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Che Guevara Archive
Brief Biography
Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna
Che
Guevara, 1928-1967
Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader
At two years old he developed asthma from which he suffered all his
life, and his family moved to the drier climate of Alta Gracia (Cordoba)
where his health did not improve. Primary education at home, mostly
by his  mother,
Celia de la Serna. He early became a voracious reader of Marx, Engels
and Freud which all were available in his father's library, it is
probable that he had read some of their works before he went to secondary
school (1941), the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes, Cordoba, where he
excelled only in literature and sports. At home he was impressed by
the Spanish Civil War refugees and by the long series of squalid political
crises in Argentina which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship
of Juan Peron, to whom the Guevara de la Sernas were opposed. These
events and influences inculcated in the young Guevara a contempt for
the pantomime of parliamentary democracy, and a hatred of military
politicians and the army, the capitalist oligarchy, and above all
the U.S. dollar/ imperialism. Yet although his parents, notably his
mother, were anti-Peronist activists, he took no part in revolutionary
student movements and showed little interest in politics at Buenos
Aires University (1947) where he studied medicine, first with a view
to understanding his own disease, later becoming more interested in
leprosy.
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In 1949 he made the first of his long journeys, exploring northern
Argentina on a bicycle, and for the first time coming into contact
with the very poor and the remnants of the Indian tribes. In 1951,
after taking his penultimate exams, he made a much longer journey,
accompanied by a friend, and earning his living by casual labor as
he went : he visited southern Argentina, Chile, where he met Salvador
Allende, Peru, where he worked for some weeks in the San Pablo leprosarium,
Colombia at the time of La Violencia, and where he was arrested but
soon released, Venezuela, and Miami. He returned home for his finals
sure of only one thing, that he did not want to become a middle-class
general practitioner. He qualified, specializing in dermatology, and
went to La Paz, Bolivia, during the National Revolution which he condemned
as opportunist. From there he went to Guatemala, earning his living
by writing travel-cum-archaeological articles about Inca and Maya
ruins. He reached Guatemala during the socialist Arbenz presidency;
although he was by now a Marxist, well read in Lenin, he refused to
join the Communist Party, though this meant losing the chance of government
medical appointment, and he was penniless and n rags. He lived with
Hilda Gadea, a Marxist of Indian stock who forwarded his political
education, looked after him, and introduced him to Nico Lopez, one
of Fidel Castro's lieutenants. In Guatemala he saw the CIA at work
as the principal agents of counterrevolution and was confirmed in
his view that Revolution could be made only be armed insurrection.
When Arbenz fell, Guevara went to Mexico City (September 1954) where
he worked in the General Hospital. Hilda Gadea and Nico Lopez joined
him, and he met and was charmed by Raul and Fidel Castro, then political
emigres, and realized that in Fidel he had found the leader he was
seeking.
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He joined other Castro followers at the farm where the Cuban revolutionaries
were being given a tough commando course of professional training
in guerrilla warfare by the Spanish Republican Army captain, Alberto
Bayo, author of Ciento cincueto preguntas a un guerrilleo, Havana
1959. Bayo drew not only on his own experience but on the guerrilla
teachings of Mao Tse-tung, and 'Che', as he was now called (it means
chum or  buddy
and is Italian origin), became his star pupil and was made a leader
of the class. The war games at the farm attracted police attention;
all the Cubans and Che were arrested, but released a month later (June
1956). When they invaded Cuba, Che went with them, first as doctor,
soon as a Commandante of the revolutionary army of barbutos. He was
the most aggressive, clever and successful of the guerrilla officers,
and the most earnest in giving his men a Lenist education: he was
also a ruthless disciplinarian who unhesitatingly shot defectors,
as later he got a reputation for cold-blooded cruelty in the mass
execution of recalcitrant supporters of the defeated president Batista.
At the triumph of the Revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel
Castro in the new government of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible
for pushing Castro towards communism, but a communism which was independent
of the orthodox, Moscow-style communism of some of their colleagues.
Che organized and directed the Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria
to administer the new agrarian laws expropriating the large land holders;
ran its Department of Industries; was appointed President of the National
Bank of Cuba; forced non-communist out of the government and key posts
and acting obstinately against the advise of two eminent French Marxist
economists who were called in by Fidel Castro and who wanted Che to
advance much more slowly and of the Soviet advisers, he pushed the
Cuban economy so fast into total Communism, and into crop and production
diversification, that he temporarily ruined it.
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In 1959 he married Aledia March and together they visited Egypt, India,
Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. Back in Cuba, as Minister
for Industry he signed (February 1960) a trade pact with the USSR,
which freed the Cuban sugar industry from dependence on the teeth
of the U.S. market; in it is foreshadowing his failure in the Congo
and Bolivia, in an axiom which proved to be hopelessly misleading;
' It is not always necessary to wait until the conditions for revolution
exist: the instructional focus can create them.' And, with Mao Tse-tung,
he believed that the countryside must bring the revolution to the
town in predominately peasant countries. Also at this time, he glorified
his own kind of communist philosophy. (Published later in the Socialism
and Man in Cuba, March 12 March 1965). It can be summed up in him
' Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces,
without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity.'
He was moving away from "Moscow", towards Mao, and beyond
into what is essentially the old idealistic, Anarchism. His formal
breach with the Soviet Communist came when, addressing the Organization
for Afro-Asian Solidarity at Algiers (February 1965) he charged the
USSR with being a 'tacit accomplice of imperialism' by not trading
exclusively with the Communist bloc and by not giving underdeveloped
socialist countries aid without any thought of return. He also attacked
the  Soviet
government for its policy of coexistence; and for Revisionism. He
initiated the Tricontiental Conference to realize a program of revolutionary,
insurrectionary, guerrilla cooperation in Africa, Asia and South America.
On the other hand, after a halfhearted attempt to come to some kind
of terms with the U.S.A., he was also attacking the North Americas,
at the UN as Cuba's representative there, for their greedy and merciless
imperialist activity in Latin America.
Che's intransigence towards both capitalist and communist establishment
forced Castro to drop him (1965), not officially, but in practice.
For some months even his whereabouts were a secret and his death was
widely rumored: he was in various African countries, notably the Congo
surveying the possibilities of turning the Kinshasa rebellion into
a Communist revolution, by Cuban-style guerrilla tactics. He returned
to Cuba to train volunteers for that project, and took a force of
120 Cubans to the Congo. His men fought well, but the Kinshasa rebels
did not, they were useless against the Belgian mercenaries and by
autumn 1965 Che had to advise Castro to withdraw Cuban aid.
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Che's final revolutionary adventure was in Bolivia: he grossly misjudged
the revolutionary potential of that country with disastrous consequences.
The attempt ended in his being captured by a Bolivian army unit and
shot a day later.
Because of his wild, romantic appearance, his dashing style, his intransigence
in refusing to kowtow to any kind of establishment however communist,
his contempt for mere reformism, and his dedication to violent, flamboyant
action, Che became a legend and an idol for the revolutionary- and
even the merely discontented- youth of the later 1960s and early 70's
a focus for the kind of desperate revolutionary action which seemed
to millions of young people the only hope of destroying the world
of bourgeois industrial capitalism and communism.
Note: Che's remains were found near Vallegrande, Bolivia at the end
of June 1997. His remains were identified and were returned to Cuba.
From A Dictionary of Modern Revolution, written by Edward
Hyams
Copyright 1973, published by Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc.
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