Amazon River in 1952. Source: Museo Che Guevara, public domain, available here.

Early family life

Che Guevara was officially born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna on June 14, 1928 in Argentina. He was in fact born a month earlier, in May, but because his parents were not yet married, they persuaded a family doctor to falsify the birth certificate to spare the family social stigma. He was raised in an upper middle-class family. His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was, like Che, an interesting character in his own right. Politically he leant to the left and took part in various political demonstrations. Che would later admit in his memoirs that he had a “combative” relationship with him. Ernesto Senior was highly educated and trained as an engineer, attending university but never graduating. He was also restless, embarking on a string of risky and largely unsuccessful business ventures: a yacht-building company, several construction businesses and a 500-acre yerba mate plantation on the Rio Paraná in Misiones, near the Argentine border with Paraguay. With few exceptions his ventures failed, leaving the family’s finances in a precarious position.

Che’s mother was Celia de la Serna, and her relationship with Ernesto Senior came with its share of challenges. The couple’s intended union did not, at first, get the approval of Celia’s family, who saw Ernesto Senior as unreliable and unsuitable as a husband. Their misgivings were not helped by Celia’s appeals for access to her inheritance to fund Ernesto’s ventures, which would in time prove ruinous to her own finances. They saw Ernesto Senior as a dilettante lacking genuine intentions. The family eventually gave in after the couple threatened to elope. To add to the drama, what the family did not know was that Celia, still unmarried, was already pregnant with young Ernesto.

Then, in June (officially) — or, more truthfully, May 1928 — young Ernesto, the future Che, was born. From early childhood he was sickly, plagued by asthma, a condition that would trouble him throughout his life. It did not stop him from throwing himself into school sports, often to his own detriment. This was, in fact, his attitude throughout his life: he would push on with whatever path he was on, regardless.

Young Ernesto was an avid reader, working his way through a wide range of genres when he was not throwing himself into physical pursuits ill-suited to an asthmatic, such as rugby. As a pupil he did not particularly stand out: his school grades in 1938, aged nine, were deemed simply “satisfactory”. He was an attention-seeker, often carrying out ridiculous pranks — drinking writing ink, eating chalk, or playing matador with a ram. He also took part in his father’s political demonstrations through the 1930s and 1940s.

When he was eleven years old, young Ernesto became involved in his father’s pressure group, Acción Argentina. According to his father, Che spent “all the free time he had outside his playtime and studies collaborating with us.” What exactly young Ernesto did, and the extent of his involvement, is unclear. The 1930s were a turbulent time in Europe and the Far East, and some of that turbulence reached South America. His father was firmly on the side of the anti-fascist movement, although the organisation itself was largely ineffective; Ernesto only protested at a safe distance, and it gained little traction on any single cause. Its main focus was the fear of Nazi infiltration on the South American continent. Events in the Spanish Civil War also divided Argentine opinion. Ernesto Senior himself was a staunch supporter of the Spanish Republicans against Franco, and later of the Allied cause against the Axis in the Second World War. As far as young Ernesto was concerned, however, he could detach himself from these causes as easily as he had become involved. For now, his interest in politics and political ideals lay deeply dormant.

His father, to quote one authority on Che’s family, had “an inescapable sense of Walter Mitty in him” and “desperately wished for a life of adventure and travelling.” He was full of empty boasts. On one occasion he claimed he would take up arms for Paraguay in the Chaco War with Bolivia (1932–35), but nothing came of it. The same was true of his supposed intention to intervene in the Spanish Civil War.

Ernesto Guevara – the student years

For now, young Ernesto concerned himself with other distractions. He was a voracious reader, and reading consumed much of his free time. His reading material was wide-ranging and advanced for his age, including works by Freud, Dumas and other heavyweight authors. His other passion in his formative years was sport. He joined a rugby team organised by Alberto Granado — an older friend, and his future travelling companion — who at first doubted Ernesto’s physical capability. He was an unlikely pick for a trial: not “robust”, and with “very thin arms”. In this period, young Che’s political activities remained minimal, apart from one incident involving Granado and a brief stint of Nazi-hunting in Argentina.

In November 1943, Alberto was arrested at a student demonstration by Argentina’s new authoritarian regime. General Pedro Ramírez had taken oppressive measures to silence any opposition, and Alberto was part of a growing protest movement. He was quickly thrown into a local jail, where young Ernesto visited him. Alberto, then aged twenty-one, asked Ernesto, then fifteen, to join his cause. Ernesto declined to take part in a march, regarding it as futile; he added that he would only join if he were given a gun, since he considered any other form of protest pointless. His political views were inconsistent, swinging between indifference and a kind of latent extremism. The two friends clearly had their political differences, but it did not harm the friendship.

While young Ernesto kept up his reading and pushed through his asthma with all kinds of sporting challenges, the wider political landscape was shifting. In the post-war period, Juan Perón was making his presence felt in Argentina under President Edelmiro Farrell, whose regime combined suspected Nazi sympathies (it later offered refuge to high-ranking Nazi war criminals) with authoritarian control. Ernesto’s family were anti-Peronist, and young Ernesto adopted the same outlook, continuing his father’s amateur Nazi-hunting with a group of old school friends. His father curiously warned him of the risks, yet Ernesto kept at it — though he “was far short of active militancy”, and his interest soon petered out. The regime remained controversial, but Che himself would later say, “I had no social preoccupations in my adolescence and no participation in the political or student struggles in Argentina.” For now, he had the normal teenage pursuits to occupy him: sport, study and, of course, the opposite sex. His distractions were everywhere except in politics.

Che - philosopher, engineer, medical student, traveller

As the war ended, Ernesto, now eighteen, developed a new interest in writing and philosophy. At one point he even began compiling his own philosophical dictionary, which he intended for publication. The first draft ran to 165 pages, and he would continue working on it over the next ten years. During this period his reading became more varied, and he mixed with a social circle of like-minded people on an intellectual and academic path; he was, in many ways, the quintessential student.

In 1946, as Perón took control of Argentina, Ernesto Jr. turned eighteen. It was a time of mixed personal fortunes. Still apolitical, Ernesto took his first job, although he had not yet finished his studies and intended to go further. His father arranged for him to attend a course in soil analysis, which opened a door into the road-construction business. At that point Ernesto had excelled in mathematics and the sciences and was thinking of a career in engineering. The job was a stop-gap for an undecided teenager; in the meantime, it gave him the money to enjoy his teenage years.

At home things were not so bright. The family had run into financial difficulties: Ernesto Senior had been forced to sell his plantation, and a building business he had entered had failed. With the family finances in a parlous state, they sold off their remaining assets and relocated to Buenos Aires. In the meantime, young Ernesto’s parents decided to separate. While all this was happening, young Ernesto’s grandmother, to whom he was close, died. In his sister’s words, he was so grief-stricken it “must have been one of the great sadnesses of his life.”

Amid all this turmoil, Ernesto decided on another change of career. He abandoned engineering and turned instead to medicine, enrolling at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires. A number of reasons have been suggested for the switch. One is that he was looking for something meaningful after the helplessness he had felt following his grandmother’s death. Some put it down to his frustration at being unable to cure his own debilitating asthma. Others — more plausibly — trace it to his restless, indecisive temperament. This last reading is supported by his own words: he “dreamed of becoming a famous researcher…of working indefatigably to find something that would be definitively placed at the disposition of humanity”, while elsewhere he spoke of seeking a “personal triumph”. He seemed driven, in part, by ego and a desire for prominence.

Within his university circle, he was considered an oddball, an eccentric who ignored the latest fashions and was often deliberately scruffy in his appearance. He was socially awkward and a clumsy dancer — very different from the combative, confident speaker of his later political years.

In between his studies, in 1950, he tried — unsuccessfully — to set himself up as an entrepreneur, first attempting to manufacture a pesticide and then, with a friend, selling second-hand goods. Despite his intelligence, he lacked any real business acumen. That same year, he made a long solo trip around northern Argentina on a bicycle fitted with a small motor, covering over 2,000 miles before returning to his studies. The trip was largely uneventful, but it gave him a taste for further travel. He still had two years of his degree to complete, but true to form his interest was once again beginning to wane.

Of course, going into every minor detail, every failed adventure, failed relationship and passing observation would bloat this article, dilute its value, and miss the main points. The interest lies in seeing Ernesto Guevara’s life before he became that cultural yet polemic icon. The Che we know was many things by this stage, but he was far from a revolutionary. He was, in fact, an unsettled, erratic and indecisive young man, in a family that was itself anything but settled. Up to this point he had been an aspiring philosopher, engineer, entrepreneur and no doubt many other things; but, much like his father, he was unsuccessful in all of them, largely through loss of interest. Even his political dalliances suffered the same indifferent fate. Young Ernesto wanted more — he just did not yet know what “more” was.

Young Ernesto was about to embark on the first of two great travelling adventures around South America. While the first trip was impactful, the second trip would prove career-defining and was published in book form some years later. For now, young Ernesto had only one expectation from life: to study, travel and enjoy himself. Revolution and politics were the furthest thing from his mind. And so, in January 1952, the journey that became “The Motorcycle Diaries”, with his friend Alberto Granado, began.

Now read part 2 on Che’s revolutionary years in the 1950s here.

What do you think of Che Guevara? Let us know below.

Sources

I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervour – Ernesto Che Guevara – Collected letters 1947-1967 – Penguin Modern Classics

The Motorcycle Diaries – Che Guevara – 1995 -Fourth Estate Paper Backs

Che Guevara – A Revolutionary Life – Jon Lee Anderson – Penguin - 1997