
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader who became a major leader of the Cuban Revolution. He became one of the most famous military theorists in history, shaping the concept of 20th century guerrilla warfare with his foco theory and his military tactics. He was killed by the Bolivian government in 1967 while attempting to overthrow Rene Barrientos' US-backed dictatorship.
Biography[]
Ernesto Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina on 14 June 1928, and he initially worked as a physician. Guevara travelled throughout South America while he was a medical student, and he was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed. He became a revolutionary following the CIA-conducted overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's left-wing regime in Guatemala in 1954, of which he was a member. He fled to Mexico and joined Fidel Castro, whom he helped overthrow Fulgencio Batista's Cuban regime in 1959. After serving as Minister of Industries from 1961 to 1965, he went to Bolivia in an attempt to export the Cuban Revolution to other Latin American countries. However, he failed and was captured and executed by Bolivian government forces. Guevara's writings, and especially his confident and aggressive communism which was hostile to the United States, but also independent from the Soviet Union, inspired a generation of radicals and student leaders in the 1960s and 1970s.