Che Guevara

On June 12, 1955, the underground "July 26 Movement" was established, led by Fidel Castro. In July 1955, to prepare an armed uprising in Cuba, he traveled to Mexico, where he met the Argentine Ernesto Guevara.

Ernesto Guevara (1928–1967) was born on June 14, 1928, in the Argentine city of Rosario, into the family of an architect with Irish roots. The father of the future revolutionary sympathized with leftist forces and socialized extensively with Spanish Republicans living in Argentina who had left Spain after their defeat in the war against the Francoists. From childhood, Ernesto suffered from bronchial asthma. Despite his illness, he was active in sports. He was also a passionate reader, studying the works of philosophers and politicians — Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kropotkin, and Bakunin. Guevara loved chess, and it is said that through chess he became interested in Cuba, since one of the world's most famous chess players was the Cuban José Raúl Capablanca. In 1946, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Buenos Aires. As a sailor on a ship in 1950, he visited British Guiana (Guyana since 1966) and Trinidad. In 1952 and 1954, he made two journeys across Latin America. In 1954, Ernesto Guevara joined the supporters of President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, who sought to limit the interests of American monopolies and nationalized the lands of the American United Fruit Company. Árbenz was overthrown in a coup organized by the CIA. Ernesto Guevara left for Mexico, where he worked for two years as a doctor at the Institute of Cardiology. It was in Mexico that he met Fidel Castro, who was preparing a revolutionary action in Cuba.

Later, Fidel admitted that the Argentine Guevara had made a strong impression on him. While Castro himself did not hold a clear political position at the time, Guevara was a convinced Marxist who could defend his views in the most challenging debates.

In December 1956, he took part in the landing from the yacht Granma together with Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos. The story of this landing is tragic. Nearly half of the 82 members of the group perished, while the remaining small detachment managed to hide in the Sierra Maestra mountains. But it was from this moment that the Cuban Revolution began, culminating in victory in January 1959.

Ernesto Guevara received the nickname "Che" for his habit of using this word in his speech. After the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara became president of the National Bank of Cuba and then Minister of Industry of the Island of Freedom. Intelligent, educated, and erudite, he proved himself in these positions as a competent professional who thoroughly mastered the intricacies of the work entrusted to him. But he missed the romance of revolutionary struggle. In April 1965, Che Guevara, famous and popular in Cuba, left all his posts and went to Africa, where he joined the revolutionary struggle in the Congo. However, due to internal disagreements with local revolutionaries, he went to Bolivia, where at the head of a guerrilla detachment in 1966 he began the fight against the local pro-American regime.

He failed to account for several factors. The local population did not particularly support the guerrillas, and the Bolivian authorities, alarmed by the appearance of such an iconic figure, requested help from the Americans. CIA special agents and forces from Latin American countries with dictatorial regimes were deployed to Bolivia. The CIA actively searched for the hideout of the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (the name under which Guevara's detachment operated). Having received information from their agent, Bolivian special forces surrounded the camp and attacked. Che Guevara was wounded and captured. To this day, it remains unknown who in the Bolivian leadership gave the order for his execution. Che Guevara's hands were amputated as material evidence of his murder. Che Guevara's death turned him into a saintly figure for the local inhabitants, who had initially been wary of him. The National Liberation Army of Bolivia continued the resistance, and in 1978, its members were able to transition to legal political struggle. In October 1997, the remains of Che and his comrades were transported to Cuba and solemnly interred in a mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, where Guevara's detachment had won one of the greatest victories during the Cuban Revolution.