From Cuba to Bolivia
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928 and trained as a doctor before joining Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement in Mexico. After the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he held senior posts in the new government, including at the central bank and the ministry of industries. In 1965 he left Cuba, and he spent months with a group of Cuban fighters in the Congo, an expedition that ended without success.
He then turned to Latin America. Bolivia was chosen as a base, partly because of its central position on the continent and partly because its government, led by the army general René Barrientos, was seen as vulnerable. Guevara reached Bolivia in November 1966 using a false identity.
The guerrilla campaign
The group set up a camp in the rugged southeast, in the Ñancahuazú region. Fighting with the Bolivian army began in March 1967. The guerrilla force was small, with a few dozen people including Cubans, Bolivians and some Peruvians, and it faced serious obstacles from the start.
The leadership of the Bolivian Communist Party, whose head Mario Monje had met Guevara, refused to hand over control of the movement, and the party gave little support. Local peasants, who spoke Quechua or Guaraní rather than the Spanish used by the Cubans, mostly did not join, and some passed on information to the army. Supplies, medicine and communication were poor, and Guevara himself suffered from asthma.
The French intellectual Régis Debray and the Argentine Ciro Bustos, who had visited the guerrillas, were captured in April, which gave the authorities useful information. The United States gave training and advice to Bolivian forces, including a ranger unit. In August the guerrillas lost a whole detachment in an ambush at the Vado del Yeso river crossing. By September the survivors were hungry and scattered.
Capture and execution
On 8 October 1967, Bolivian soldiers surrounded a small group in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine. Guevara was wounded, captured, and taken to the nearby village of La Higuera, where he was held in a schoolhouse. The next day, 9 October, the Bolivian high command ordered that he be killed, and a soldier carried out the order. He was 39.
His body was flown to Vallegrande and shown to journalists, partly to prove that he was dead. The hands were cut off, reportedly to confirm fingerprints, and the burial place was kept secret. The location was not discovered until 1997, when remains were found and returned to Cuba. Fidel Castro announced Guevara’s death publicly in mid-October and declared days of mourning.
There are different accounts of the details around his last hours, including how far US advisers took part in questioning him, and the exact words he is said to have spoken. Many of these accounts come from people with a stake in the story, so it is wise to treat quotations with care.
Why the foco idea failed
Guevara had argued that a small armed group could create the conditions for a revolution, rather than waiting for them to appear, an idea sometimes called foco theory. In Bolivia it did not work. The guerrillas lacked local roots, had no deep ties to the urban left or the miners, and were cut off from supply lines. Many historians also argue that the army’s reaction, helped by foreign advice, was effective against a small force.
The message Guevara had sent in April 1967 to a conference in Havana called for “two, three, many Vietnams” to overstretch the United States. It was a call that, in practice, was not matched by events. The Vietnam War escalation was still dominating headlines in 1967, and Guevara saw himself as part of that global confrontation.
From guerrilla to symbol
His death turned him into a martyr for many. The image that became famous was a photograph taken by the Cuban photographer Alberto Korda in 1960, showing Guevara in a beret looking into the distance. It was reproduced after 1967, and the Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick made a stylised graphic version in 1968. Korda did not charge for it, reportedly, and the picture spread widely on posters, T-shirts and flags.
Young people in Europe and North America, drawn by the student movement and the American counterculture, adopted his image as a mark of defiance, often with little attention to his actual politics. In West Berlin protests and in Paris during 1968, his portrait was seen at demonstrations. For his admirers, he stood for idealism and sacrifice. For critics, he was a man who had taken part in executions in Cuba and supported a one-party state, and whose strategy cost lives.
That split in opinion has never gone away, and it is part of why the image remains so recognisable. The picture has outlived the argument about the man, becoming one of the most reproduced images of the twentieth century.