1. ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

2. CHE GUEVARA
• 14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967
• Argentine Marxist revolutionary
• Politician
• Author
• Physician
• Military theorist
• Guerrilla leader during the Cuban revolution

3. EARLY LIFE
• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, known as Che
Guevara, was born on 14 June 1928 in
Rosario, Argentina into a middle-class family.
He was very active in his youth, playing
rugby, swimming and doing other physical
activities. He also received an excellent
education. He studied medicine at Buenos
Aires University.

4. A teenage Ernesto (left) with his parents and siblings, c. 1944.
Seated beside him, from left to right: Celia (mother), Celia
(sister), Roberto, Juan Martín, Ernesto (father) and Ana María.

5. MEDICINE
• In 1947 Ernesto moved to Buenos Aires to care for his elderly grandmother.
She died shortly thereafter and he began medical school: some believe that
he was driven to study medicine because of his inability to save his
grandmother.

6. THE MOTORCYLE DIARIES
• At the end of 1951, Ernesto set
off with his good friend Alberto
Granado on a trip north through
South America. They traveled
through Chile, Peru, Colombia
and Venezuela, where they
parted ways. Ernesto continued
to Miami and returned to
Argentina from there.

7. • Ernesto kept notes during his trip, which he subsequently made into a book named
The Motorcycle Diaries. It was made into an award-winning movie in 2004. The trip
showed him the poverty and misery all throughout Latin America and he wanted to
do something about it, even if he did not know what.

8. FIDEL CASTRO AND CUBAN
REVOLUTION
• Ernesto returned to Argentina in
1953 and finished medical school.
He left again almost immediately
from Argentina. In 1954 he went to
Mexico and the following year he
met Cuban revolutionary leader
Fidel Castro. Castro was planning
a communist rebellion in Cuba.
Guevara joined Castro's '26th July
Movement' and played a key role
in the eventual success of its
guerrilla war against Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista.

9. • Castro overthrew Batista in 1959 and took power in Cuba. From 1959-1961, Guevara was
president of the National Bank of Cuba, and then minister of industry. In this position, he
travelled the world as an ambassador for Cuba. At home, he carried out plans for land
redistribution and the nationalisation of industry.

10. • In 1965, Che decided that he was not
meant to be a government worker, even
one in a high post. His calling was
revolution, and he would go and spread
it around the world. He disappeared from
public life and began plans for bringing
about revolutions in other nations. The
communists believed that Africa was the
weak link in the western
capitalist/imperialist stranglehold on the
world, so Che decided to head to the
Congo to support a revolution there led
by Laurent Désiré Kabila.
• The Congo venture was a total fiasco.
Che wanted to remain and die fighting
as a martyr, but his Cuban companions
convinced him to escape. All in all, Che
was in Congo for about nine months and
he considered it one of his greatest
failures.

11. • Back in Cuba, Che wanted to try again for another communist revolution, this time in Argentina.
Fidel and the others convinced him that he was more likely to succeed in Bolivia. Che went to
Bolivia in 1966. From the start, this effort, too, was a fiasco.

12. THE DEATH OF CHE GUEVARA
• He was captured in Bolivia. On October 9, the order was given, and Che was
executed, shot by a Sergeant Mario Terán of the Bolivian Army. His body was not
found until 1997.