Che Guevara

Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (June 14, 1928 - October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader. “Che” is an Argentine expression for calling someone's attention, and in some other parts of Latin America, a slang for someone from Argentina.

Guevara was a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After the revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro in the new government of Cuba. After a brief stints as president of the National Bank and Minister of Industries, Guevara did not settle in as part of the new Cuban government, and tried without success to stage revolutions through guerilla warfare in various countries, notably the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bolivia, where he was captured by a unit of the Bolivian Ranger Battalion advised by United States Green Berets on October 8, 1967, and executed the following day.


Quotes

“We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear.”
—Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental

“In a revolution, one triumphs or dies.”
—Che Guevara (farewell letter to Fidel Castro; dated April 1, 1965)

“Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.”
—Che Guevara (message to the Tricontinental; 1967)

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”
—Che Guevara

“Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.”
—Che Guevara