he is the worldwide symbol of rebellion and revolutionary struggle his silhouette is familiar to billions representing the epitome of cool anti-establishment ISM yet few people know the real story behind the legends of Che Guevara and in this week's biographic we discover the man behind the myth to reveal an individual whose passion for social justice saw no bounds [Music] Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on June the 14th 1928 in the town of Rosario Argentina his family was Arastoo critique with his father Ernesto Guevara Lynch operating construction and shipbuilding businesses born prematurely the infant Guevara
who soon acquired the nickname che struggles with asthma as well as pneumonia his mother was the dominant figure in his life teaching him to read and write and impressing her belief in social justice upon him J was the oldest of five children the family were exposed to a wide range of political and philosophical thought with his father being friendly with many veterans of the Spanish Civil War the boy develops a strong interest in sport excelling as athletics swimming and rugby he was known for his aggressive style of play and the mental drive to push his
body to the limit che also develops a passion for intellectual pursuits by the age of ten he had become a very good chess player and a voracious reader the Guevara home was overflowing with books on a wide range of subjects exposing him to the ideas of men like Karl Marx Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Engels che also showed a great love for poetry in his early teens chase interest in the philosophies of great fingers of the past that didn't to keep a personal journal in which he would summarize their main ideas as he formulated his own
outlook on life at school che he was confident and determined a schoolmate remembered him as incredibly sure of himself and totally independent in his opinions very dynamic Restless and unconventional he acted more maturely than many of his peers and associates while still in high school he surrounded himself with university students proving to be their intellectual equal and showing a political insight that often even surpassed theirs on one occasion his university pals urged him to join them in a political rally he replied go out in the streets so the police can hit us with their clubs
nothing doing I'll go and demonstrate only if you give me a gun in later life Guevara made their comments that was certainly the case for himself an ANA 15 already knows what he wants to die for India's no afraid of giving his life if he has found an ideal which makes the sacrifice easy at age 15 Guevara is ideal was still in a raw state consisting of little more than a passion for equality for all and a rejection of materialism still at this age he was more interested in sport than politics he impressed everyone with
his fierce self-discipline his asthma made it a challenge for him to stay on the rugby fields but he saw his condition as a barrier that could be overcome with sheer force of will Shay's self-discipline translated to his academic life as well after graduating from high school he completed a six year university medical degree in just three years his aunt later recalled we would listen to him gasping studying as he lay on the floor to ease his breathing but he never complains for him there was a challenge [Music] J began his university studies at the University
of Buenos Aires in 1948 at the age of 20 he refused to involve himself with the political movement against the Perron government staying focused on his studies he found his respite from academia on the back of his 500cc Norton motorcycle which he nicknamed lap Ponderosa meaning the mighty one yet Shay's first major excursion was actually on the back of the bicycle though one that he had fitted a small motor tube in 1950 he embarked on a solo trek across northern Argentina that would seem peddling some 2,800 miles a year later he paired up with a
university friend Alberto Granado for a massive motorcycle track across the South American continent the two men traveled from one location to another finding work as laborers as they went at some Pablo they volunteered to work in a leper colony it was here that Guevara recalled seeing the most impressive example of solidarity and loyalty and this was among men who had nothing materially he was also deeply affected by the intense poverty that he saw in every corner of the continent in his mines this was an indictment of the failing capitalist system throughout the 5,000 mile excursion
Guevara kept a journal in which he recorded his experiences these were later published as a book which was entitled the motorcycle diaries in the 1990s the motorcycle journey proved to be a great turning points in Guevara 's life in 1960 he wrote the following because of the conditions in which I traveled I came into close contact with poverty and hunger and disease I discovered that I was unable to cure sick children through lack of means and I saw the degradation of undernourishment and constant repression in this way I began to realize that there was another
thing that was as important as being a famous researcher or making a great contribution to medical science and that was to help people his experiences over the course of his travels also it proven to Guevara that he could exist on very little he had the ability to push himself forward despite food water sleep or anything materially these qualities were to make him an extremely effective guerrilla fighter Guevara had taken a year sabbatical from his university degree to embark upon his epic journey returning he threw himself into his studies graduating in 1953 to officially become a
doctor two months later however he abandoned this career and stepped into the political arena with another friends Carlos Ferrer cavora headed for Bolivia the country had just come under his first reformed government the big issue was the nationalization of the country's 10 lines a revolution was forming but she refused to be drawn in stating that the revolutionaries were not concerned with addressing the causes of injustice but were merely tinkering with the effects rejecting the revolutionary movement in Bolivia J and Carlos headed for Peru here they found that they were unable to open any kind of
communication with the downtrodden Indians who according to Ferrer stared at us lips as tight and forbidding as a vice that refused to reply to our questions still the Peruvian border guards were sure that the two foreign upstarts were forming some sort of agrarian revolution from Peru they traveled to Guatemala here a revolution had just taken place J had not yet fully developed a Marxist philosophy but he felt a personal responsibility to help the downtrodden his challenge was to find a workable way in order to do this the new revolutionary government in Guatemala was led by
acabo our bents who had managed to pull together a group of young army officers and intellectuals as J arrived on the scene Arbenz was in the process of redistributing lands that had been nationalized from the American United Fruit Company to peasant workers the ever-present fear was that this would provoke a counter-revolution that would be backed by the Americans che wanted to work as a doctor for the Guatemalans in the jungles of Bataan however he would be required to join the Guatemalan Labor Party which was another name for the local Communist Party che refused to join
claiming that he was a revolutionary and that that designation superseded any political affiliations the arbenz government only lasted a year due to the feared American intervention becoming a reality the CIA trained and financed a revolutionary group who managed you asked the sitting government courts in the middle of it all was Che Guevara who commented we are like the Spanish Republic betrayed from within and without but we did not fall with the same dignity finally he committed himself to revolutionary action yet despite his best efforts he could not rally the Guatemalan people for a consolidated defense
in the ends are Ben's weekly resigns she had been marked for execution by the incoming regime and was forced to flee to the argentinian embassy where he was holed up for almost two months his experiences in Guatemala convinced je that America was the great enemy of worldwide freedom and that capitalism was holding people in a state of subjugation it was at this point that he began to seriously study the works of Marx and Lenin from Argentina je made from Mexico where he began to develop his skills as a revolutionary in 1955 he met Fidel Castro
who had been exiled from Cuba after a failed coup Castro was actively looking for revolutionaries to join second attempts to overthrow the regime a full hence EO Batista shaped liked what he heard and he enthusiastically signed up the Cuban revolutionaries hadn't even left Mexican asurs when they were intercepted by Mexican intelligence services and thrown in prison it was J's first experience of incarceration the screams of his fellow inmates as they were being beaten and immersed in water it had a powerful impact on Castro though he was able to exert influence through the Russian embassy forgot
all of the men released from 1956 the small band of men were undergoing guerrilla warfare training on the Rancho San Miguel near Hal Co che proved to be the outstanding student among the group despite his ever-present asthma the 82 revolutionaries they sat out for Cuba on November the 25th 1956 on board a dilapidated yacht called Granma none of the men on board were sailors and they all got seasick with most of the supplies being lost in a storm they finally landed in a swampy area that led to a mountain range in the southeast of Cuba
for the next few weeks they wandered around somewhat aimlessly they found a guide but he betrayed them to Batista's forces the rebels were surrounded as they lounged around in the jungle with their boots off and weapons laid aside in the ensuing firestorm all but 12 of Castro's men they were wiped out Castro he was wounded in the neck but he managed to escape with four of his comrades in doing so he had to make a fateful choice of this he later wrote this was perhaps the first time to choose between my education for medicine and
my duty as a revolutionary soldier at my feet were a pack full of medicines and a cartridge box together they were too heavy to carry I chose the cartridge box leaving behind the medicine back Jai led his group to the Sierra Maestra to meet up with any other survivors he used what he thought was the north start and guide him but it was actually another star and the group got hopelessly lost they eventually arrived at the meeting place by sheer luck for the next few weeks the men had to rely on the generosity of local
peasants just to survive it was a small victory and the group struggled to enlarge their numbers as they settled into life in the Sierra Maestra mountains though few peasants joined the rebellion they did build up a network of sympathizers any who showed any signs of allegiance to the pâtisserie government were put to death often on the orders of Guevara it was during this time that she developed the cold ruthlessness that he felt was necessary to the makeup of a revolutionary over the next two years he was to order the deaths of hundreds of p'tee stew
followers by May of 1957 the guerrilla force had been rebuilt to about 80 men and they had built up a sizeable cache of weapons they overcame another army barrack since before long the entire Sierra Maestra region had become a liberated zone where that Easter's forces to go during this time that rebel army had transformed itself from something of a clueless mob to an actual seasoned guerrilla force this was almost entirely due to the training and guidance of Che Guevara Castro had made him a commandant second in rank only to himself as well as training the
men in fighting tactics he also established a field hospital the tailor's shop bakery and a printing shop Guevara also set up a radio station so that the rebels could speak directly to the peasant population as a result of his prominent work at the core of the rebel army Guevara 's name came to the attention of the authorities being mentioned in the same breath as the Castro brothers as an enemy of the state within the group he also garnered his own loyal following and in time he would become a threat to Fidel himself by the end
of autumn 1958 the rebel force had won a series of victories in the south of Cuba this precipitated chaise longue march toward Savannah during which is small but determined force traveled by night and attacked the villages and towns that they encountered along the way during the day the ultimate objective was to gain control of the province of las viejas effectively cutting cuba in half che proved himself to be a brilliant tactician he perfected the art of setting up rural bases expanding them until a town fell and then isolating cities and squeezing the resistance out of
it the final attack on the provinces capital of Santa Clara involved a suicide squad attack that surahs men outnumbered ten to one the victory that resulted was the most decisive battle in the entire revolution with the rebel victory at Santa Clara and the rebels heading for the capital for Henze Oh Batista knew the game was up he abandoned the country and on the 1st of January 1959 headed for the Dominican Republic with an alleged fortune of 300 million dollars the next day che entered ivana like a conquering hero Fidel derived six days later to proclaim
that a new era had begun [Music] the men who now inherited the governments of Cuba were predominantly uneducated and ill-prepared for the task the clear exception was Che Guevara while he had no direct governmental experience he was the university graduates who was steeped in philosophical thought further during the time in the mountains he had proven his ability to organize men surely organizing a country wouldn't be much more difficult as a result she became the brains of the new government for the next six years he remained in Cuba implementing his own form of guerrilla government his
first focus was to shift Cuba from an agrarian to an industrial society in order to become independent from foreign imperialists Cuba had to become self-sufficient che spoke less about the peasantry and more about the urban worker in 1961 he was appointed Minister of Industry and instituted a program of converting agricultural implements into raw materials so many people buy such policies che he was deserting the peasant class she never appreciated the complexity and financial resources that were needed to set up new industries the factories that resulted ended up producing goods that were of low quality and
high price by the end of 1964 Guevara had established himself as an international expert on revolutionary action during a three-month world tour II visited China North Korea Algiers Ghana Tanzania and a few other countries espousing his anti-capitalist ideology and claiming that the Cuban Revolution was something spiritual that would can send all boarders at the beginning of 1965 Guevara went to the Congo to lend his support to the revolutionary struggle there for seven months he led an afro-cuban force of about a hundred men however his movements were constantly monitored by the Congo National Army and the
American CIA and he was unable to make any traction [Music] after spending time in exile at the Cuban embassy in dar elsalam Sheikh quietly returned to Cuba then in October 1966 he slipped into Bolivia there he believed that he could ferment an uprising that would lead to the eventual overthrow of imperialism throughout all of Latin America during his time in Bolivia Guevara caps a detailed daily account of his experiences which had been published as the Bolivian Diaries the account reveals that the specter of death was ever-present though it is clear that he didn't go to
Bolivia wanting to get killed he was well aware that the odds of emerging from the struggle alive were slim at best J and the Cubans who came with him not welcomed with open arms by thei Bolivian revolutionaries the Bolivian Indians they distrusted the Cubans as foreign white men as a result during the entire 11 months che was unable to recruit a single Bolivian Indian to his cause che divided his small rebel group into two divisions he lacked the decisiveness and aggression of the actions that he had during the Cuban Revolution he was also suffering physically
at this point with his asthmatic bouts becoming chronic still his resolve to go on in never wanes as long as he could breathe he could fight each rebel division was systematically hunted down by the Bolivian forces on October the 7th 1967 an informants led Bolivian Special Forces troops to Castro's camp in the gyro ravine almost 2,000 soldiers surrounded the camp and moved in for the kill all but 10 men were killed Guevara threw up his hands and he yelled do not shoot I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead
the wounded che was captured bound and taken to a nearby schoolhouse attempts to interrogate him failed as he refused to speak one of the Bolivian soldiers present recalled that che held his head high looked very one straight in the eye and asked only for something to smoke a pipe was handed to che and he contently puffed on it until a Bolivian officer entered the room and grabbed it from his mouth in response Guevara kicked out at the officer on the morning of October the 9th Guevara requested an audience with the local schoolteacher the young woman
was summoned and she listened respectfully as che brought our attention to the dilapidated condition of a schoolroom and transitive to the lavish conditions which government officials enjoyed he told her that is what he was fighting for the teacher Julia Cortes later related that she could not meet Shay's gaze because it was unbearable piercing and so tranquil soon the news came through the Bolivian president Rene barrientos had ordered the death of Che Guevara before the execution the soldiers paraded him outside the schoolroom and took photos with him then he was taken back inside where his executioner
entered Guevara stood as he spoke the last words to his killer I know you've come to kill me shoot coward you are only going to kill a man the assassin soldier named Mario Terran then opened fire hitting Che in the arms and legs he was careful to inflict wounds in such a way that the story could be told that Shay was killed during a firefight the revolutionary icon was pronounced dead at 1:10 p.m. on October the 9th 1968 the manner of its death created a martyr while the substance of his life created a legend as
strong today as it ever was so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe we've got brand new videos like this every Monday and every Thursday and when you are hitting that subscribe button do hit that bell as well because that means you will get notifications if you just subscribe you might you might not who know so do click that as well and as always thank you for watching
