Che Guevara, real name Ernesto Guevara
(1928-1967), Latin American guerrilla leader and revolutionary theorist, who
became a hero to the New Left radicals of the 1960s. Born into a middle-class
family in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara received a medical degree from the
University of Buenos Aires in 1953. Convinced that revolution was the only
remedy for Latin America's social inequities, in 1954 he went to Mexico, where
he joined exiled Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro. In the late 1950s, he
played an important role in Castro's guerrilla war against Cuban dictator
Fulgencio Batista, and when Castro came to power, he served as Cuba's minister
of industry (1961-1965). A strong opponent of U.S. influence in the Third World,
he helped guide the Castro regime on its leftward and pro-Communist path. The
author of two books on guerrilla warfare, Guevara advocated peasant-based
revolutionary movements in the developing countries. He disappeared from Cuba in
1965, reappearing the following year as an insurgent leader in Bolivia. He was
captured by the Bolivian army and executed near Vallegrande on October 8, 1967.
