Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara, was one of the most significant revolutionaries of the twentieth century. Born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1928, he trained as a doctor before dedicating his life to armed struggle. His nickname “Che” came from his constant use of the Argentine interjection che, meaning “mate” or “hey,” a habit that marked him wherever he went.

In 1952 a long journey across South America changed his life. Travelling with his friend Alberto Granado, he came face to face with poverty, hunger and exploitation across the continent. He worked with miners and peasants, and treated patients in a leper colony in Peru. What began as an adventure became a political awakening. Guevara concluded that Latin America shared not only a common Hispanic heritage but also a shared condition of injustice. His notebooks from this trip were published posthumously as Notas de viaje (1993), translated as The Motorcycle Diaries (1995) and later adapted for cinema in 2004.

In 1954 Guevara was in Guatemala when Jacobo Árbenz’s reformist government was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The experience convinced him that peaceful reform would always be blocked by foreign powers. The following year he met Fidel and Raúl Castro in Mexico, joining their group of exiles preparing to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. In December 1956 he landed with them on the yacht Granma. After heavy losses, the survivors regrouped in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara’s discipline, tactical skill and medical training earned him a place among the movement’s most trusted leaders. When Havana fell in January 1959, he stood alongside Castro as one of the architects of victory.

In revolutionary Cuba he became head of the National Bank and later Minister of Industry. He helped to drive literacy campaigns, healthcare reform and agrarian change, but was also central to the use of tribunals and executions to secure the new state. To supporters he embodied sacrifice, discipline and international solidarity. To critics he was a rigid ideologue, willing to use violence to achieve his goals.

Guevara saw Cuba as only the beginning. In 1965 he travelled to the Congo to support an anti-colonial uprising, but the effort collapsed. The next year he secretly entered Bolivia, hoping to ignite a guerrilla movement that would spread across South America. The plan failed. Isolated from local support and pursued by the Bolivian army with CIA assistance, he was captured in October 1967 and executed the next day at just 39.

Che Guevara’s legacy remains one of the most contested of the modern era. Alberto Korda’s famous photograph turned him into a global symbol, reproduced on murals, banners and T-shirts. For many he represents socialism, rebellion and resistance to imperialism. For others he stands for violence and authoritarianism.