The internationalist icon who traded a stethoscope for a rifle
“Create two, three, many Vietnams.” — Message to the Tricontinental, 1967
Argentine Marxist revolutionary. As a guerrilla comandante of the Cuban Revolution, he played a key role in overthrowing the Batista regime in 1959. He then devoted himself to the international revolutionary struggle, leading guerrilla campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967.
Career Timeline
- 1948–1953Medical student; the journeys across Latin America
- 1955Meets Castro in Mexico; joins the 26th of July Movement
- 1956–1959Guerrilla comandante; takes Santa Clara
- 1959–1965President of the National Bank; Minister of Industry
- 1960Published Guerrilla Warfare
- 1965–1967Guerrilla campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia
- 1965Published Socialism and Man in Cuba
- 1967.10Captured in Bolivia; shot the next day
Related historical events
Bolivia: the last eleven months — "Create two, three, many Vietnams"
In 1965 Che laid down every office and left Cuba. 'Other mountains are calling,' he wrote in his farewell letter to Fidel. Seven months in the Congo ended in failure. He did not stop.
In November 1966 he slipped into Bolivia under a false identity. With forty-seven men he opened a guerrilla front in the Andean foothills. But the Bolivian Communist Party refused support, the peasants distrusted him, and the CIA fielded a pursuit team that included Cuban exiles.
In April 1967 he sent his message to the Tricontinental: 'Create two, three, many Vietnams.' The only answer to imperialism, he argued, was to open simultaneous Vietnams across the globe. It became his testament.
On 8 October 1967 his column was ambushed in the Quebrada del Yuro. Wounded in the leg, Che was captured alive. The next morning, in the schoolhouse at La Higuera, he was shot: reportedly after telling his executioner, 'Shoot, coward, you are only killing a man.' He was thirty-nine.
The death photograph, with its uncanny resemblance to a deposition-of-Christ, circled the globe and completed the iconization he himself had dreaded.
The Bolivian Diary was found in his pack and published. The last entry was dated 7 October.