Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, known as Che Guevara, was born on 14 June 1928 in Rosario, Argentina into a middle-class family. He studied medicine at Buenos Aires University and during this time travelled widely in South and Central America. The widespread poverty and oppression he witnessed, fused with his interest in Marxism, convinced him that the only solution to South and Central America's problems was armed revolution.
In 1954 he went to Mexico and the following year he met Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. 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.
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 w
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Early Life and Motorcycle Diaries
Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina on June 14, 1928. The oldest of five children in a genteel, middle-class family, his liberal parents—especially his mother, Celia—were political activists. Guevara’s asthma led the family to relocate near Cordoba when he was a boy, where the drier climate lessened his attacks. And while he participated in sports, he also became a voracious reader. As a teen, he began to cultivate a political ideology and joined detractors of Argentine dictator Juan Perón.
Did you know? Che Guevara has been the subject of a number of films, including “The Motorcycle Diaries,” which was based in part on Che's own account of his nine-month journey across South America in 1951–52, an experience that shaped his leftist beliefs.
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine but left to embark on what would be known as his “motorcycle diaries” journeys. First, traveling solo across northern Argentina in 1950 on a makeshift motorcycle that consisted of a small engine attached to a bicycle