Next to commemorate the 91th anniversary of the birth of that child turned into a paradigm; we can affirm that his example continues to be a source of inspiration for every young revolutionary.

Born in the city of Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna spent his childhood and youth in Alta Gracia and Cordova, a product of asthma, a disease that accompanied him until his last breath.

In 1947 the family moved to Buenos Aires.  It is noteworthy that the Guevara de la Serna family had a good economic position for the time, although the result of asthma the young Ernesto met the first hand letters of his mother Celia.  With nine years in 1937 he attends school for the first time to attend the third grade, in this year and until 1939 he followed all the events of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1948 he entered the university to study medicine.  In his university studies he shows special interest in the investigation of asthma, allergies, leprosy and nutrition theory.

He did internships at the Allergic Research Institute and began to lean towards the study and attention of this area; but in 1950 he interrupted his studies to make a trip to the North of the country on a bicycle, to which he attached an engine.

He travels more than four thousand kilometers through twelve provinces, his sporting prowess does not go unnoticed by locals and foreigners, and a propaganda company portrays him and publishes a poster where it is seen an athletic young man who firmly grips the handlebars.

On this trip he meets Alberto Granado, a young man who, in December 1951, would accompany him, along with Poderosa II, thus they named the 500 cc Norton motorbike with which they toured Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.  But Chile would be the country that would mark it when appreciating in the visit to the copper mines of Chuquicamata the degree of exploitation and discrimination to which the natives were subjected.

He would express this in a story entitled Let us understand: “(…) that our view was never panoramic, always fleeting and not always equally informed, and the judgments are too strict?  (…) The character who wrote these notes died when he stepped on Argentine soil again, the one who orders and polishes them, I am not me;  At least I am not the same inner self.  That wandering aimlessly for our Capital America has changed me more than I thought (…). ”

This passage, together with the readings, passion started from the family library where classical texts of universal literature, history, philosophy, psychology and works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, with which he became familiar in his youth, help us to understand  why he has changed more than he properly believes.

In June 1953 he became a doctor and a month later he embarked on his second journey through that capital America, now they would be: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and finally, Guatemala, the countries he visits.  Going through them and seeing their realities reveals his deepest humanism, and at the same time makes his revolutionary way of thinking and his firm anti-imperialism grow and grow.

He is attracted by the policy exercised by the Arbenz government in Guatemala.  But see how the coup against Arbenz was planned and executed by the United States government on June 18.

He participates in the transport of arms and tries to unite some young people to the fight, also helps to save some political leaders.  On June 20 he wrote to his mother: “These attacks, along with the lies of the international press, have awakened the indifferent ones.  A combative climate prevails here.  I volunteered for medical aid services and registered with the youth brigade to receive military training and go to the fight if it is necessary. ”

Along with the commotion for the resignation of the president and the mass exile of the main Guatemalan leaders, Che expressed: “In Guatemala it was necessary to fight, but almost no one fought.  The resistance should have been implemented but almost nobody wanted to do it “.  He is accused of being a dangerous Argentine communist and he must leave Guatemala, forbidding him to remain in the country. ”

When Che arrived in Mexico, he met Ñico Lopez, a fighter of July 26, 1953, whom he had already met in Guatemala. He would meet Raúl, who introduced him to Fidel.  From this meeting, Che expressed:

“(…) I talked with Fidel all night.  And at dawn he was already the doctor of his future expedition.  In fact, after the experience lived through my walks throughout Latin America, it did not take much to encourage me to enter any revolution against a tyrant, but Fidel impressed me as an extraordinary man.  The most impossible things were those that faced and solved.  He had an exceptional faith that once he left to Cuba, he would arrive.  That once I got there I was going to fight.  And that fighting, I would win.  I shared his optimism.  It was necessary to do, to fight, to concrete.  Let stop crying, and fight (…) “.

Thus he would become the expedition´s doctor; he would be one of the 82 expeditionaries of the Granma yacht.  He was one of the survivors of the combat of Alegría de Pío on December 5, 1956. He was wounded in that operation and when he retired, he preferred to carry a box of bullets instead of a medicine box.

On the 21st of the same month, he would meet Fidel and other survivors at Cinco Palmas, Purial de Vicana.  He was part, even as medical officer, of the initial nucleus of the Rebel Army and participated in the attack on the military post of La Plata on January 17, 1957. About the meaning of this military action he wrote years later:

“(…) It was a wake-up call to all, the demonstration that the Rebel Army existed and was willing to fight and, for us, the reaffirmation of our chances of final triumph.”

There would be innumerable combat actions in which Che participated during our last stage of liberation struggle.  Such is the case that he was part of column number one José Martí under the direct leadership of the leader of the insurrectional process Fidel Castro.  For his merits in the same year 1957 in the month of July is promoted to Commander, he would write: “In a really informal way I was appointed commander of the second Column of the guerrilla.  The dose of vanity that is in all of us made me feel the most proud man in the world that day. ”

Multiplicity and integrality distinguish him when he publishes the newspaper El Cubano Libre from his enormous responsibilities.  Under the pseudonym sniper, he writes various articles in permanent educational work and in February 1958 founds Radio Rebelde.  Likewise, it creates small war industries in order to satisfy the primary needs of the war.

His participation in the meeting of Altos de Mompié, on May 3, 1958, was decisive, where the causes of the failure of the General Strike on April 9 and the organization of the Revolutionary Movement July 26, with the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, as maximum Rebel Army leader were analyzed.

After the end of the counter-offensive of summer where the numerous Batistian forces were defeated by the rebels, inferior in number, Che is designated Head of Invading Column No. 8 Ciro Redondo.  For this, the Commander in Chief wrote on August 21: “The mission to lead a brigade from the Sierra Maestra to the province of Las Villas and to operate there according to the strategic plan of the rebel army, is assigned to Commander Ernesto” Che “Guevara (…) He is also appointed as leader of all the units of the July 26 Movement that operate in that province, in the cities and in the countryside.  (…) The eight brigade’s strategic objective is to attack the enemy continuously in the center of Cuba and intercept the movements of the hostile troops in land from west to east until they are completely weakened. ”

He would fully comply with the assigned orders, and he effectuated the unity between the MR-26 of July and the Revolutionary Directorate of March 13, signed by the well-known Pact of slinger, which also operated in the Escambray, on December 1, 1958. Also he was part of the Popular Socialist Party.

The battle of Santa Clara conducted brilliantly by Che, the derailment of the military reinforcement train sent by the Batista high command, along with other actions carried out by the rebel forces in different parts of the East contributed to the fall of the Batista dictatorship.

Commander Guevara would be ordered to go to Havana and take La Cabaña Fortress, just as Commander Camilo Cienfuegos would take the Columbia quarter and secure the revolutionary triumph.

With the triumph of the revolution Che Guevara would occupy dissimilar tasks leading the revolutionary process as military chief of La Cabaña and Training of the Rebel Army, later, head of the Department of Industrialization of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank  of Cuba, military chief of the Western region, Minister of Industries, member of the National Directorate of the ORI and then of the Party, with responsibilities in the Central Planning Board (JUCEPLAN).

He was granted with Cuban citizenship, the title Doctor Honoris Causa in Pedagogy and the National Medical Association conferred him the status of Honorary Cuban Doctor and was named adoptive son of Cabaiguán y Fomento on February 8.  Ernesto Che Guevara takes the Cuban nationality on February 9.

He was also the voice not only of Cuba but of all the oppressed and exploited countries of the world, his accusing voice as representative of Cuba when performing functions within the foreign policy of the nascent Cuban revolution.  At the same time he felt the sympathies that aroused the revolutionary process in the world.

He never stopped thinking about the formation of future generations, and he told university students: “(…) to make contact with people, not to help them with their knowledge or whatever – as an aristocratic woman who gives a coin to  a beggar – but to become part of the revolutionary forces that govern Cuba today.  To put your shoulders and help the revolution and at the same time get experiences that can become more important than what they learn in the classroom. ”

The internationalism of Che not only with the Cuban case, of which he had been a vital figure, can help us to understand the interview from the Sierra Maestra on Radio El Mundo of Buenos Aires:

“- I am here simply because I believe that the only way to liberate America from dictators is by defeating them.  I will do everything possible to make them fall, the sooner the better.

– Are you not afraid that your intervention will be taken as a foreign interference?

– As a first measure I do not consider only Argentina as my native country but the whole of America.  For this I would like to take examples like Martí, and it is in his native land (Cuba) that I will help to make his doctrine a reality.  Also, you can not call interference if I want to give myself totally – even the blood – to a cause that seems right to me and that is the cause of the people.  A people that wants to be liberated from a tyranny that in itself is based on foreign armed interference, with airplanes, weapons and even strategists.  So far not even a single country has accused North America of intervening in the internal affairs of Cuba, not a single newspaper has accused the Yankees of helping Batista to kill its people. ”

This thought would take him to the Congo after the Patricio Lumumba´s death.  On February 16, 1965 arrives at Dar El Salaam along with several African revolutionary leaders, those who ask for arms, training and financing to Cuba.  There, Che meets Laurent Kabila and his staff.  They agree that the main enemy of Africa is American imperialism.  In response to Kabila’s request to train the guerrillas in Cuba, Che says no.  He explains that it is better to train them on their own ground.

On March 24 Che arrives from Tanzania near the port of Kigoma on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.  He disembarks with 14 Cubans in the outskirts of the port to elude the patrols of Belgian mercenaries.  From there they arrive at Kimbamba in Congo.  On May 9 he makes contact with the first group of guerrillas.  He explains that he went there to give him an education in guerrilla techniques at the request of Gastón Soumaliot and Laurent Kabila.  He tells them that he wants to fight on their side in the operations they decide.  That is at your command.  Then begins a guerrilla school called the Base.

In November, the situation appears on different fronts – among other things due to the constant discussions between the revolutionary leaders – so confused that more and more guerrillas abandon the struggle.  In agreement with the Congolese, the decision is made that the Cubans should withdraw.  The mission took seven months in which Cuban forces participated in more than 50 actions.

Upon his return to Cuba clandestinely and with the idea of ​​the struggle for the emancipation of the peoples of the American continent begins the training of the contingent that would accompany him to Bolivia.

But before, since October 3, 1965, in the Act of conformation of the PCC and its Central Committee the Commander in Chief announces the letter of farewell that Che wrote him.  There were many questions from Cubans, the surprise that he was not a member of the newly created Party.  This letter is an example of modesty, of revolutionary thought, of firm fidelity to Fidel from Mexico and to the revolution and the people of Cuba.  But also, of that internationalist and anti-imperialist thought formed in him.

About the Bolivian heroic deed we could write pages, but it would be much better to suggest the reading of the Diary, to see all the vicissitudes faced by the guerrilla throughout the Bolivian High Plane described by Che in it.  Che always tells us that the moral of the group was high until the last moment on that fateful day October 8, 1968 in Quebrada Del Yuro.

For future generations, especially the Cuban one, he bequeathed works for its revolutionary formation since the times of the Sierra to the subsequent revolutionary triumph.  Among them we can mention, Passages of the revolutionary war, Socialism and man in Cuba, Cuba historical exception or vanguard, among others.

Che in Camagüey

After the revolutionary triumph of January 1959, Che returned to Camagüey in April of that year.  On the 14th in a park in the city of the same name, he spoke at a multitudinous gathering of revolutionary reaffirmation, an event that was also attended by Fidel Castro.  There, he called the people to be alert, because the enemies of the Revolution were working to create disunity among the Camagüey revolutionaries.

In September he returned and in one of the squares of the city thousands of people, many dressed in the uniform of the National Militias and carrying arms, supported the First Declaration of Havana.  Guevara identified the enemies of Cuba, he pointed to the United States as the true culprit of the poverty of the nations of South America and the Caribbean, and with his immeasurable firmness he cited dignity as a support for struggle even if it entailed the risk to die.

In October of 1961 he attended unexpectedly in the city of Camagüey to a series of conferences for officials and the Technical Councils of the Ministry of Industries.  On that occasion he pronounces words that transcend:

“We must raise the cultural and technical level of the entire working class as another of the imperatives of this moment in which we live.  Let’s produce!  We do not share misery! ”

In 1963, he moved once again to Camagüey, focused on boosting the mechanization of sugarcane harvesting and working for several days in the cuttings with a prototype harvester, in massive cane cutters in the north of the province.

During those days he inaugurated a barbed wire factory in Nuevitas, a city that has an important port, then its main economic line next to the platform fishing.  There, he glimpses what will be Nuevitas in the future: an industrial city (as materialized years later) with a thermoelectric, expanded and diversified fertilizer and cement plants, food factories and thousands of homes for workers.

But what better way to see Che than to do it through the words of our Commander in Chief when he said: “(…) how we want our children to be, we want them to be like Che.”

Photo: taken from archivoshistoria.com

Translated into English by José Carlos García Cruz