Che Guevara

Ernesto Guevara was a medical student whose travels through South America in the early 1950s left him appalled by poverty and convinced that US capitalism was the root cause. After Guatemala's CIA-backed coup in 1954 hardened his politics, he met Fidel Castro in Mexico City, joined the 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba in 1956 to wage guerrilla war against Fulgencio Batista. He rose to second-in-command during the two-year campaign that toppled the regime, then took powerful roles in the new government: overseeing war tribunals, running the National Bank, directing agrarian reform, and helping train the forces that repelled the Bay of Pigs and bring Soviet missiles to the island in 1962. A prolific writer, he produced a guerrilla warfare manual and a best-selling memoir, arguing that only world revolution could break imperialism's grip on the Third World. He left Cuba in 1965 to export insurgency to Africa and South America, failed in the Congo, and was captured and executed by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces on 9 October 1967.