Che Guevara born Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (Spanish: Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna), was born in Rosario, República Argentina , into a middle-class family in Argentina on 14 May in 1928 and trained as a doctor, but became radicalised by the poverty and hunger he witnessed in South America.
In 1955, he met Fidel Castro and participated in the preparations for the "Granma" expedition; in November 1956, he went to Cuba; in 1956, he participated in armed struggles in places like the Sierra Maestra in Cuba; in December 1958, he commanded troops in the attack on Santa Clara; in January 1959, he entered Havana; in June 1959, he was commissioned by the Cuban government to visit various countries; in June 1961, he signed an economic agreement with the Soviet Union; in August 1962, he led a Cuban party and government delegation on a visit to Moscow; in May 1963, he was appointed a member of the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, and the Secretariat of the party..
In 1965, Che Guevara sat down and wrote letters he hoped his children might one day understand. He was 37 years old and preparing to leave Cuba,.
To his parents, he wrote with the tenderness of a son who had spent much of his life far from home. But the most personal letter was written to his children -Hilda, Aleida, Camilo, Celia, and Ernesto. In it, he tried to compress a father’s advice into a few final pages.
“Know that your father was a man who acted according to what he believed in,” he wrote, “and there is no doubt about his sincerity and loyalty to his convictions.” He urged them to study hard. To read deeply. To never accept injustice.
“Above all,” he wrote, “always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Two years later, on October 9, 1967, Che Guevara was captured by Bolivian forces in the village of La Higuera and executed at the age of 39. His children eventually received the letter. History has never agreed on what to make of him.
His story resists simplicity. What remains certain is that he lived—and died—according to absolute conviction. In the final hours before leaving for a war he would not survive, he was thinking about his children. Not about fame. Not about legacy. But about what values he hoped they would carry forward. “Study and read diligently,” he wrote. “Remember that an individual has no value alone.” Stand for something. Learn everything you can. Never be indifferent to suffering. Whether one sees him as hero or villain, the letter still raises questions that outlive the man who wrote it: What do we leave behind for the next generation? What beliefs are worth sacrifice? And when we are gone, what part of us will remain?"
His farewell to Fidel Castro written in 1965, before leaving Cuba to continue the revolutionary struggle abroad explains how he is stepping away from all his official positions and even renouncing his Cuban citizenship, not out of disappointment, but out of a profound sense of duty. He writes that Cuba has already given him everything, and that he cannot remain in safety while other nations are still fighting against oppression.
The letter reflects his deep loyalty to Fidel and the Cuban Revolution, as well as his belief in international revolution rather than remaining in power. Che openly accepts the possibility of failure, imprisonment, or death, presenting his departure as a moral obligation rather than a personal choice.
The farewell later became one of the most iconic texts associated with his legacy as a committed, self-sacrificing revolutionary.
Farewell letter from Che to Fidel Castro
Year of Agriculture
Havana, April 1, 1965.
Fidel: At this moment I remember many things: when I met you in Maria Antonia's house, when you proposed I come along, all the tensions involved in the preparations. One day they came by and asked who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of it struck us all. Later we knew it was true, that in a revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many comrades fell along the way to victory.
Today everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature, but the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine. I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. The only ties are of another nature — those that cannot be broken as can appointments to posts.
Reviewing my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient integrity and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.
I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean [Missile] crisis. Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant as you were in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your way of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.
Other nations of the world summon my modest efforts of assistance. I can do that which is denied you due to your responsibility as the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part. You should know that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of those I hold dear. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever it may be. This is a source of strength, and more than heals the deepest of wounds.
I state once more that I free Cuba from all responsibility, except that which stems from its example. If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you. I am grateful for your teaching and your example, to which I shall try to be faithful up to the final consequences of my acts.
I have always been identified with the foreign policy of our revolution, and I continue to be. Wherever I am, I will feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I shall behave as such. I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children; I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and receive an education. I would have many things to say to you and to our people, but I feel they are unnecessary. Words cannot express what I would like them to, and there is no point in scribbling pages.
Ernesto Che Guevara
Che would continue revolutionary campaigns abroad, first in Africa to the Congo to support the rebellion there, and finally to Bolivia where with a small, committed group he initiated a revolutionary movement, but was captured and executed by Bolivian and US military forces on 9 October 1967.
In July 1997, his remains were discovered; in October, the Council of State of Cuba issued a notice designating the period from the 11th to the 17th of that month as a national period of mourning, and his remains were interred at the Che Guevara Square in Santa Clara.
After his death, Che Guevara's portrait became a ubiquitous symbol of counterculture, an icon of global popular culture, as well as a hero of Third World communist revolutionary movements and a symbol of the Western Leftist Movement. Time magazine selected him as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.
The Cuban-American sociologist Samuel Farber praised Che Guevara as “an honest and committed revolutionary.” But he also criticized him for not fully embracing democracy.
Guevara remains though a national hero in Cuba. His picture is on the 3 peso banknote. School children start each morning by though saying, “We will be like Che.” In his home country of Argentina, high schools are named after him. Many Che museums exist, and a 12-foot bronze statue of him was unveiled in his birth city, Rosario, in 2008. Some Bolivian farmers even see him as “Saint Ernesto” and pray to him for help.
However, Guevara is hated by many in the Cuban exile and Cuban American community in the United States. They see him as “the butcher of La Cabaña.” Despite these strong feelings, a famous black-and-white image of Che’s face, created by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, has become a widely sold image. It is found on T-shirts, hats, and other items. This is ironic because Guevara disliked consumer culture
We should not forget the fact that Cuba before the revolution was a horror show. Bankrolled by the Mafia, US intelligence and wealthy US businessmen, dictator Fulgencio Batista's reign of terror knew no bounds. The bodies of hundreds of political prisoners showed signs of severe torture. Anyone suspected of opposing the government could be rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or even executed in the street. Batista's Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activites, which carried out the torture and extrajudicial killings, was trained by the CIA ,
At the same time the US government was carrying out a program of political repression against suspected communists in the US in which labor organizers, journalists and members of the Hollywood elite were targeted, leaving their careers and lives in ruin.
The American Mafia in Cuba, led by Meyer Lanksy, Lucky Luciano and Santo Trafficante, Jr., paid Batista to kill, torture and intimidate any suspected Cuban dissenters - with the goal of keeping Havana "safe" and quiet so their empire of drug trafficking, human trafficking and gambling could continue unabated.
The belief that pre-revolution Cuba was anything but a deadly despotic hellhole run by gangsters is a cute story but nowhere is it based in reality. Make no mistake, when the capitalists say they want to "free" Cuba from the revolutionary government, this is what they have in mind.
It is amazing how the media can tell you all about human rights abuses in Iran, but when the US is causing people on ventilators to die in Cuba, there is radio silence. Apparently, human rights only matter when we need an excuse to start a war. Keep the revolutionary memory of Che alive and hands of Cuba,
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