Brain Tech Tutorial : Che Guevara II Latin American Studies II Brain Tech Tutorial

Saturday, 27 December 2025

Che Guevara II Latin American Studies II Brain Tech Tutorial

Che: The Poster Boy of Revolutionaries worldwide

This is an initiative to compile and preserve information about the life and philosophy of Che Guevara.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14 May 1928 – 9 October 1967) was a Cuban-Argentinian Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later in Mexico City, Guevara met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht Granma with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion and brought Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba, which preceded the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, Guevara was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal guerrilla warfare manual, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism, and monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment continental revolutions across both Africa and South America, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, Guevara has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. In contrast, his ideological critics on the right accuse him of promoting authoritarianism and endorsing violence against his political opponents. Despite disagreements on his legacy, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled Guerrillero Heroico, was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".

BBC Documentary on Che Guavera

When and why did Che Guavera come in India?

Ernesto "Che" Guevara visited

India in July 1959 as part of a diplomatic mission to establish bilateral relations and trade ties between the newly revolutionary government of Cuba and India.

When He Came to India

Che Guevara and his delegation arrived in New Delhi on June 30, 1959, and stayed for approximately a week before continuing their tour of Asia. They also visited Kolkata (then Calcutta) before leaving the country. [3, 4, 5]

Why He Came to India

The primary reasons for his visit were diplomatic and economic:

To Establish Diplomatic Relations: Just months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, Fidel Castro dispatched Che Guevara on an Afro-Asian tour to seek international recognition and establish formal diplomatic missions with other nations. India was one of the first countries to officially recognize the new Cuban government.
To Foster Trade: Guevara, who served as Cuba's Minister for Industries and head of the National Bank at various times, aimed to initiate trade relations with India. Discussions were held regarding the potential sale of Cuban sugar in exchange for Indian goods like coal, textiles, jute, edible oils, and tea.
To Learn from India's Experience: Guevara met with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian officials, including the Defence Minister V. K. Krishna Menon and members of the Planning Commission, to discuss the country's development projects and experience with post-independence nation-building. He visited the Okhla Industrial Area and an agricultural research institute, showing interest in India's efforts to solve problems of land distribution and poverty.
Ideological Interest: While a staunch proponent of violent revolution, Guevara expressed appreciation for Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and noted in his report that in India "the word war is so distant of the spirit of the people that they didn't resort to it even at the tense moments of their struggle for independence". [3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]