There are few figures in the modern world who can compete with Ernesto Che Guevara in worldwide popularity. He turned into a symbol of the Revolution, a symbol of the fight against any lies and injustice. And here is the paradox - Che Guevara, who was an example of dedication and selflessness, now brings huge profits to businessmen who make money from his image. Souvenirs with portraits of the Comandante, T-shirts, baseball caps, bags, restaurants named after him. Che is fashionable and stylish, and even pop music figures consider it their duty to play up his rebellious image.

Iron character

The real, living Ernesto Che Guevara would probably have treated this with his usual irony. During his life, he did not care about ranks, regalia and popularity - he considered his main task to be helping the disadvantaged and powerless.

Ernesto Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in the Argentine city of Rosario, in the family of an architect with Irish roots. Ernesto Guevara Lynch And Celia de la Serna la Llosa, who had Spanish roots.

Little Tete had four brothers and sisters, and his parents did everything to raise them as worthy people. Ernesto himself and all his brothers and sisters received higher education.

The father of the future revolutionary sympathized with leftist forces, and communicated a lot with the Republican Spaniards living in Argentina, who left their homeland after the defeat in the civil war with the Francoists. Ernesto heard the conversations of the Spanish emigrants with his father, and his future political views began to take shape even then.

Not everyone knows, but the fiery revolutionary Che Guevara suffered all his life from a serious chronic illness - bronchial asthma, which is why he was always forced to carry an inhaler with him.

But Ernesto was distinguished by his strong character from childhood - despite his illness, he was involved in football, rugby, equestrian sports and other sports. Che Guevara also loved to read in his youth; fortunately, his parents had an extensive library. Ernesto began with adventures, then his reading became more and more serious - classics of world literature, works of philosophers and politicians, including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kropotkin, Bakunin.

Che Guevara loved chess very much, and it was thanks to them that he became interested in Cuba - when Ernesto was 11 years old, when the ex-world champion Cuban came to Argentina Jose Raul Capablanca.

Ernesto Che Guevara fishing. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Student - traveler

In his youth, Ernesto Guevara did not think about becoming a revolutionary, although he firmly knew that he wanted to help people. In 1946, he entered the medical faculty of the National University of Buenos Aires.

Ernesto not only studied, but also traveled, trying to learn more about the world. In 1950, he visited Trinidad and British Guiana as a sailor on an oil tanker.

Ernesto Guevara's views were greatly influenced by two trips to Latin America, made in 1952 and 1954. Poverty and complete lack of rights of the common people against the background of the wealth of the elite - that’s what caught the young doctor’s eye. Latin America bore the unofficial title of “US backyard,” where the country’s intelligence services contributed to the establishment of military dictatorships that protected the interests of large American corporations.

During his second trip, the young doctor (graduated in 1953) Ernesto Guevara in Guatemala joins the supporters President Jacobo Arbenz, who pursued a policy independent of the United States by nationalizing the lands of the American agricultural company United Fruit Company. However, Arbenz was overthrown in a coup organized by the US CIA.

Nevertheless, Guevara’s activities in Guatemala were appreciated by both friends and enemies - he was included in the list of “dangerous communists of Guatemala to be eliminated.”

The revolution is calling

Ernesto Guevara went to Mexico, where he worked as a doctor at the Institute of Cardiology for two years. In Mexico he met Fidel Castro, who was preparing a revolutionary action in Cuba.

Fidel later admitted that the Argentinean Guevara made a strong impression on him. If Castro himself by that time did not take a clear political position, Guevara was a convinced Marxist who knew how to defend his views in the most difficult discussions.

Ernesto Guevara joined Castro's group preparing for the landing in Cuba, having finally decided on his future - he preferred the dangers of the revolutionary struggle to a calm career as a doctor.

Despite the preparations, the landing of revolutionaries in Cuba in December 1956 turned into a real nightmare. The Granma yacht turned out to be a fragile little vessel, but the rebels simply did not have the money for anything more serious. In addition, it turned out that out of 82 members of the group, only a few people were not susceptible to seasickness. And finally, at the landing site, the detachment was waiting for a 35,000-strong group of troops of the dictator of Cuba Batista, which had tanks, coast guard ships and aircraft.

As a result, half of the group died in the first battles, and more than twenty people were captured. Only a small group broke through to the Sierra Maestra mountains, which became a refuge for the revolutionaries, including Ernesto Guevara.

However, it was with this group that the Cuban Revolution began, ending in victory in January 1959.

In Cuba. Photo: AiF/Pavel Prokopov

Che

Since June 1957, Ernesto Guevara became the commander of one of the formations of the revolutionary army, which was joined by more and more Cubans - the fourth column.

The soldiers noted that Commander Guevara always knew how to correctly influence soldiers in difficult moments, sometimes being cruel in his words, but never humiliating his subordinates.

The revolutionary soldiers were amazed - suffering from bouts of illness, Che Guevara marched along with the others, as a doctor treated the wounded, and shared his last food with the hungry.

The nickname “Che” was given to Ernesto Guevara in Cuba for his habit of using this word in speech. According to one version, Guevara used “che” in conversation as an analogue of the Russian “hear.” According to another, the address “che” in Argentine slang meant “buddy” - this is how Commander Guevara addressed the sentries while going around the posts.

One way or another, Ernesto Guevara went down in history as Comandante Che Guevara.

Continuing the fight

After the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara became President of the National Bank of Cuba, and then Minister of Industry of Liberty Island. The idea that Che Guevara was illiterate and played the role of a “wedding general” in these positions is deeply erroneous - the intelligent and educated Che showed himself to be a competent professional who thoroughly delved into the intricacies of the assigned work.

The problem was rather in internal feelings - if Castro and his comrades, having achieved victory in Cuba, saw the task in the state building of their homeland, then the Argentinean Che Guevara sought to continue the revolutionary struggle in other parts of the globe.

In April 1965, Che Guevara, by that time a well-known and popular Cuban politician throughout the world, left all his posts, wrote a farewell letter, and left for Africa, where he joined the revolutionary struggle in the Congo. However, due to disagreements with local revolutionaries and unfavorable conditions, he soon went to Bolivia, where in 1966, at the head of a detachment, he began a guerrilla struggle against the local pro-American regime.

The fearless Che did not take into account two things - unlike Cuba, the local population in Bolivia at that time did not support the revolutionaries. In addition, the Bolivian authorities, frightened by the appearance of Che Guevara in their area, requested help from the United States.

A real hunt began for Che. Special detachments from almost all of the then dictatorial regimes in Latin America were deployed to Bolivia. CIA special agents were actively searching for the hiding place of the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (under this name the detachment of Che Guevara operated).

Death of the Comandante

In August-September 1967, the partisans suffered serious losses. Che, however, remained himself even in these conditions - despite asthma attacks, he encouraged his comrades and provided medical assistance to both them and the captured soldiers of the Bolivian army, whom he then freed.

At the beginning of October, the informant Ciro Bustosa gave government troops the location of Che Guevara's detachment. On October 8, 1967, special forces surrounded and attacked a camp in the Yuro Gorge area. In a bloody battle, Che was wounded, his rifle was smashed by a bullet, but the special forces managed to capture him only when the pistol ran out of cartridges.

The wounded Che Guevara was taken to the village school building in the town of La Higuera. Approaching the building, the revolutionary drew attention to the wounded soldiers of the Bolivian army and offered to help them as a doctor, but was refused.

On the night of October 8-9, Che Guevara was kept in a school building, and the authorities feverishly decided what to do with the revolutionary. It is still unclear where the order to execute came from - officially there was a signature under it head of the military government Rene Ortunho, however, he himself maintained all his life that he did not actually make such a decision. The Bolivian authorities negotiated with the US CIA headquarters in Langley, and the execution order may have been given by the top leadership of the United States.

The soldiers chose the direct executor among themselves using a straw drawn Sergeant Mario Teran.

When Teran entered the room where Che Guevara was, he already knew about his fate. Calmly standing in front of the executioner, Che Guevara briefly said to Terana, whose hands, according to eyewitnesses, were shaking:

Shoot, coward, you will kill the man!

A shot rang out, ending the life of the revolutionary.

Forever Alive

Che Guevara's hands were amputated as evidence of his murder. The body was put on public display for residents and the press in the village of Vallegrande.

And then something happened that the executioners clearly did not expect. Bolivian peasants, previously wary of Che, looking at the body of the defeated revolutionary who sacrificed his life in the struggle for a better life for them, saw in him a resemblance to the crucified Christ.

After a short period of time, the deceased Che became a saint for local residents, to whom they turn with prayers, asking for help. The leftist movement in Bolivia has received a noticeable boost. The National Liberation Army of Bolivia continued to fight after the death of Che until 1978, when its members switched to political activity in a legal position. The fight started by Che will continue, and in 2005 he will win the elections in Bolivia leader of the Movement Towards Socialism party Evo Morales.

Che Guevara's body was buried secretly, and only in 1997, General Mario Vargas Salinas, a participant in the execution of the revolutionary, said that the remains were located under the runway of the airfield in Vallegrande.

In October 1997, the remains of Che and his comrades were transported to Cuba and solemnly buried in a mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, where Che's detachment won one of the largest victories during the Cuban Revolution.

Defeated in battle, Che conquered death, becoming the eternal symbol of the Revolution. The commander himself, in the most difficult days, had no doubt about the victory of his cause: “My defeat will not mean that it was impossible to win. Many have failed in their efforts to reach the summit of Everest, and in the end Everest was defeated.”

Ernesto Guevara was born on June 14, 1927 in one of the largest cities. The famous prefix “Che” began to be used much later. With its help, while living in Cuba, the revolutionary emphasized his own Argentine origin. "Che" is a reference to the interjection. It is a popular title in Ernesto's homeland.

Childhood and interests

Guevara's father was an architect, his mother was a girl from a family of planters. The family moved several times. The future Comandante Che Guevara graduated from college in Cordoba, and received his higher education in Buenos Aires. The young man decided to become a doctor. By profession he was a surgeon and dermatologist.

Already an early biography of Ernesto Che Guevara shows how extraordinary his personality was. The young man was interested not only in medicine, but also in numerous humanities. His reading range consisted of the works of the most famous writers: Verne, Hugo, Dumas, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. The revolutionary's socialist views were shaped by the works of Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin and other left-wing theorists.

A little-known fact that distinguished the biography of Ernesto Che Guevara is that he knew French perfectly. In addition, he loved poetry and knew the works of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Lorca by heart. In Bolivia, where the revolutionary died, he carried a notebook with his favorite poems in his backpack.

On the roads of America

Guevara's first independent trip outside of Argentina dates back to 1950, when he worked part-time on a cargo ship and visited British Guiana and Trinidad. The Argentine loved bicycles and mopeds. The next voyage covered Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. In the future, the partisan biography of Ernesto Che Guevara will be full of many such expeditions. In his early youth, he traveled to neighboring countries to get to know the world better and gain fresh impressions.

Guevara's partner on one of his travels was the doctor of biochemistry Alberto Granado. Together with him, the Argentine doctor visited leper colonies in Latin American countries. The couple also visited the ruins of several ancient Indian cities (the revolutionary was always keenly interested in the history of the indigenous population of the New World). When Ernesto was traveling in Colombia, civil war began there. By chance, he even visited Florida. A few years later, Che, as a symbol of the “export of revolutions,” would become one of the main opponents of the White House administration.

In Guatemala

In 1953, the future leader Ernesto Che Guevara, during a break between two major trips to Latin America, defended his thesis on the study of allergies. Having become a surgeon, the young man decided to move to Venezuela and work in a leper colony there. However, on the way to Caracas, one of his fellow travelers persuaded Guevara to go to Guatemala.

The traveler found himself in the Central American republic on the eve of the invasion of the Nicaraguan army, organized by the CIA. Cities in Guatemala were bombed and Socialist President Jacobo Arbenz relinquished power. The new head of state, Castillo Armas, was pro-American and began repressions against supporters of leftist ideas living in the country.

In Guatemala, the biography of Ernesto Che Guevara was for the first time directly related to the war. The Argentine helped the defenders of the overthrown regime transport weapons and participated in extinguishing fires during air raids. When the socialists suffered a final defeat, Guevara's name was included in the lists of people who were awaiting repression. Ernesto managed to take refuge in the embassy of his native Argentina, where he found himself under diplomatic protection. From there he moved to Mexico City in September 1954.

Meet the Cuban revolutionaries

In the capital of Mexico, Guevara tried to get a job as a journalist. He wrote a test article about events in Guatemala, but it didn't go any further. For several months, the Argentine worked part-time as a photographer. Then he was a watchman in a book publishing house. In the summer of 1955, Ernesto Che Guevara, whose personal life was illuminated by a joyful event, got married. His fiancée, Ilda Gadea, came to Mexico City from her homeland. Occasional earnings barely helped the emigrant. Finally, Ernesto, through a competition, got a job at a city hospital, where he began working in the allergy department.

In June 1955, two young men came to see doctor Guevara. These were Cuban revolutionaries trying to overthrow dictator Batista on his home island. Two years earlier, opponents of the old regime attacked the Moncada barracks, after which they were tried and imprisoned. The day before, an amnesty had been declared, and revolutionaries began to flock to Mexico City. During his ordeal in Latin America, Ernesto met many socialist Cubans. One of his old friends came to see him, offering to participate in the upcoming military expedition to the Caribbean island.

A few days later, the Argentine met for the first time. Even then, the doctor firmly decided to give his consent to participate in the raid. In July 1955, Raul's older brother arrived in Mexico from the United States. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara became the main protagonists of the impending revolution. Their first meeting took place at one of the Cuban safe houses. The next day, Guevara became a member of the expedition as a doctor. Recalling that period, Fidel Castro later admitted that Che understood the theoretical and ideological issues of the revolution much better than his Cuban comrades.

Guerrilla warfare

As they prepared to sail to Cuba, members of the 26th of July Movement (the name of the organization led by Fidel Castro) faced many difficulties. An agent provocateur infiltrated the ranks of the revolutionaries and informed the authorities about the suspicious activities of foreigners. In the summer of 1956, Mexican police staged a raid after which the conspirators, including Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, were arrested. Famous public and cultural figures began to stand up for opponents of the Batista regime. As a result, the revolutionaries were released. Guevara spent more time under arrest than the rest of his comrades (57 days), as he was charged with illegally crossing the border.

Finally, the expeditionary force left Mexico and went by ship to Cuba. The departure took place on November 25, 1956. Ahead was a months-long guerrilla war. The arrival of Castro's supporters on the island was marred by a shipwreck. The detachment, consisting of 82 men, found itself in the mangroves. It was attacked by government aircraft. Half of the expedition died under shelling, and another two dozen people were captured. Finally, the revolutionaries took refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Provincial peasants supported the partisans, gave them shelter and food. Caves and difficult passes became other safe shelters.

At the beginning of the new year 1957, Batista's opponents won their first victory, killing five government soldiers. Soon, some members of the detachment came down with malaria. Ernesto Che Guevara was among them. Guerrilla warfare made us accustomed to mortal danger. Every day the soldiers faced another fatal threat. Che fought the insidious disease, resting in peasant huts. His comrades often saw him sitting with a notepad or another book. Guevara's diary later formed the basis of his own memoirs of the guerrilla war, published after the victory of the revolution.

By the end of 1957, the rebels already controlled the Sierra Maestra mountains. New volunteers joined the detachment from among local residents dissatisfied with the Batista regime. At the same time, Fidel made Ernesto major (comandante). Che Guevara began to command a separate column consisting of 75 people. The underground fighters enjoyed support abroad. American journalists penetrated their mountains and produced reports in the United States about the July 26 Movement.

The Comandante not only led the military operations, but also conducted propaganda activities. Ernesto Che Guevara became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Free Cuba. Its first issues were written by hand, then the rebels managed to get a hectograph.

Victory over Batista

In the spring of 1958, a new stage of guerrilla warfare began. Castro's supporters began to leave the mountains and operate in the valleys. In the summer, stable contact was established with Cuban communists in cities where strikes began to occur. Che Guevara's detachment was responsible for the offensive in the province of Las Villas. Having traveled a distance of 600 kilometers, in October this army reached the Escambray mountain range and opened a new front. For Batista, the situation was getting worse - the US authorities refused to supply him with weapons.

In Las Villas, where rebel power was finally established, a law was published on agrarian reform - the liquidation of landowners' estates. The policy of demolishing old patriarchal customs in the countryside attracted more and more peasants to the ranks of the revolutionaries. The initiator of the popular reform was Ernesto Che Guevara. He spent years of his life studying the theoretical works of socialists, and now he honed his oratory skills, convincing ordinary people of Cuba of the correctness of the path proposed by the members of the July 26 Movement.

The last and decisive battles were the battle for Santa Clara. It began on December 28 and ended with the rebel victory on January 1, 1959. A few hours after the surrender of the garrison, Batista left Cuba and spent the rest of his life in forced emigration. The battles for Santa Clara were led directly by Che Guevara. On January 2, his troops entered Havana, where a triumphant population awaited the revolutionaries.

New life

After Batista's defeat, newspapers around the world asked who Che Guevara was, what made this rebel leader famous and what was his political future? In February 1959, Fidel Castro's government declared him a citizen of Cuba. At the same time, Guevara began to use the famous prefix “Che” in his signatures, with which he went down in history.

Under the new government, yesterday's rebel served as president of the National Bank (1959 - 1961) and minister of industry (1961 - 1965). In the first summer after the victory of the revolution, he, as an official, conducted an entire world tour, during which he visited Egypt, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Indonesia, Burma, Japan, Morocco, Spain and Yugoslavia. Also in June 1959, the commander married for the second time. His wife was Aleida March, a member of the July 26 Movement. The children of Ernesto Che Guevara (Aleida, Camilo, Celia, Ernesto) were born in marriage with this woman (except for the eldest daughter Ilda).

Government activities

In the spring of 1961, the American leadership, having finally fallen out with Castro, began an operation in which enemy troops landed on Liberty Island. Until the end of the operation, Che Guevara led troops in one of the provinces of Cuba. The American plan failed, and socialist power in Havana remained.

In the fall, Che Guevara visited the GDR, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. In the Soviet Union, his delegation signed agreements on the supply of Cuban sugar. Moscow also promised financial and technical assistance to Liberty Island. Ernesto Che Guevara, interesting facts about whom could form a separate book, participated in the festive parade dedicated to the next anniversary of the October Revolution. The Cuban guest stood on the podium of the mausoleum next to Nikita Khrushchev and other members of the Politburo. Subsequently, Guevara visited the Soviet Union several more times.

As a minister, Che seriously reconsidered his attitude towards the governments of socialist countries. He was dissatisfied with the fact that large communist states (primarily the USSR and China) established their own strict conditions for the exchange of goods with subsidized small partners, such as Cuba.

In 1965, during a visit to Algeria, Guevara made a famous speech in which he criticized Moscow and Beijing for their enslaving attitude towards fraternal countries. This episode once again showed who Che Guevara was, what he became famous for and what reputation this revolutionary had. He did not compromise his own principles, even if he had to go into conflict with his allies. Another reason for the Comandante’s dissatisfaction was the reluctance of the socialist camp to actively intervene in new regional revolutions.

Expedition to Africa

In the spring of 1965, Che Guevara found himself in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This Central African country was experiencing a political crisis, and guerrillas were operating in its jungles, advocating the establishment of socialism in their homeland. The Comandante arrived in the Congo along with a hundred other Cubans. He helped organize the underground, sharing with them his own experience gained during the war with Batista.

Although Che Guevara put all his strength into the new adventure, new failures awaited him at every step. The rebels suffered several defeats, and relations between the Cubans and the leader of their African comrades, Kabila, did not work out from the very beginning. After several months of bloodshed, the Congolese authorities, opposed by the socialists, made some compromises and resolved the conflict. Another blow to the rebels was Tanzania's refusal to provide them with rear bases. In November 1965, Che Guevara left the Congo without achieving the goals set for the revolution.

Future plans

Che's stay in Africa cost him another case of malaria. In addition, asthma attacks, from which he had suffered since early childhood, worsened. The commander spent the first half of 1966 in secret in Czechoslovakia, where he was treated in one of the sanatoriums of Czechoslovakia. While taking a break from the war, the Latin American continued to work on planning new revolutions around the world. His statement about the need to create “many Vietnams,” where at that time the conflict between the two main world political systems was in full swing, became widely known.

In the summer of 1966, the Comandante returned to Cuba and led preparations for the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia. As it turned out, this war was his last. In March 1967, Barrientos learned with horror about the activities of guerrillas in his country, thrown into the jungle from socialist Cuba.

To get rid of the “Red threat”, the politician turned to Washington for help. The White House decided to use special CIA units against Che's squad. Soon, leaflets scattered from the air began to appear over the provincial villages in the vicinity of which the guerrillas were operating, announcing a large reward for the murder of the Cuban revolutionary.

Death

In total, Che Guevara spent 11 months in Bolivia. All this time he kept notes, which after his death were published in the form of a separate book. Gradually, the Bolivian authorities began to push back the rebels. Two detachments were destroyed, after which the commander was left almost completely isolated. On October 8, 1967, he and several comrades were surrounded. Two rebels were killed. Many were injured, including Ernesto Che Guevara. How the revolutionary died became known thanks to the recollections of several eyewitnesses.

Guevara, along with his comrades, was sent under escort to the village of La Higuera, where there was a place for the prisoners in a small adobe building, which was a local school. The underground fighters were captured by a Bolivian detachment, which had completed training the day before, organized by military advisers sent by the CIA. Che refused to answer the officers' questions, spoke only to the soldiers and from time to time asked for a smoke.

On the morning of October 9, an order came to the village from the Bolivian capital to execute the Cuban revolutionary. On the same day he was shot. The body was transported to a nearby town, where Guevara's corpse was put on display for local residents and journalists. The hands of the body were amputated in order to officially confirm the death of the rebel using prints. The remains were buried in a secret mass grave.

The burial was discovered in 1997 thanks to the efforts of American journalists. At the same time, the remains of Che and several of his comrades were transferred to Cuba. There they were interred with honors. The mausoleum where Ernesto Che Guevara is buried is located in Santa Clara, the city in which the Comandante won his main victory in 1959.

Che Guevara graffiti.© Photo wikipedia.org

Argentinean Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, who trained as a doctor and became one of the main protagonists of the Cuban revolution, remains to this day a symbol of the pursuit of ideals. At the same time, he himself was not an ideal.

“Rosbalt Like” collected 20 facts about a man who lived a fantastic life, but would never have believed that his image would become one of the most replicated and commercially successful images of a real person.

1. Che's full name is Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, and Che is his nickname. And he was not born on June 14th.

Photo: wikimedia.org

He used the nickname to emphasize his Argentine origin. The interjection che is a common address in Argentina. As for the date of birth, his parents specifically wrote the date a month later on the birth certificate, otherwise it would have become known that the boy was conceived before the engagement, and Che’s father and mother did not want his relatives to know about this.

2. A distant ancestor of Che's mother was General José de la Serna e Hinojosa, Viceroy of Peru.

Photo: wikimedia.org

Che Guevara's family. From left to right: Ernesto Guevara, mother Celia, sister Celia, brother Roberto, father Ernesto with son Juan Martin and sister Anna Maria.

3. Che didn’t like to wash.

Ernesto's childhood name was Tete, which translated means “pig.” He always walked around as dirty as a pig. He himself said that they called him Borov. And not because he was fat, but because he was dirty. Fear of cold water, which sometimes caused asthma attacks, gave Ernesto a dislike for personal hygiene.

4. Che Guevara was born in Argentina, and became interested in Cuba at the age of 11, when Cuban chess player Capablanca came to Buenos Aires. Ernesto was very passionate about chess.

5. The name of Che Guevara appeared in newspapers for the first time not in connection with revolutionary events, but when he made a four-thousand-kilometer tour on a moped, traveling all over South America.

The feature film “The Diary of a Motorcyclist” was shot about this journey.

Photo: wikimedia.org. In 1960, Che Guevara met his idols in Cuba - writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Young Ernesto read the original in French (knowing this language from childhood) and interpreted Sartre’s philosophical works “L’imagination”, “Situations I” and “Situations II”, “L”Être et le Nèant”, “Baudlaire”, “Quest” -ce que la litèrature?”, “Lʼimagie.” He loved poetry and even composed poems himself.

7. Che Guevara “rejected” the army.

Photo: wikimedia.org

Ernesto Che Guevara, not wanting to serve in the army, caused an asthma attack with an ice bath and was declared unfit for military service.

8. Che Guevara learned to smoke cigars in Cuba to ward off midges.

Photo flickr.com

Besides, it was cool. Although he couldn’t smoke a lot because of the same asthma.

9. Che Guevara in the early 1950s sometimes signed his letters “Stalin II.”

The sister of Fidel and Raul Castro, Juanita, who knew Guevara closely and later left for the United States, wrote about him in a biographical book: “Neither the trial nor the investigation mattered to him. He immediately started shooting because he was a man without a heart.”

After Castro's supporters came to power, Che became the commandant of the Havana fortress-prison of La Cabaña and the head of the appeals tribunal, which did not issue a single acquittal. According to some reports, he personally executed about 2,000 people, for which he received the nickname “The Butcher of La Cabaña.” In general, after Castro’s supporters came to power in Cuba, more than eight thousand people were shot, many without trial.

10. Was accidentally appointed Minister of Economy.

Photo: wikimedia.org

From November 1959 to February 1961, Ernesto Che Guevara was president of the National Bank of Cuba. In February 1961, Ernesto was appointed Minister of Industry and head of the Central Planning Council of Cuba. This photo is the famous photograph of Che at the Cuban Ministry of Industry, 1963.

According to legend, Fidel Castro, having gathered his associates, asked them a simple question: “Is there at least one economist among you? “Hearing “communist” instead of “economist,” Che was the first to raise his hand. And then it was too late to retreat.

11. Che Guevara was married twice and has five children.

Che Guevara with Ilde Gadea on their honeymoon. Photo: wikimedia.org

In 1955, he married Peruvian revolutionary Ilda Gadea, who gave birth to Guevara's daughter. In 1959, his marriage to Ilda broke up, and the revolutionary married Aleida March (pictured), whom he met in a partisan detachment. They had four children with Aleida.

12. Che harshly criticized the USSR.

In 1963, Ernesto Che Guevara visited the USSR and spoke at a banquet in the Kremlin. His speech was harsh: “Is it really possible, Nikita Sergeevich, that all Soviet people eat the way we do today? In the USSR, bosses get more and more, leaders have no obligations to the masses. There is a blasphemous defamation of Stalin's merits and personality. The Khrushchev-Brezhnev group is mired in bureaucracy and nomenclature Marxism, is hypocritical about the US base in Guantanamo, and even agrees with the American occupation of this Cuban region.”

Later in 1964 in Moscow, he made an indictment against the non-internationalist policies of socialist countries. He reproached them for imposing on the poorest countries conditions of exchange of goods similar to those dictated by imperialism on the world market, as well as for refusing unconditional support, including military support, and for refusing the struggle for national liberation.

13. In some Latin American countries, after the death of Che, they seriously declare him a saint and call him San Ernesto de La Higuera.

Photo: wikimedia.org

In November 1966, Che Guevara arrived in Bolivia to organize the guerrilla movement. The partisan detachment he created on October 8, 1967 was surrounded and defeated by government forces. Ernesto Che Guevara was wounded, captured and killed the next day.

Many say that no dead man looked as much like Christ as Che in the photograph familiar to the whole world, where he lies on a table in a school, surrounded by Bolivian soldiers.

14. Che rarely sat still for a long time.

Photo: wikimedia.org

This map shows the countries (red) where Ernesto visited. The states where he participated in the revolution are highlighted in green.

15. The original of the famous portrait of Che actually looks like this:

Photo: wikimedia.org

On March 5, 1960, Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took the famous photograph of Ernesto Che Guevara. Initially, the photo contained the profile of a random person, but the author later removed unnecessary elements. The photo, titled “Heroic Partisan” (Guerrillero Historico), hung on the wall in Korda’s apartment for several years until he gave it to an Italian publisher he knew.

He published the picture immediately after the death of Che Guevara, and the story of the colossal success of this image began, which allowed many of its participants to earn good money. Ironically, Korda is perhaps the only one who never benefited financially from this photograph.

16. How the famous Che print appeared.

Photo: wikimedia.org

The world-famous two-color portrait of Che Guevara was created by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick from a photograph of Korda. Che's beret bears the José Martí star, a distinctive sign of a comandante (major, there was no higher rank in the revolutionary army), received from Fidel Castro in July 1957 along with this rank.

Fitzpatrick attached Korda's photograph to the window glass and transferred the outline of the image onto paper. From the resulting “negative”, using a special copy machine and black ink, he printed a poster on red paper and then gave away almost all copies of his work for free, which soon became as famous as its black and white original.

17. Che’s grave was found only in July 1995.

The original burial place of Che Guevara and 6 partisans. Photo: wikimedia.org

Almost 30 years after the murder, the location of Guevara's grave in Bolivia was discovered. And in July 1997, the remains of the Comandante were returned to Cuba; in October 1997, he was reburied in the mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara in Cuba.

18. Che Guevara never said his most famous quote.

Be realistic - demand the impossible! — This slogan of Paris May 1968 is mistakenly attributed to Che Guevara. In fact, it was shouted out at the University of Paris III New Sorbonne by Jean Duvigneau and Michel Leris (François Dosse, History of Structuralism: The sign sets, 1967-present, p. 113).

19. In 2000, Time magazine included Che Guevara in its lists of “20 Heroes and Icons” and “One Hundred Most Important Persons of the 20th Century.”

In the photo from taringa.net, Che is seen with another person on this list, John Lennon.

20. The famous song “Hasta Siempre Comandante” (“Comandante forever”), contrary to popular belief, was written by Carlos Puebla before the death of Che Guevara, and not after.

The paradox of Che Guevara's legacy is that people wearing T-shirts with his image, as a rule, do not know that he advocated the complete subordination of the interests of the individual to the state, accused the USSR of imperialism, his hands were up to his elbows in blood, and his death was a relief met even in the leadership of Cuba. However, he became a symbol of the fight for freedom and change in society.

Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna (Che Guevara), legendary Latin American revolutionary and political activist.

In 2000, Time magazine included Che Guevara in its lists of "20 Heroes and Icons" and "The 100 Most Important Persons of the 20th Century."

In 2013, the year of the 85th anniversary of the birth of Ernesto Che Guevara, his manuscripts were included in the register of documentary heritage of the UNESCO Memory of the World program.

Chronology

Born June 14, 1928 in the city of Rosario, Argentina.
1946 - 1953 - Medical student at the National University of Buenos Aires.
1950 - A sailor on an oil tanker, traveling to Trinidad and British Guiana.
1951 February - 1952 August- Travels with Alberto Granados throughout Latin America. Visits Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, from where he returns by plane via Miami (USA) to Buenos Aires.
1953 - Finishes his studies at the university and receives a doctor's degree.
1953 - 1954 - Makes a second trip to Latin America. Visits Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia. Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador. In Guatemala, he takes part in defending the government of President J. Arbenz. after the defeat of which he settles in Mexico.
1954 - 1956 - In Mexico he works as a doctor and at the Institute of Cardiology.
1955 - Meets with Fidel Castro, joins his revolutionary detachment, participates in the preparation of the expedition to Granma.

1955 - August 18- marries Peruvian Ilda Gadea in Tepotzotlan, Mexico.
1956 June - August- Imprisoned in a Mexico City prison for belonging to Fidel Castro's squad.
- November 25 departs from the port of Tuxpan on the yacht “Granma” among 82 rebels led by Fidel Castro to Cuba, where “Granma” arrives on December 2.
1956 - 1959 - Participant in the revolutionary war of liberation in Cuba, twice wounded in battle.
1957 - May 27 - 28- Battle of Uvero.
- June 5- appointed major, commander of the fourth column.
1958 - August 21 receives an order to relocate to the province of Las Villas at the head of the eighth column of the Ciro Redondo.
- October 16 Che's column reaches the Escambray mountains.
December launches an attack on the city of Santa Clara.
December 28 - 31 Che leads the battle for Santa Clara.
1959 - January 1- liberation of Santa Clara.
- January 2 Che's column enters Havana, where it occupies the Cabanha fortress.
- February 9th Che is declared a citizen of Cuba by presidential decree with the rights of a born Cuban.
- 2 June marries Cuban Aleida March.
- June 13 - September 5 on behalf of the Cuban government, travels to Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Indonesia, Ceylon, Japan, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Spain.
- October 7th appointed head of the industry department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRL).
- November 26 appointed director of the National Bank of Cuba.
1960- February 5 in Havana participates in the opening of the Soviet Exhibition of Achievements of Science, Technology and Culture, meets A.I. Mikoyan for the first time. Che's book Guerrilla Warfare is published in Havana in May.
- October 22 - December 9 At the head of Cuba's economic mission, he visits the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, the PRC, and the DPRK.
1961 - February 23 appointed by the Minister of Industry and a member of the Central Planning Council, which he soon heads part-time.
- April 17- mercenary invasion of Playa Giron. Che leads troops in Pinar del Rio.
- 2 June signs an economic agreement with the USSR.
- June 24 meets with Yuri Gagarin in Havana.
In August represents Cuba at the Inter-American Economic Council conference in Punta del Este (Uruguay), at which he exposes the imperialist nature of the “Union for Progress” created by the United States. Visits Argentina and Brazil, where he negotiates with Presidents Frondizi and Cuadros.
1962 - March 8 appointed as a member of the National Leadership and
- 2nd of March - member of the Secretariat and Economic Commission of the United Revolutionary Organizations (URO).
- April 15 speaks in Havana at the trade union congress of Cuban workers, calls for the development of socialist competition.
- August 27 - September 8 is in Moscow at the head of the Cuban party and government delegation. After Moscow he visits Czechoslovakia.
In the second half of October - early November leads troops in Pinar del Rio.
1963 - in May in connection with the transformation of the ORO into the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, Che was appointed a member of its Central Committee, the Politburo of the Central Committee and the Secretariat.
- July- is in Algeria at the head of a government delegation to celebrate the first anniversary of the independence of this republic.
1964 - January 16 signs the Cuban-Soviet protocol on technical assistance.
March 20 - April 13 leads the Cuban delegation to the UN Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva (Switzerland).
- April 15 -17 visits France, Algeria, Czechoslovakia.
November 5 - 19 is in the Soviet Union at the head of the Cuban delegation to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution,
- 11th of November speaks at the House of Friendship at the founding meeting of the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society.
- 9 - 17 December participates as the head of the Cuban delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.
Second half of December- visits Algeria.
1965 - January - March- travels to China, Mali, Congo (Brazzaville), Guinea, Ghana, Dahomey, Tanzania, Egypt, Algeria, where he participates in the 11th economic seminar of Afro-Asian solidarity.
March 14th returns to Havana.
- March 15th last public appearance in Cuba, giving a report on his foreign trip to employees of the Ministry of Industry.
- April 1 writes farewell letters to parents, children, Fidel Castro.
- October 8- Fidel Castro reads a farewell letter from Che at the founding meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
1966 - February 15 sends a letter to his daughter Ilda, in which he congratulates her on her birthday.
November 7 arrives at a guerrilla camp on the Nyancahuazu River, Bolivia.
1967 - March 28 the beginning of hostilities of a partisan detachment (the National Liberation Army of Bolivia), led by Che (Ramon, Fernando).
- April 17 publication in Havana of Che's message to the Tricontinental Solidarity Organization.
20 April arrest by Bolivian authorities of Debray, Bustos and Rosa.
July 29 Opening of the founding conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity in Havana.
August 31 the death of Joaquin’s detachment, including the partisan Tanya.
October 8 p The last battle took place in the Yuro Gorge, Bolivia. The wounded Che is captured.
October 9 at 3 hours 10 minutes in the afternoon (according to other information - at 13.10) he was brutally killed by CIA “rangers” in the village of Higuera (Higuera).

October 15 Fidel Castro confirms Che's death in Bolivia.
1968 in June The first edition of Che's Bolivian Diary is published in Havana.

The house where Che was shot was razed to the ground and the burial place was kept secret. Only in June 1997 did Argentine and Cuban scientists manage to find and identify the remains of the legendary comandante. They were transported to Cuba and on October 17, 1997, buried with honors in the mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara.

Children:

Hilda Beatriz Guevara Gadea, born February 15, 1956, died in Havana on August 21, 1995.

Che was born into the family of Ernesto Guevara Lynch (1900-1987), an architect (according to other sources, he worked as a civil engineer). Both Ernesto Che Guevara's father (of Irish descent; his paternal grandmother was descended from the Irish rebel Patrick Lynch) and mother were Argentine Creoles. There were also Californian Creoles in my father's family who received US citizenship. Che Guevara's mother, Dona Celia de la Serna la(i?) Llosa (1908-1965), was distantly related to José de la Serna, the penultimate Viceroy of Peru. Celia inherited a plantation of yerba mate (so-called Paraguayan tea) in the province of Misiones. Having improved the situation of the workers (in particular, by starting to pay them wages in money rather than food), Che’s father aroused the discontent of the surrounding planters, and the family was forced to move to Rosario, at that time the second largest city in Argentina, opening a factory there for processing yerba. mate. Che was born in this city. The family had average income. Due to the global economic crisis, the family returned to Misiones, to the plantation.

Ernesto was the eldest of five children raised in this family, which was distinguished by a tendency towards liberal opinions and beliefs. All children received higher education. Sisters Celia and Anna Maria became architects, brother Roberto became a lawyer, and Juan Martin became a designer.
At the age of two, Ernesto fell seriously ill: he suffered a severe form of bronchial asthma, as a result of which attacks of suffocation accompanied him for the rest of his life. To restore the baby’s health, his family was forced to move to the province of Cordoba in an area with a drier climate. Having sold the estate, the family purchased “Villa Nidia” in the town of Alta Gracia, at an altitude of two thousand meters above sea level. True, the health of little Tete (as Ernesto was called in childhood) did not improve significantly. In this regard, Ernesto never had a loud voice, so necessary for an orator, and people listening to his speeches constantly felt wheezing sounds emanating from their lungs with every word he uttered, feeling how difficult it was for him.
The father began to work as a construction contractor, and the mother began to look after a sick baby. For the first two years, Ernesto was unable to attend school and studied at home because he suffered from daily asthma attacks. After this, he attended, intermittently (due to health reasons), high school in Alta Gracia.

From an early age he showed a penchant for reading literature. With great enthusiasm Ernesto read the works of Marx, Engels and Freud, which were available in abundance in his father's library; it is possible that he studied some of them before he entered Cordova State College in 1941. While studying in college, his abilities manifested themselves only in literature and sports disciplines.
During this period of his youth, Ernesto was deeply impressed by the Spanish emigrants who fled to Argentina from Francoist repressions during the Spanish Civil War, as well as by the continuous series of dirty political crises in his native country, the apotheosis of which was the establishment of the “left-fascist” dictatorship of Juan Peron, to whom the family Guevara was extremely hostile. Events and influences of this kind for the rest of his life confirmed in the young man contempt for the pantomime of parliamentary democracy, hatred for military dictatorial politicians and the army as a means of achieving their dirty goals, for the capitalist oligarchy, but most of all - for American imperialism, ready to commit any crime. for the sake of profit in dollar terms.

The Spanish Civil War caused significant public outcry in Argentina. Guevara's parents assisted the Committee for the Relief of Republican Spain, in addition, they were neighbors and friends of Juan Gonzalez Aguilar (deputy to Juan Negrin, Prime Minister in the Spanish government before the defeat of the Republic), who emigrated to Argentina and settled in Alta Gracia. The children went to the same school and then to college in Cordoba. Celia, Che's mother, drove them to college every day by car. The prominent Republican General Jurado, who was visiting the Gonzaleses, visited the Guevara family home and talked about the events of the war and the actions of the Francoists and German Nazis, which, according to his father, influenced Che’s political views.

During World War II, Argentine President Juan Peron maintained diplomatic relations with the Axis countries - and Che's parents were among the active opponents of his regime. In particular, Celia was arrested for her participation in one of the anti-Peronist demonstrations in Cordoba. In addition to her, her husband also participated in the military organization against the Peron dictatorship; bombs were made in the house for demonstrations. Significant enthusiasm among the Republicans was caused by the news of the USSR's victory in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Although Ernesto's parents, primarily his mother, were active participants in anti-Peron protests, he himself did not take part in student revolutionary movements and generally had little interest in politics while studying at the University of Buenos Aires. Ernesto entered there in 1947, when he was predicted to have a brilliant career as an engineer, deciding to become a doctor in order to alleviate the suffering of other people, since he was unable to alleviate his own. At first, he was primarily interested in diseases of the respiratory tract, which was closest to him personally, but later he became interested in studying one of the most terrible scourges of humanity - leprosy, or, scientifically, leprosy.

In 1964, speaking with a correspondent for the Cuban newspaper El Mundo, Guevara said that he first became interested in Cuba at the age of 11, being passionate about chess when the Cuban chess player Capablanca came to Buenos Aires. In the house of Che's parents there was a library of several thousand books. From the age of four, Ernesto, like his parents, became passionate about reading, which continued until the end of his life. In his youth, the future revolutionary had an extensive reading range: Salgari, Jules Verne, Dumas, Hugo, Jack London, and later Cervantes, Anatole France, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky, Engels, Lenin, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Freud. He read social novels by Latin American authors that were popular at that time - Ciro Alegria from Peru, Jorge Icaza from Ecuador, Jose Eustasio Rivera from Colombia, which described the life of Indians and workers on plantations, works by Argentine authors - Jose Hernandez, Sarmiento and others.

Young Ernesto read the original in French (knowing this language from childhood) and interpreted Sartre’s philosophical works “L’imagination”, “Situations I” and “Situations II”, “L’Être et le Nèant”, “Baudlaire”, "Qu'est-ce que la litèrature?", "L'imagie." He loved poetry and even composed poems himself. He read Baudelaire, Verlaine, Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, and the works of the contemporary Spanish Republican poet Leon Felipe. In his backpack, in addition to the Bolivian Diary, a notebook with his favorite poems was posthumously discovered. Subsequently, a two-volume and a nine-volume collected works of Che Guevara were published in Cuba. Tete was strong in the exact sciences, such as mathematics, but chose the profession of a doctor. He played football at the local Atalaya sports club, playing in the reserve team (he could not play in the first team because he needed an inhaler from time to time due to asthma). He was also involved in rugby (he played for the San Isidro club), equestrianism, was fond of golf and gliding, having a special passion for cycling (in the caption on one of his photographs, given to his would-be bride Chinchina, he called himself “the king of the pedal ").

Chinchina (translated as “rattle”) was Che’s youthful love. The daughter of one of the richest landowners in the province of Cordoba. According to the testimony of her sister and others, Che loved her and wanted to marry her. He appeared at parties in shabby clothes and shaggy, which was a contrast with the scions of wealthy families who sought her hand, and with the typical appearance of Argentine young men of that time. Their relationship was hindered by Che's desire to devote his life to treating lepers in South America, like Albert Schweitzer, whose authority he bowed to.

At the end of 1948, Ernesto decides to go on his first big trip through the northern provinces of Argentina by bicycle. During this journey, he primarily sought to make acquaintances and learn more about life among the poorest strata of the population and the remnants of Indian tribes, doomed to extinction under the then political regime. It was from that trip that he began to understand his powerlessness as a physician in treating the diseases of the entire society in which he lived.
In 1951, after passing his penultimate university exams, Guevara went on a more serious trip with his friend Granado, earning a living by doing menial jobs in the places he passed through; He then visited southern Argentina, Chile, where he met Salvador Allende (according to other sources, he personally met him much later), Peru, where he worked for several weeks in the leper colony of the city of San Pablo, Colombia in the Age of Violence (la Violencia) - there he was arrested but soon released; In addition, I visited Venezuela, Florida, and Miami.
Returning home from this trip, Ernesto once and for all determined for himself the main goal of life: to alleviate human suffering.

Together with the doctor of biochemistry Alberto Granado (friendly nickname - Mial), for seven months from February to August 1952, Ernesto Guevara traveled through the countries of Latin America, visiting Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Granado was six years older than Che. He was from the town of Hernando, in the south of the province of Cordoba, graduated from the pharmaceutical faculty of the university, became interested in the problem of treating leprosy and, after studying at the university for another three years, became a doctor of biochemistry. Since 1945, he worked in a leper colony 180 km from Cordoba. In 1941, he met Ernesto Guevara, who was then 13 years old, through his brother Thomas, Ernesto's classmate at Dean Funes College. He began to often visit Che's parents' house and used their rich library. They became friends through their love of reading and arguing about what they read. Granado and his brothers went on long mountain walks and built outdoor huts around Cordoba, and Ernesto often joined them (his parents believed that this would help his fight against asthma.

Guevara's family lived in Buenos Aires, where Ernesto studied at the Faculty of Medicine. At the Institute for the Study of Allergy, he interned under the guidance of the Argentine scientist Dr. Pisani. At that time, Guevara's family was experiencing financial difficulties, and Ernesto was forced to work part-time as a librarian. Coming to Cordoba on vacation, he visited Granado at the leprosarium and helped him in experiments to study new methods of treating lepers. On one of his visits, in September 1951, Granado, on the advice of his brother Thomas, invited him to become a partner on a trip to South America. Granado intended to visit leper colonies in various countries of the continent, get acquainted with their work and, possibly, write a book about it. Ernesto enthusiastically accepted this offer, asking him to wait until he passed the next exams, since he was in his last year of medical school. Ernesto's parents did not object, provided that he returned no later than a year later to take his final exams.

On December 29, 1951, having loaded Granado’s badly worn motorcycle with useful items, a tent, blankets, taking a camera and an automatic pistol, they set off. We stopped by to say goodbye to Chinchina, who gave Ernesto $15 and asked him to bring her a swimsuit from the USA. Ernesto gave her a puppy as a farewell gift, calling him Comeback - “Come back”, translated from English (“come back”).

We also said goodbye to Ernesto's parents. Granado recalled:

“Nothing stopped us any longer in Argentina, and we headed to Chile - the first foreign country on our way. Having passed the province of Mendoza, where Che's ancestors once lived and where we visited several haciendas, watching how horses were tamed and how our gauchos lived, we turned south, away from the Andean peaks, impassable for our stunted two-wheeled Rocinante. We had to suffer a lot. The motorcycle kept breaking down and required repair. We didn’t so much ride on it as we dragged it on ourselves.”

Stopping overnight in the forest or in the field, they earned money for food by doing odd jobs: washing dishes in restaurants, treating peasants or acting as veterinarians, repairing radios, working as loaders, porters or sailors. We exchanged experiences with colleagues, visiting leper colonies, where we had the opportunity to take a break from the road. Guevara and Granado were not afraid of infection and felt sympathy for lepers, wanting to devote their lives to their treatment. On February 18, 1952, they arrived in the Chilean city of Temuco. Local newspaper Diario Austral published an article entitled: “Two Argentine leprosy experts travel around South America by motorcycle.” Granado's motorcycle finally broke down near Santiago, after which they moved to the port of Valparaiso (where they intended to visit the Easter Island leper colony, but learned that they would have to wait six months for the ship, and abandoned the idea), and then on foot, hitchhiking or "hares" ships or trains. We walked on foot to the Chuquicamata copper mine, which belonged to the American company Braden Copper Mining Company, after spending the night in the barracks of the mine guards. In Peru, travelers became acquainted with the life of the Quechua and Aymara Indians, who by that time were exploited by landowners and stifled hunger with coca leaves. In the city of Cusco, Ernesto spent several hours reading books about the Inca Empire in the local library. We spent several days at the ruins of the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru.

From Machu Picchu we went to the mountain village of Huambo, stopping on the way at the leper colony of the Peruvian communist doctor Hugo Pesce. He warmly greeted the travelers, introducing them to the methods of treating leprosy known to him, and wrote a letter of recommendation to a large leper colony near the city of San Pablo in the province of Loreto in Peru. From the village of Pucallpa on the Ucayali River, boarding a ship, the travelers set off to the port of Iquitos on the banks of the Amazon. They were delayed in Iquitos due to Ernesto's asthma, which forced him to go to the hospital for some time. Arriving at the leper colony in San Pablo, Granado and Guevara were warmly received and invited to treat patients in the center's laboratory. The patients, trying to thank the travelers for their friendly attitude towards them, built them a raft, calling it “Mambo-Tango”. On this raft, Ernesto and Alberto could sail to the next point on the route - the Colombian port of Leticia on the Amazon.

On June 21, 1952, having packed their belongings on a raft, they sailed down the Amazon towards Leticia. They took a lot of photographs and kept diaries. By negligence, they drove past Leticia, which is why they had to buy a boat and return from Brazilian territory. Looking suspicious and tired, both comrades ended up in jail. According to Granado, the police chief, a soccer fan familiar with Argentina's soccer success, released the travelers after learning where they were from in exchange for a promise to coach the local soccer team. The team won the regional championship, and fans bought them plane tickets to the capital of Colombia, Bogota. In Colombia at that time, President Laureano Gómez’s “violencia” was in effect, which consisted of forcefully suppressing the discontent of the peasants. Guevara and Granado were again imprisoned, but they were released on a promise to leave Colombia immediately. Having received money for travel from student acquaintances, Ernesto and Alberto took a bus to the city of Cucuta near Venezuela, and then crossed the border across the international bridge to the city of San Cristobal in Venezuela. On July 14, 1952, travelers reached Caracas.

Granado remained to work in Venezuela at the leper colony in Caracas, where he was offered a monthly salary of eight hundred American dollars. Later, while working in a leper colony, he meets his future wife, Julia. Che needed to get to Buenos Aires alone. Having accidentally met a distant relative - a horse trader, at the end of July he went to accompany a shipment of horses by plane from Caracas to Miami, and from there he had to return on an empty flight through Maracaibo to Buenos Aires. However, Che stayed in Miami for a month. He managed to buy Chinchina the promised lace dress, but in Miami he lived almost without money, spending time in the local library. In August 1952, Che returned to Buenos Aires, where he began preparing for exams and his thesis on allergy problems. In March 1953, Guevara received a diploma as a surgeon in dermatology. Not wanting to serve in the army, he caused an asthma attack with an ice bath and was declared unfit for military service. Having a diploma in medical education, he decided to go to the Venezuelan leper colony in Caracas to Granado, but later fate brought them together only in the 1960s in Cuba.

Having become a specialist in the field of skin diseases after graduation, he sharply rejected the offer of a promising career at the university, deciding to devote at least the next ten years to work as a practicing doctor, to get to know the life of ordinary people and understand what he himself was capable of. Having received a letter from Granado from Venezuela with an offer of interesting work, Ernesto happily grabbed this offer and, together with another of his comrades, headed there through the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, by train, which was called the “milk convoy” (the train stopped at all stops, and there farmers loaded cans of milk). On April 9, 1952, a revolution took place in Bolivia, in which miners and peasants participated. The Nationalist Revolutionary Movement party, led by President Paz Estenssoro, which came to power, paid compensation to foreign owners, nationalized the tin mines, and in addition, organized a police force of miners and peasants, and carried out agrarian reform. In Bolivia, Che visited Indian mountain villages, mining villages, met with members of the government and even worked in the department of information and culture, as well as in the department for the implementation of agrarian reform. I visited the ruins of the Indian sanctuaries of Tiahuanaco, which are located near Lake Titicaca, taking many pictures of the “Gate of the Sun” temple, where the Indians of the ancient civilization worshiped the sun god Viracocha.

However, Guevara never managed to see his friend in Caracas. Fascinated by friends' stories about the architectural monuments of ancient Mayan civilizations (archeology was his main hobby, along with bicycles) and interested in the revolutionary events in Guatemala, he and like-minded people hurried to head there. There he wrote travel notes about the archaeological sites of the ancient Mayan and Inca civilizations.

In La Paz, Ernesto met lawyer Ricardo Rojo, who persuaded him to go to Guatemala, but Ernesto agreed to be a travel companion only as far as Colombia, since he still had the intention of going to the leper colony in Caracas, where Mial (Granado) was waiting for him. Rojo flew by plane to the capital of Peru, Lima, and Ernesto took a bus with his fellow traveler, a student from Argentina, Carlos Ferrer, around Lake Titicaca and arrived in the Peruvian city of Cusco, where Ernesto had already been during a previous trip in 1952. After being stopped by border guards (they were confiscated of brochures and books about the revolution in Bolivia), they arrived in Lima, where they met with Rojo. Since it was dangerous to linger in Lima due to the political situation in the country during the reign of General Odria, the travelers - Rojo, Ferrer and Ernesto - traveled by bus along the Pacific coast to Ecuador, reaching the border of this country on September 26, 1953. Influenced by Rojo, as well as press reports about the impending US invasion against Arbenz, Ernesto goes to Guatemala. In Guayaquil, they applied for a visa at the Colombian mission, but the consul demanded that they have air tickets to Bogota (Colombia), considering it unsafe for foreigners to travel by bus due to the military coup that had just occurred in Colombia (General Rojas Pinilla overthrew ruler Laureano Gomez). Without funds for air travel, the travelers turned to a local Socialist Party leader with a letter of recommendation that they had from Salvador Allende, and through him they obtained free tickets for students on the United Fruit Company steamer from Guayaquil to Panama.

Guevara lived and worked as a practicing physician in Guatemala during the reign of Socialist President Arbenz.

The Arbenz government passed a law through the Guatemalan parliament that doubled wages for United Fruit Company workers. 554 thousand hectares of landowners' land were expropriated, including 160 thousand hectares of United Fruit. In Panama, Guevara and Ferrer were delayed because they ran out of money, and Rojo continued on to Guatemala. Guevara sold his books and published a number of reports about Machu Picchu and other historical sites in Peru in a local magazine. We hitched a ride to San Jose (Costa Rica), but it overturned due to a tropical downpour, after which Ernesto, having injured his left hand, had difficulty using it for some time. Travelers reached San Jose in early December. There Ernesto met the leader of the Venezuelan Democratic Action party and the future President of Venezuela Romulo Betancourt, with whom they sharply disagreed, the writer Juan Bosch from the Dominican Republic, the future president of this country, as well as the Cubans - Batista's opponents.

Already defending Marxist positions at this time and having thoroughly studied the works of Lenin, Ernesto, however, refused to join the Communist Party, fearing to lose the chance to have a position in the field of medical work of his qualifications. He was then friends with Ilda Gadea, who later became his wife, a Marxist of the Indian school, who significantly advanced his political education, and she introduced him to Nico Lopez, one of Fidel Castro's lieutenants. It was in Guatemala that Guevara gained an understanding of the essence of the CIA and the methods of work of its agents for the benefit of the counter-revolution, which finally convinced him of the correctness of the revolutionary path of development and methods of armed struggle as the only possible ones in the current situation.

On June 17, 1954, armed groups of Armas from Honduras invaded Guatemala, the executions of supporters of the Arbenz government and the bombing of the capital and other cities of Guatemala began. Ernesto, according to Ilda, asked to be sent to the battle area and called for the creation of a militia. He was part of the city's air defense groups during the bombings and helped transport weapons. Mario Dalmau claimed that “together with members of the Patriotic Youth of Labor organization, he stands guard among fires and bomb explosions, exposing himself to mortal danger.” Ernesto Guevara was included in the list of “dangerous communists” to be eliminated after the overthrow of Arbenz. The Argentine ambassador warned him at the Cervantes boarding house about the danger and offered to take refuge in the embassy, ​​in which Ernesto took refuge along with a number of other supporters of Arbenz, after which, with the help of the ambassador, he left the country and went by train to Mexico City with his fellow traveler Patojo (Julio Roberto Caceres Valle).

When Arbenz, with the support of American intelligence services, was overthrown, which almost cost his like-minded people, in particular Guevara, their lives, Ernesto moved to Mexico City, where, starting in September 1954, he worked in the central hospital. There he was joined by Ilda Gadea and Nico Lopez.

At the end of June 1955, two Cubans came for a consultation to the Mexico City city hospital, to the doctor on duty, Ernesto Guevara, one of whom was Nyiko Lopez, Che’s acquaintance from Guatemala. He told Che that the Cuban revolutionaries who attacked the Moncada barracks had been released from the convict prison on Pinos Island under an amnesty, and began to gather in Mexico City and prepare an expedition to Cuba. A few days later, an acquaintance with Raul Castro followed, in whom Che found a like-minded person, later saying about him: “It seems to me that this one is not like the others. At least he speaks better than others, and besides, he thinks.” At this time, Fidel, while in the United States, collected money for the expedition among emigrants from Cuba. Speaking in New York at a rally against Batista, Fidel said: “I can tell you with all responsibility that in 1956 we will gain freedom or become martyrs.”

The meeting between Fidel and Che took place on July 9, 1955 in the house of Maria Antonia Gonzalez, at 49 Emparan Street, where a safe house for Fidel’s supporters was organized. At the meeting they discussed the details of the upcoming military operations in Oriente. Fidel claimed that Che at that time “had more mature revolutionary ideas than me. In ideological and theoretical terms, he was more developed. Compared to me, he was a more advanced revolutionary.” By the morning, Che, whom Fidel had impressed, in his words, as an “exceptional person,” was enlisted as a doctor in the detachment of the future expedition. Some time later, another military coup took place in Argentina, and Peron was overthrown. The emigrants who were opponents of Peron were invited to return to Buenos Aires, which Rojo and other Argentines living in Mexico City took advantage of. Che refused to do the same because he was fascinated by the upcoming expedition to Cuba. Mexican Arsacio Vanegas Arroyo owned a small printing house and knew Maria Antonia Gonzalez. His printing house printed documents from the July 26 Movement, which was headed by Fidel. In addition, Arsacio was engaged in physical training for the participants of the upcoming expedition to Cuba, being an athlete-wrestler: long hiking trips over rough terrain, judo, and an athletics gym was hired.

Without a shadow of hesitation, Ernesto joined Fidel’s emerging detachment, preparing for an armed struggle in the name of freedom of the Cuban people.
Guevara received his nickname “Che”, which he was proud of throughout his subsequent life, in this detachment for the characteristic Argentinean manner of using this exclamation during a friendly conversation.

Spanish Army Colonel Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the war against Franco and author of the manual “150 Questions for a Partisan,” was involved in the military training of the group. Initially asking for a fee of 100 thousand Mexican pesos (or 8 thousand US dollars), then he reduced it by half. However, believing in the capabilities of his students, he not only did not take payment, but also sold his furniture factory, transferring the proceeds to Fidel’s group. The colonel purchased the Santa Rosa hacienda, 35 km from the capital, for 26 thousand US dollars from Erasmo Rivera, a former partisan of Pancho Villa, as a new base for training the detachment. Che, while undergoing training with the group, taught how to make bandages, treat fractures, give injections, receiving more than a hundred injections in one of the classes - one or several from each of the group members.

Che became his best student. Soon, however, the rebel camp attracted the attention of the police and was dispersed. On June 22, 1956, Mexican police arrested Fidel Castro on a Mexico City street. Then an ambush was set up at Maria Antonia's apartment, where everyone entering was detained. At Rancho Santa Rosa, the police captured Che and some of his comrades. The arrest of the Cuban conspirators and the participation of Colonel Bayo in this case were reported in the press. It subsequently turned out that the arrests were made on a tip from Venerio, who infiltrated the ranks of the conspirators. On June 26, the Mexican newspaper Excelsior published a list of those arrested, including the name of Ernesto Che Guevara Serna, who was described as an "international communist agitator" with reference to his role in Guatemala under President Arbenz.

Former President Lázaro Cárdenas, his former naval minister Heriberto Jara, labor leader Lombarde Toledano, artists Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, as well as cultural figures and scientists interceded on behalf of the prisoners. A month later, Mexican authorities released Fidel Castro and the rest of the prisoners, with the exception of Ernesto Guevara and Cuban Calixto Garcia, who were accused of entering the country illegally. After leaving prison, Fidel Castro continued preparations for the expedition to Cuba, collecting money, buying weapons and organizing secret appearances. The training of fighters continued in small groups in various places across the country. The yacht Granma was purchased from the Swedish ethnographer Werner Green for 12 thousand dollars. Che feared that Fidel's efforts to rescue him from prison would delay the sailing, but Fidel told him: “I will not abandon you!” Mexican police also arrested Che's wife, but after some time Ilda and Che were released. Che spent 57 days in prison. The police continued to monitor and broke into safe houses. The press wrote about Fidel's preparations for sailing to Cuba. Frank Pais brought 8 thousand dollars from Santiago and was ready to start an uprising in the city. Due to the increasing frequency of raids and the possibility of a provocateur handing over the group, yacht and transmitter to the Cuban embassy in Mexico for $15,000, preparations were accelerated. Fidel gave the order to isolate the alleged provocateur and concentrate in the port of Tuxpan in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Granma was moored. A telegram “The book is sold out” was sent to Frank Pais as an agreed signal to prepare the uprising at the appointed time. Che ran into Ilda’s house with a medical bag, kissed her sleeping daughter and wrote a farewell letter to her parents.

Che Guevara was with them first as a doctor, and then received at his disposal one of the brigades and the highest rank of comandante (major).

At 2 a.m. on November 25, 1956, in Tuxpan, the detachment landed on the Granma. The police received a "mordida" (bribe) and were absent from the pier. Che, Calixto Garcia and three other revolutionaries traveled to Tuxpan by passing car for 180 pesos, for which they had to wait a long time. Halfway there, the driver refused to go further. They managed to persuade him to take him to Rosa Rica, where they changed to another car and reached their destination. In Tuxpan they were met by Juan Manuel Marquez and taken to the river bank where the Granma was moored. 82 people with weapons and equipment boarded an overcrowded yacht, which was designed for 8-12 people. At that time there was a storm at sea and it was raining, the Granma, with its lights extinguished, set course for Cuba. Che recalled that “out of 82 people, only two or three sailors, and four or five passengers did not suffer from seasickness.” The ship leaked, as it later turned out, due to an open tap in the lavatory, however, trying to eliminate the ship's draft with the pump out not working, they managed to throw canned food overboard.

The Granma arrived on the shores of Cuba only on December 2, 1956 in the area of ​​Las Coloradas (Cuba) in the province of Oriente, immediately running aground. A boat was launched into the water, but it sank. A group of 82 people waded to the shore, shoulder-deep in water; We managed to bring weapons and a small amount of food onto land. Boats and planes of units subordinate to Batista rushed to the landing site, which Raul Castro later compared to a “shipwreck,” and Fidel Castro’s group came under fire. Waiting for them were 35,000 armed soldiers, tanks, 15 coast guard vessels, 10 warships, 78 fighters and transport aircraft. The group made its way for a long time along the swampy coast, which was made up of mangroves. On the night of December 5, the revolutionaries walked through a sugar cane plantation, and in the morning they made a stop on the territory of the central (a sugar factory along with a plantation) in the area of ​​​​Alegría de Pio (Holy Joy). Che, being the detachment's doctor, bandaged his comrades, since their legs were worn out from a difficult hike in uncomfortable shoes, making the last bandage to the detachment's fighter, Humberto Lamote. In the middle of the day, enemy planes appeared in the sky. Under enemy fire in the battle, half of the detachment's fighters were killed and approximately 20 people were captured. The next day, the survivors gathered in a hut near the Sierra Maestra.

Fidel said: “The enemy defeated us, but failed to destroy us. We will fight and win this war." Guajiro - the peasants of Cuba friendly received the members of the detachment and sheltered them in their homes.

In February, Che had an attack of malaria and then another attack of asthma. During one of the skirmishes, the peasant Crespo, putting Che on his back, carried him out from under enemy fire, since Che could not move on his own. Che was left in a farmer's house with an accompanying soldier and was able to overcome one of the crossings, holding onto tree trunks and leaning on the butt of a gun, in ten days, with the help of adrenaline, which the farmer managed to get. In the Sierra Maestra mountains, Che, who suffered from asthma, periodically rested in peasant huts so as not to delay the movement of the column. He was often seen with a book or notepad in his hands

“I remember he had a lot of books. He read a lot. He didn't waste a minute. He often sacrificed sleep to read or write in his diary. If he got up at dawn, he started reading. He often read at night by the light of the fire. He had very good eyesight."

Marcial Orozco, captain

“I am sent to Santiago, and he asks me to bring him two books. One of them is “The Universal Song” by Pablo Neruda, and the other is a collection of poetry by Miguel Hernandez. He loved poetry very much."

Calixto Morales

“I don’t understand how he could walk; his illness kept choking him. However, he walked through the mountains with a duffel bag on his back, with a weapon, with full equipment, like the toughest fighter. His will, of course, was ironclad, but even greater was his devotion to ideas - that’s what gave him strength.”

Antonio, captain

“Poor Che! I saw how he suffered from asthma, and only sighed when the attack began. He fell silent and breathed quietly, so as not to further disturb the disease. During an attack, some people become hysterical, cough, and open their mouths. Che tried to contain the attack and calm his asthma. He hid in a corner, sat on a stool or on a stone and rested. In such cases, she hurried to prepare him a warm drink.”

Ponciana Perez, peasant woman

On March 13, 1957, in Havana, the student organization "Revolutionary Directorate of March 13" staged an unsuccessful uprising, attempting to seize the radio station, the university, and the presidential palace. Most of the rebels died in battle with the army and police. In mid-March, Frank Pais sent reinforcements of 50 volunteers to Castro's detachment. The replenishment consisted of townspeople who were not accustomed to long journeys through mountainous terrain. The decision was made to begin their training. Volunteers of various political views joined Fidel’s detachment of barbudos (“bearded men” who grew a beard due to camp life and the lack of razors), and funds, medicines and weapons were delivered by foreign Cuban emigrants.
Comandante Che emerged as the most courageous, decisive, talented and successful brigade commander. Demanding of the soldiers subordinate to him and merciless towards his enemies, he won a number of brilliant victories over government troops. The most impressive and actually predetermined the victory of the Cuban revolution was the battle for the city of Santa Clara, a strategically important point near Havana, which began on December 28, 1958 and ended with its capture on December 31. A day later, the Revolutionary Army entered Havana. The revolution was victorious, and a new stage in the life of the Cuban people began.

Since Fidel Castro came to power, repressions against his political opponents began in Cuba. Initially, it was announced that only “war criminals”—functionaries of the Batista regime directly responsible for torture and executions—would be tried. The American newspaper The New York Times regarded Castro's public trials as a travesty of justice: “In general, the procedure is disgusting. The defense attorney made absolutely no attempt to defend himself; instead, he asked the court to excuse him for defending a prisoner.” Not only political opponents were subjected to repression, but also the allies of the Cuban communists in the revolutionary struggle - anarchists. After the rebels occupied the city of Santiago de Cuba on January 12, 1959, a show trial was held there of 72 police officers and other persons in one way or another connected with the regime and accused of “war crimes.” As defense counsel began to rebut the prosecution's allegations, presiding officer Raúl Castro declared, “If one is guilty, all are guilty. They are sentenced to death!” All 72 were shot. All legal guarantees against the accused were abolished by the Partisan Law. The investigative conclusion was considered irrefutable evidence of the crime; the lawyer simply admitted the charges, but asked the government to be generous and reduce the punishment. Che Guevara personally instructed the judges: “There should be no red tape in court proceedings. This is a revolution, the evidence here is secondary. We must act out of conviction. They are all a gang of criminals and murderers. Also, remember that there is an appeal tribunal.” The appeals tribunal, chaired by Che himself, did not overturn a single sentence.

Executions in the Havana fortress-prison of La Cabaña were personally administered by Che Guevara, who was the commandant of the prison and headed the appeal tribunal. After Castro's supporters came to power in Cuba, more than eight thousand people were shot, many without trial.

Che became the second person in the new government after Fidel. In February 1959, he was given Cuban citizenship and all the rights of a native Cuban and was entrusted with the highest government positions. Che Guevara organized and headed the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, eliminating semi-feudal land tenure and improving its efficiency; served as Minister of Industry; was elected president of the National Bank of Cuba. Having virtually no experience in the field of public administration and economics, Che in the shortest possible time managed to study and change for the better the affairs in the areas entrusted to him, carrying out monetary and industrial reforms under the conditions of a severe American blockade and the threat of intervention.
In 1959, after marrying Aleida March for the second time, he visited Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Yugoslavia with her; Returning from his trip, he concluded a historic agreement with the Soviet Union on the export of sugar and import of oil, breaking with the dependence of the Cuban economy on the United States. Having later visited the Soviet Union, he was delighted with the successes achieved there in building socialism, but did not entirely approve of the policies pursued by the then leadership. He did not consider it necessary to wait for a revolutionary situation to mature, but believed it was right to prepare the ground for it ourselves; in addition, like Mao, he believed that it was best to carry out revolutions in predominantly agricultural countries. Even then, he saw in the leading stratum of Soviet society the emerging shoots of counter-revolution and a rollback to imperialism, and, as it turned out now, he was largely right. In addition, Che took an extremely aggressive position during the Cuban missile crisis, but managed to soften his views and maintain a friendly relationship between Cuba and the USSR.

Che Guevara believed that he could count on unlimited economic assistance from “brotherly” countries. Che, as a minister of the revolutionary government, learned a lesson from conflicts with fraternal countries of the socialist camp. Negotiating support, economic and military cooperation, and discussing international policy with Chinese and Soviet leaders, he came to an unexpected conclusion and had the courage to speak out publicly in his famous Algerian speech. It was a real indictment against the non-internationalist policies of socialist countries. He reproached them for imposing on the poorest countries conditions of exchange of goods similar to those dictated by imperialism on the world market, as well as for refusing unconditional support, including military support, for refusing the struggle for national liberation, in particular in the Congo and Vietnam. Che knew well the famous Engels equation: the less developed the economy, the greater the role of violence in the formation of a new formation. If in the early 1950s he jokingly signed his letters “Stalin II,” then after the victory of the revolution he was forced to prove: “There are no conditions for the establishment of the Stalinist system in Cuba.” At the same time, in 1965, Che called Stalin a “great Marxist.”

Che Guevara would later say: “After the revolution, it is not the revolutionaries who do the work. It is done by technocrats and bureaucrats. And they are counter-revolutionaries.”

He was interested in the revolutionary movement throughout the world, and he sought to be its main inspirer. To do this, he attended a meeting of the UN General Assembly and initiated the Three Continents Conference to implement his program of revolutionary, liberation and partisan cooperation in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He considered the synthesis of the Cuban and Vietnamese types of guerrilla movements to be the most successful revolutionary tactics. He wrote books on guerrilla warfare tactics, about episodes of the revolutionary war in Cuba, about socialism and people in Cuba.
The revolution called to Ernesto like a guiding star. And for her sake, in the end, he gave up everything else.

In 1965, Che left all the high government positions he held, renounced his Cuban citizenship, and, after dropping a few lines to his wife, children and parents, disappeared from public life. There were many rumors then about his fate. They said that he had either gone crazy and was in a madhouse somewhere in Russia, or that he had been killed somewhere in Latin America. One thing was beyond doubt: he finally and irrevocably decided to devote the rest of his life to the struggle for justice and liberation of oppressed peoples, for the cause of the revolution.

In April 1965, Guevara arrived in the Republic of the Congo, where fighting continued at that time. He had great hopes for the Congo; he believed that the vast territory of this country, covered with jungle, would provide excellent opportunities for organizing guerrilla warfare. A total of more than 100 Cuban volunteers took part in the operation. However, from the very beginning, the operation in the Congo was plagued by failures. Relations with the local rebels were quite difficult, and Guevara had no faith in their leadership. In the first battle on June 29, the Cuban and rebel forces were defeated. Later, Guevara came to the conclusion that it was impossible to win the war with such allies, but still continued the operation. The final blow to Guevara's Congolese expedition was dealt in October, when Joseph Kasavubu came to power in the Congo and put forward initiatives to resolve the conflict. After Kasavubu's statements, Tanzania, which served as a rear base for the Cubans, stopped supporting them. Guevara had no choice but to stop the operation. He returned to Tanzania and, while at the Cuban embassy, ​​prepared a diary of the Congo operation, which began with the words “This is a story of failure.”

After Tanzania, Che was in one of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe; according to Fidel Castro, he did not want to return to Cuba, but Castro persuaded Che to secretly return to Cuba to begin preparations for the creation of a revolutionary center in Latin America. In November 1966, his guerrilla struggle began in Bolivia.

Rumors about Guevara's whereabouts did not stop in 1966-1967. Representatives of the Mozambican independence movement FRELIMO reported a meeting with Che in Dar es Salaam, during which they refused assistance offered to them in their revolutionary project. The rumors that Guevara led partisans in Bolivia turned out to be true. By order of Fidel Castro, the Bolivian communists specifically purchased land to create bases where partisans were trained under the leadership of Guevara. In April 1967, Che and his squad illegally entered Bolivian territory. At the very beginning of their activities, things progressed successfully. Hyde Tamara Bunke Bieder (also known by her nickname "Tanya"), a former Stasi agent who, according to some information, also worked for the KGB, was introduced into Guevara's circle as an agent in La Paz. Several victories were won over government troops, and Bolivian miners organized an armed uprising. However, it was brutally suppressed and did not meet with widespread support among the people. In addition, frightened by the appearance of the “furious Che,” Bolivian President Rene Barrientos, frightened by news of guerrillas in his country, called on American intelligence agencies for help. It was decided to use CIA forces specially trained for anti-guerrilla operations against Guevara.

Guevara's guerrilla force numbered about 50 people and acted as the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (Spanish: Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia). It was well equipped and carried out several successful operations against regular troops in the difficult mountainous terrain of the Kamiri region. However, in August - September the Bolivian army was able to eliminate two groups of guerrillas, killing one of the leaders, "Joaquin". Despite the brutal nature of the conflict, Guevara provided medical care to all wounded Bolivian soldiers who were captured by the guerrillas, and later freed them.

On September 15, 1967, the Bolivian government began scattering leaflets over the villages of the province of Vallegrande about a $4,200 price on Che Guevara's head.

“There was no man the CIA feared more than Che Guevara, because he had the ability and charisma necessary to lead the fight against the political repression of traditional power hierarchies in Latin America.” - Philip Agee, CIA agent who defected to Cuba .

Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban refugee turned CIA Special Operations agent, was an adviser to Bolivian troops during the hunt for Che Guevara in Bolivia. Additionally, the 2007 documentary Enemy of My Enemy, directed by Kevin MacDonald, alleges that Nazi criminal Klaus Barbier, known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was an adviser and may have helped the CIA plot the capture of Che Guevara.

On October 7, 1967, informant Ciro Bustos gave Bolivian special forces the location of Che Guevara's guerrilla detachment in the Quebrada del Yuro gorge.

In October the denouement came. Che Guevara's squad was discovered with the help of the latest American technical reconnaissance equipment and surrounded by special military units of the Bolivian army, trained by the CIA, in the area of ​​​​the village of Vallegrande. The detachment was forced to fight in unfavorable conditions. While trying to escape from the encirclement, Tanya and Che's closest associates died, very few escaped, and Guevara himself was wounded and captured on October 8.

During his last battle in Quebrada del Yuro, Guevara was wounded, a bullet hit his rifle, which disabled the weapon, and he fired all the cartridges from the pistol. When he was captured, unarmed and wounded, and escorted to a school that served government troops as a temporary prison for guerrillas, he saw several wounded Bolivian soldiers there. Guevara offered to provide them with medical assistance, but was refused by the Bolivian officer.

On October 8, 1967, a local woman reported to the army that she heard voices on the cascades of the river in the Quebrada del Yuro gorge, closer to where it merges with the San Antonio River. It is unknown whether this was the same woman whom Che's squad had previously paid 50 pesos for silence. In the morning, several groups of Bolivian rangers broke up along the gorge in which the woman heard Che’s detachment and took up advantageous positions.

At noon, one of the detachments from General Prado's brigade, which had just completed training under the guidance of advisers from the CIA, met Che's detachment with fire, killing two soldiers and wounding many. At 13.30 they surrounded the remnants of the detachment with 650 soldiers, and captured the wounded Che Guevara at the moment. when one of the Bolivian partisans, Simeon Cuba Sarabia “Willy,” tried to carry him away. Che Guevara biographer John Lee Anderson wrote about the moment of Che's arrest from the words of Bolivian sergeant Bernardino Huanca: the twice wounded Che, whose weapon was broken, shouted: “Don't shoot! I am Che Guevara, and I am worth more alive than dead.”

Che Guevara and his men were tied up and escorted on the evening of October 8 to a dilapidated adobe hut that served as a school in the nearby village of La Higuera. For the next half day, Che refused to answer questions from Bolivian officers and spoke only to Bolivian soldiers. One of these soldiers, helicopter pilot Jaime Nino de Guzman, wrote that Che Guevara looked terrible. According to Guzman, Che had a through wound in his right shin, his hair was dirty, his clothes were torn, his legs were dressed in rough leather sock covers. Despite his tired appearance, Guzman recalls, “Che held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only to smoke.” Guzman says he "liked" the prisoner and gave him a small bag of tobacco for his pipe. Later that evening on October 8, despite his hands being tied, Che Guevara slammed Bolivian officer Espinosa against a wall after he entered the school and tried to snatch the pipe from Che's smoking pipe as a souvenir for himself. In another instance of insubordination, Che Guevara spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Ugartecha as he attempted to question him hours before his execution. Che Guevara spent the night from October 8 to October 9 on the floor of the same school. Next to him lay the bodies of his two killed comrades.

The next morning, October 9, Che Guevara asked to be allowed to see the village schoolteacher, 22-year-old Julia Cortes. Cortez would later say that she found Che "a sweet-looking man with a soft, ironic gaze" and that during their conversation she realized that she "could not look him in the eye" because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing and so calm." During the conversation, Che Guevara noted to Cortez that the school was in poor condition, said that it was anti-pedagogical to educate poor schoolchildren in such conditions while government officials drove Mercedes, and stated: “that’s exactly why we are fighting against this.”

On the same day, October 9 at 12:30, an order from the high command from La Paz came by radio. The message said: “Proceed with the destruction of Senor Guevara.” The order, signed by the President of the Bolivian military government, Rene Barrientes Ortuño, was transmitted in encrypted form to CIA agent Felix Rodriguez. He entered the room and said to Che Guevara: “Comandante, I’m sorry.” The execution was ordered despite the US government's desire to transport Che Guevara to Panama for further interrogation. The executioner volunteered to be Mario Teran, a 31-year-old sergeant in the Bolivian army, who personally wanted to kill Che Guevara in revenge for his three friends killed in earlier battles with Che Guevara’s squad. To ensure the wounds matched the story the Bolivian government planned to present to the public, Felix Rodriguez ordered Teran to aim carefully so that it would appear that Che Guevara had been killed in battle. Gary Prado, the Bolivian general who commanded the army that captured Che Guevara, said that the reason for Che Guevara's execution was the high risk of him escaping from prison, and that the execution was overturned by a trial that would have brought Che Guevara and Cuba to the attention of the world. In addition, negative aspects of the Bolivian President’s cooperation with the CIA and Nazi criminals could come to light at the trial.

30 minutes before the execution, Felix Rodriguez tried to ask Che where the other wanted rebels were, but he refused to answer. Rodriguez, with the help of other soldiers, got Che to his feet and took him out of the school to show him to the soldiers and take photos with him. One of the soldiers filmed Che Guevara surrounded by Bolivian army soldiers. Afterwards, Rodriguez took Che back to the school and quietly told him that he would be executed. Che Guevara responded by asking Rodriguez whether he was Mexican-American or Puerto Rican-American, making it clear to him that he knew why he did not speak Bolivian Spanish. Rodriguez replied that he was born in Cuba, but immigrated to the United States and is currently a CIA agent. Che Guevara only grinned in response and refused to talk to him further.

A little later, a few minutes before his execution, one of the soldiers guarding him asked Che if he thought about his immortality. “No,” Che replied, “I think about the immortality of the revolution.” After this conversation, Sergeant Teran entered the hut and immediately ordered all the other soldiers to leave. One on one with Teran, Che Guevara told the executioner: “I know you came to kill me. Shoot. Do it. Shoot me, you coward! You will only kill a person!” As Che spoke, Teran hesitated, then began firing his M1 Garand semi-automatic shotgun, hitting Che in the arms and legs. For a few seconds, Che Guevara writhed in pain on the ground, biting his hand to keep from screaming. Teran fired several more times, fatally wounding Che in the chest. According to Rodriguez, Che Guevara's death occurred at 13:10 local time. In total, Teran fired nine shots at Che: five times in the legs, once each in the right shoulder, arm and chest, the last shot hit the throat.

A month before his execution, during his last public appearance at the Three Continents Conference, Che Guevara wrote an epitaph for himself, which included the words: “Even if death comes unexpectedly, let it be welcome, such that our battle cry can reach the hearing ear.” and another hand would reach out to take our weapons.”

The body of the shot Guevara was tied to the skids of a helicopter and taken to the neighboring village of Vallegrande, where it was displayed to the press. After a military surgeon amputated Guevara's arms, Bolivian army officers took the body to an unknown location and refused to say where it was buried. On October 15, Fidel Castro informed the public of Guevara's death. Guevara's death was considered a heavy blow to the socialist revolutionary movement in Latin America and throughout the world. Local residents began to consider Guevara a saint and addressed him in prayers “San Ernesto de La Higuera”, asking for favors.

The enemies' fear even of the dead Che was so great that the house where he was shot was razed to the ground.

On October 11, 1967, his body and the bodies of six more of his comrades were secretly buried, the burial place being kept secret.

In July 1995, the location of Guevara's grave was discovered near the airport in Vallegrande.

Only in June 1997 did Argentine and Cuban scientists manage to find and identify the remains of the legendary comandante. They were transported to Cuba and on October 17, 1997, buried with honors in the mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara.

Che Guevara sincerely believed in the victory of communism throughout the world, considering it more progressive than capitalism. However, the fact that in the early 60s. unexpectedly for this knight of the world revolution, a sharp increase in the number of officials, the swelling of the administrative apparatus, bribery among the seasoned fighters of the Sierra Maestra seriously worried Che. Apparently, he still had not lost faith in the success of the revolution. The Comandante is thinking about how to reduce the influence of negative factors on the life of society. He sees a way out in expanding the social conflict, in connecting new countries and regions suffering from “underdeveloped capitalism” to it.
The Latin American revolution is the goal Che sets for himself. For her sake, he leaves friends, associates, and family in Havana. He was confident that the continent was ready to repeat the Cuban experience of armed struggle on a much larger scale. Victory in it would improve Cuba's international position and weaken the position of the United States. Che understood that this undertaking was much more risky than traveling on the Granma. And the romantic Che believed that everything should be started by a person who knew guerrilla warfare both in theory and in practice. He had no better candidate than himself.
Undoubtedly, Che truly believed in the need for a world revolution, of which he always considered himself a soldier. He sincerely wished happiness to the peoples of Latin America and wanted the triumph of social justice on the continent. Of course, he was mistaken in many respects and for this he courageously paid with his life. In his last letter to his children, he wrote: “Your father was a man who acted according to his views and lived according to his convictions.”

The world-famous two-color full-face portrait of Che Guevara has become a symbol of the romantic revolutionary movement, but at the moment, according to some, it has largely lost its meaning and has turned into kitsch, which is used in contexts far removed from the revolution. It was created by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick from a photograph taken at a funeral rally in Havana by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960 at 12:13 p.m. Che's beret bears the José Martí star, a distinctive feature of the Comandante, received from Fidel Castro in July 1957 along with this title.

Alberto Korda made his photograph public domain, but filed a lawsuit for using his portrait in a vodka advertisement.

Che's image inspired not only revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and the Red Army Faction (RAF), but also a number of literary figures. Julio Cortázar wrote the story “Reunion,” which tells the story of the landing of guerrillas on an island in the first person. Although all the characters in the story have fictitious names, some of them are recognizable as real figures of the Cuban revolution, in particular the Castro brothers. The narrator on whose behalf the story is told is easily recognizable as Che Guevara. A quote from the commander's diaries is included in the epigraph of the story.

The spirit of Che Guevara appears in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””, where he dictates to the main character a text entitled “Identicalism as the highest stage of dualism” (the title clearly parodies the title of Lenin’s work “Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism”). The text, in particular, says: “Now the words of the Buddha are available to everyone, but salvation finds only a few. This is no doubt due to the new cultural situation that ancient texts of all religions called the coming “dark age”. Companions! This dark age has already arrived. And this is connected primarily with the role that so-called visual-psychic generators, or objects of the second kind, began to play in human life.” The famous song Hasta Siempre Comandante (“Comandante forever”), contrary to popular belief, was written by Carlos Pueblo before the death of Che Guevara, in 1965 (Carlos Pueblo himself gave the epigraph to the song “The first text was written when Fidel read a letter to Che”). The most famous versions are performed by the author, Buena Vista Social Club, Natalie Cardon, Joan Baez. This song was then covered and modified many times. The punk rock band Electric Guerrillas' song "Bolivia" is dedicated to Che's Bolivian campaign.

Soviet writers did not ignore Che Guevara either. For example, the poet Dmitry Pavlychko, now considered a classic of Ukrainian literature, wrote a cycle of poems about the Cuban Revolution.

April 1, 1965, before being sent to the “continental guerrilla,” Che Guevara wrote letters to his parents, children and Fidel Castro.

Letter to parents:

“Dear old people!

I again feel the ribs of Rocinante in my heels, again, dressed in armor, I set off on my way.

About ten years ago I wrote you another farewell letter.

As far as I remember, then I regretted that I was not a better soldier and a better doctor; the second doesn’t interest me anymore, but I didn’t turn out to be such a bad soldier.

Basically nothing has changed since then, except that I have become much more conscious, my Marxism has taken root in me and has been purified. I believe that armed struggle is the only way out for peoples fighting for their liberation, and I am consistent in my views. Many people would call me an adventurer, and that's true. But I’m just a special kind of adventurer, the kind that risks their own skin to prove that they’re right.

Maybe I'll try this one last time. I am not looking for such an end, but it is possible if we logically proceed from the calculation of possibilities. And if that happens, please accept my last hug.

I loved you deeply, but I didn’t know how to express my love. I am too direct in my actions and I think that sometimes I was misunderstood. Besides, it was not easy to understand me, but this time, trust me. So, the determination, which I have cultivated with the passion of an artist, will force frail legs and tired lungs to act. I will achieve my goal.

Sometimes remember this modest condottiere of the 20th century.

Kiss Celia, Roberto, Juan Martin and Pototin, Beatriz, everyone.

Your prodigal and incorrigible son Ernesto hugs you tightly.”

PAGES OF CHE GUEVARA'S BOLIVIAN DIARY

November 30, 1966 “It worked out pretty well; I arrived without complications, half the people were in place... The prospects in this area remote from all centers, where, apparently, we can practically stay as long as we deem necessary, seem good. Our plans: wait for the others to arrive, bring the number of Bolivians to at least 20 and take action..."
December 12, 1966 “I spoke to my group, “reading a sermon” about the essence of armed struggle. He especially emphasized the need for unity of command and discipline...”
January 31, 1967 G. “Now the guerrilla stage begins in the literal sense of the word, and we will test the fighters. Time will tell what they are worth and what the prospects for the Bolivian revolution are.
Of all the things we thought about in advance, the process of Bolivian fighters joining us is the slowest..."
February 23, 1967 . “A nightmare day for me... At 12 o’clock, under the sun that seemed to melt the stones, we set off. Soon it seemed to me that I was losing consciousness. This was when we were passing the pass. WITH From this moment I was already walking on enthusiasm...”
28th of February. “Although I don’t know how things are going in the camp, everything is going more or less well, with exceptions inevitable in such cases...
The march goes well, but is marred by the incident that costs Benjamin his life. The people are still weak, and not all Bolivians will survive. The last days of hunger showed a sharp weakening of enthusiasm and even its decline.”
March 4th. “People’s morale is low, and their physical condition is deteriorating day by day. U I have swelling in my legs.”
20th of March. Return to base camp. “There is a completely defeatist atmosphere here... From all this— feeling of terrible chaos. They don’t know what to do at all.”
March 31. “Now there is a stage of consolidation and self-purification of the partisan detachment, which is being carried out mercilessly. The composition of the detachment is growing slowly due to some fighters who arrived from Cuba, who look good, and due to Guevara’s people (M. Guevara— one of the leaders of the Bolivian miners), whose moral level is very low (two deserters, one who surrendered and blurted out everything he knew, three cowards, two weaklings). Now the stage of the struggle has begun, characterized by the precise blow we delivered, which caused a sensation, but was accompanied both before and after by gross mistakes... The stage of the enemy’s counter-offensive has begun...
It is clear that we will have to leave the place earlier than I I hoped to leave here, leaving a group that would be constantly under threat. In addition, perhaps four more people will betray. The situation is not very good."
12th of April. “At half past seven in the morning I gathered all the fighters (except for the four scumbags) to honor the memory of Rubio and emphasize that the first blood shed— Cuban blood. This had to be done, because among the vanguard fighters there was a tendency to disdain the Cubans. This was evident yesterday when Kamba said that he trusts the Cubans less and less...”
April 17. “Of all the peasants we met, only one— Simon— agreed to help us, but he was clearly scared..."
30 April, “...after the publication of my article in Havana, hardly anyone has any doubts that I am here... Things are going more or less normally...”
June 14. “I turned 39 years old, the years inevitably fly by, and you involuntarily think about your partisan future. But for now I’m in shape...”
June 19. “You need to hunt for the residents in order to talk to them, they are like animals...”
30 June. “...the peasants still do not join us. A vicious circle is created: in order to recruit new people, we need to constantly operate in a more populated area, and for this we need more people...
From a military point of view, the army is ineffective, but it does work among the peasants, which we cannot underestimate...»
31 July. “The most important features of the month are as follows.

1) Continued complete lack of contact.
2) The peasants still do not join the detachment, although there are some encouraging signs; our old friends among the peasants received us well.
3) The legend of the partisans is spreading across the continent...”
“The most important tasks: restore contacts, recruit new volunteers, get medicine.”
7 August. “Today marks nine months since day formation of a partisan detachment. Of the six first partisans, two— dead, two— injured, one— disappeared, and I have asthma, which I don’t know how to get rid of.”
August 14. “Dark day... at night from the latest news we learned that the army had discovered a hiding place... Now I am condemned to suffer from asthma indefinitely. The radio also reports that various documents and photographs have been found. We have been dealt the hardest blow. Someone betrayed us. Who? This is unknown for now."
August 30. “The situation was becoming unbearable. People fainted. Miguel and Dario drank urine, and so did Chino, with sad consequences.— upset stomach and cramps. Urbano, Benigno and Julio went down to the bottom of the gorge and found water there..."
31 August. “This was by far the hardest month we have experienced. since then moment when hostilities began... We are experiencing the moment of our decline combat spirit. The legend of the partisans is also fading..."
30 September. “This month is similar in its features to the previous one, but now the army is clearly showing greater efficiency in its actions... The morale of the majority of the people who remain with me is quite high... The peasant masses... do not help in anything, the peasants are becoming traitors... .
Most important task— leave here and look for more favorable areas. In addition, we need to establish contacts, even though our entire apparatus is in La Paz (the main city of Bolivia— Note ed.) was destroyed, and there we also received heavy blows.”
October 7th. “Eleven months from the day of our arrival in Nyancahuasu passed without any complications, almost idyllic. Everything was quiet before half past one, when an old woman appeared at the gorge in which we set up our camp, grazing her goats... She did not say anything intelligible about the soldiers, answering all our questions, that she did not know anything, that she had been in these places for a long time did not appear... The old woman was given 50 pesos and told not to say a word about us to anyone. But we have little hope that she will keep her promise...
The army transmitted a strange message that 250 soldiers were stationed in Serrano, blocking the path of the surrounded 37 guerrillas, and that we were located between the Acero and Oro rivers...”
With this recording, which was made between 2 and 4 a.m. on October 8, Che Guevara's Bolivian diary ends.

There are not many historical figures who could compete with Ernesto Che Guevara (full name Ernesto Rafael Guevara Lynch de la Serna) in popularity. He is perhaps the most famous revolutionary of the 20th century. After his death, he turned into a real symbol of revolution and protest. The Comandante's portrait can be seen on souvenirs, T-shirts, baseball caps, bags and backpacks, on the signs of cafes and nightclubs named in his honor. The image of Che remains attractive today - it is still romantic and interesting. At the same time, people who decorate themselves with accessories with his portrait sometimes know almost nothing about what kind of person he was, who he fought against and what inspired him to this fight.

Childhood and youth of the future commander

Ernesto Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in Argentina, the son of respected architect Ernesto Guevara Lynch. That is, in 2018, if he had lived to this day, he could have turned ninety years old.

From early childhood, Che Guevara became interested in reading, which was facilitated by the fact that there was a library in his parents' house, which included thousands of books. His special passion was poetry, he read it in large quantities, and even wrote poetry himself when he became an adult. In addition, from an early age Ernesto was fond of chess. It is known that he was greatly impressed by the Cuban chess player Capablanca, who once came to Buenos Aires. Little Ernesto did not yet know that he would soon write his name forever in the history of Cuba - the Island of Liberty.

In 1946, Ernesto became a student - he entered the medical faculty of the University of Buenos Airos. Che Guevara wanted to devote himself to treating people affected by leprosy (the young man was inspired by the example of Albert Schweitzer, a German doctor who built a hospital on the territory of the modern African state of Gabon and for many years treated local residents).

As a student, Che Guevara was involved in horse riding, cycling, gliding, football and rugby. There is information that the future revolutionary, together with like-minded people, founded the first rugby magazine in Argentina Tackle(“Throw”) There Che Guevara wrote sports notes and signed them with a pseudonym Chang-cho.

By character, Che Guevara was, of course, an incorrigible adventurer. And this was evident even in those years when he was studying to become a doctor. In 1950, student Ernesto enlisted as a sailor on a cargo ship and thus visited several islands, for example, the island of Trinidad. In the same year, he toured 12 Argentine provinces on a moped, which was squeezed out of him by the Micron company for advertising purposes.

Later, he made a couple more trips to South America - 1952 and 1953–1954 (and in the period between these trips, Guevara just received an official medical diploma). On the road, Che Guevara often saw terrible poverty and lack of rights of ordinary people, and this, against the backdrop of the luxurious life of the elites, seemed to him extremely unfair. Latin America at that time was called the “backyard of the United States” - here the US intelligence services often contributed to the establishment of dictatorial regimes that primarily protected the interests of American corporations represented in the region.

In 1954, traveling Ernesto, succumbing to the persuasion of a random fellow traveler, ended up in Guatemala, where Jacobo Arbenz was president at that time. Arbenz was a socialist, legalized all leftist parties in the country and began to carry out progressive reforms for his time.

It was in Guatemala that Che Guevara met his first wife, revolutionary Ilda Gadea. Ilda soon gave birth to a daughter from Che Guevara, but this marriage as a whole did not last too long. Here, in Guatemala, he met Cuban emigrants - supporters of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary July 26 Movement.

Che Guevara - hero of the Cuban Revolution

In June 1954, a military coup inspired by the CIA took place in Guatemala. As a result, President Arbenz was forced to resign. And Guevara was soon added by the new authorities of this Central American state to the list of “dangerous communists who are subject to liquidation.” But thanks to the efforts of the Argentine embassy staff, he managed to leave the country.

But he did not go home, but to Mexico. Here Ernesto Guevara worked for about two years as a doctor at the Institute of Cardiology. And it was during this period (more specifically, in 1955) that he met directly with Fidel Castro. At that time, Fidel was just preparing an operation in Cuba. According to eyewitnesses, the two men talked all night and the next morning Che Guevara decided to join Castro’s squad.

In November 1956, a group of 82 revolutionaries, among whom was Ernesto, set sail on the yacht Granma to the coast of Cuba with the goal of launching an attack against the dictatorship of Batista. Only a month later the yacht sailed to its destination. However, at the landing site, the detachment faced an unpleasant meeting with an enemy military group of thousands, which had tanks, ships and aircraft. As a result, in the first battle, almost half of the squad was killed, and more than twenty people were captured.

However, a small group of rebels, in which Ernesto found himself, managed to get lost in the mangroves and escape to the Sierra Maestra mountains - these beautiful mountains became a refuge for the revolutionaries for a long time. Cuban peasants generally welcomed the members of Castro's detachment in a friendly manner and settled them in their homes. In addition, many local residents joined the revolutionaries and became part of the rebel armed formation.

During the guerrilla war in Cuba, Guevara learned to smoke cigars - this helped drive away mosquitoes in the forests. By the way, Guevara was also given the nickname “Che” on Liberty Island - he often used this word in his speech. “Che” is an Argentine interjection, a shortened and colloquial form of the verb “escuche” (“listen”, that is, an analogue of the Russian “hear”). Ernesto uttered this word very often when addressing his comrades. He himself did not object to such a nickname. After all, it emphasized his connection with his homeland - sunny Argentina.

In the summer of 1957, Castro awarded Che Guevara the rank of major (comandante) and made him commander of a unit of the revolutionary army. Despite his severe asthma attacks, Che Guevara performed forced marches along with the rest. Those who fought with Guevara in Cuba also remember that, as a commander, he did not shout at anyone or make fun of anyone, but he often used strong words in conversation and could be very harsh when necessary.

Comandante as a statesman

Surprisingly, a small detachment that arrived from Mexico on just one yacht eventually managed to overthrow the Batista regime. This happened at the very beginning of 1959. After the revolution won, Che Guevara received Cuban citizenship and married a second time. His second wife was Aleida March, an active participant in the July 26th Movement. From this marriage Guevara had 4 children.

Then Che Guevara was the leader of the garrison of the La Cabaña fortress in Havana, participated in the implementation of agrarian reform, served as president of the National Bank of Cuba, and then minister of industry of the Island of Liberty...

The opinion that Che Guevara carried out his duties in these positions carelessly is generally untrue - the intelligent, well-educated Argentine showed himself to be a decent professional who delved into the nuances of any business that was entrusted to him.

By 1964, Che Guevara was already a well-known politician throughout the world. He visited many countries on business trips - he visited Czechoslovakia, East Germany, China, North Korea, Egypt and the USSR (he was here several times). His anti-American speech at the 19th UN General Assembly, delivered on December 11, 1964, gained great resonance.

At some point, Che Guevara apparently realized that a career as an official was not for him. He felt like a citizen of the world and sought to continue the struggle for the victory of socialism in other parts of the planet. And in the spring of 1965, having written letters to his parents, his children, and also to Fidel Castro, he quietly left Cuba.

Che Guevara in Congo and Bolivia

Together with a detachment of 150 black Cuban volunteers, he went to the Congo, where at that time the so-called Simba uprising was taking place - a major anti-government uprising in several regions of the country. However, the operation in the Congo did not work out from the very beginning - failures happened one after another. And Guevara’s relationship with the local rebels, whose leader was Laurent-Désiré Kabila, could not be called simple.

In the first battle, which took place on June 20, the rebel and Cuban forces suffered an unfortunate defeat. Guevara soon came to the conclusion that winning a war with such allies was unrealistic, and he soon had to stop the operation. In his diary, he himself admitted that his mission in the Congo was a failure.

After some time, the restless Che again tried to raise a revolutionary uprising - this time in Bolivia. He arrived there in November 1966. Moreover, back in the spring, at the request of Castro, the Bolivian communists specially acquired land here to create bases where, under the control of the commandant, partisans could undergo training.

Che Guevara's detachment that arrived in Bolivia consisted of 50 people. It was well equipped and was able to carry out several successful attacks against regular troops in the mountainous terrain of the Kamiri region.

Of course, the appearance of the famous rebel frightened the Bolivian authorities, and therefore they asked for help from the United States. Armed forces from almost all of the then existing dictatorial regimes in South America were sent to Bolivia. CIA agents were also searching for the location of the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (the so-called military organization of the Comandante). A real hunt began for the Comandante, and this put him in a very difficult position. In addition, Che did not take into account that the local population in Bolivia at that time did not support the left very much.

In Bolivia, Che very actively kept his diary, in which he focused on analyzing the shortcomings and mistakes of the partisans. During August and September 1967, the Bolivian army managed to locate and eliminate two rebel groups, including the killing of one of the leaders, Juan "Joaquina" Acuña Nunez. Che, however, was not going to give up. He continued to encourage his comrades and, if necessary, provide medical assistance to them, as well as to captured soldiers of the enemy army, whom, by the way, he often released after that.

Capture and execution of Che Guevara

At the very beginning of October 1967, Ciro Bustos, who agreed to cooperate with Bolivian troops, named the place where Che Guevara could be located. And soon the special forces actually found the commander’s camp. The special forces attacked unexpectedly: a shootout ensued, Che was wounded and his rifle was disabled by a bullet. But they managed to capture the experienced revolutionary only when his pistol ran out of cartridges. Che was tied up and brought to the village of La Higuera.

Ernesto spent the night of October 9 in a small local school building, while the authorities decided what to do with the indomitable rebel. It is not completely known who exactly made the decision to execute, but officially this order bore only the signature of the head of the Bolivian government, Rene Ortunho. The direct executor was chosen by lot - and it so happened that a sergeant named Mario Teran drew the short straw.

When this sergeant entered the room where Che Guevara was kept, the commandant immediately understood everything. He, remaining calm, stood in front of the executioner, who, on the contrary, was very nervous, his hands were even shaking. Then Che said: “Shoot, you coward!”, and Teran began to shoot - he fired as many as nine bullets at the commandant.

Guevara's dead body was flown by helicopter to the tiny town of Vallegrande, where it was shown to local residents and media representatives. And then something unplanned happened: the Bolivian peasants, who had previously been wary of Guevara, looking at the body of the revolutionary who died in the struggle for a better life for them, considered him a saint.

Che Guevara's body was buried secretly, and for a long time his whereabouts were unknown. However, in 1997, a man named Mario Vargas Salinas, who participated in the capture of Che, admitted that the remains of the comandante and six of his comrades should be sought under the runway of a small airfield in Vallegrande. They were actually found there and transported to Cuba, after which they were buried with honors in a beautiful mausoleum in Santa Clara - it was in this city that the detachment under the command of Che won the most important victory during the revolution in Cuba.

The famous portrait of Che and the memory of the commander

Comandante Che Guevara lived a short but colorful life. He was remembered as a selfless and selfless fighter, for whom power was not an end in itself; he was completely honest with people and unconditionally believed in his ideals.

Surely everyone has seen the famous two-color portrait created by artist Jim Fitzpatrick based on the photo “Heroic Guerrilla.” And this photo itself was taken by Cuban Alberto Korda at a rally on March 5, 1960, and was taken almost by accident.

Over the years, Fitzpatrick's portrait has become a symbol of revolutionary romance, but now it has largely lost its meaning and is often used in contexts that are inappropriate and distant from Guevara's personality.

On October 8, Cuba celebrates the Day of the Heroic Partisan - on this day in the country it is customary to remember Comandante Guevara and his legendary exploits. And in the schools of Liberty Island, lessons begin with the song “We will be like Che.” In addition, Comandante Guevara is depicted on the front side of the three Cuban pesos bills.

In Argentina, the revolutionary's homeland, there are also many museums dedicated to him. And in the city of Rosario there is even a bronze statue of Che four meters high; it was installed here not so long ago - in 2008.

And one more amazing fact: among Bolivian workers, Che Guevara, who was a staunch atheist during his lifetime, is still revered as a saint; he is called San Ernesto de La Higuera (Saint Ernesto of Higuera). Ordinary people turn to him with prayers and ask for intercession and help.

Documentary film "Che Guevara as you've never seen him"