And one will wonder, who this man is, that in his irrepressible idealism enlivened in clandestine activities and political conspiracies, dare deprive death of his satisfaction, for indeed decades later, Comandante Che, is now heroically revered.īorn Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, Che Guevara, was, unlike the ideology he died for, born in an affluent family of landed Argentinean elites, albeit a family on a sole route certain to lead them to modest living later on.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s last words * (Anderson, 1991:735) “Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” There is no doubt that this monumental work will stand as the definitive portrait of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating, yet largely unexplored, historical figures. He has obtained hitherto unpublished documents, including several of Che's personal diaries and, in the course of his research, broke open a twenty-eight-year-old mystery - the whereabouts of Che's body in Bolivia. Jon Lee Anderson has been given unprecedented access to the Cuba Government's archives and has had total co=operation from Che's widow, Aleida March, who has never previously spoken for publication about her late husband. It has an epic sweep as it evokes an era of tumultuous change, of a worldwide super-power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, manifesting itself in numerous 'little wars' across the globe. Che drove himself with fanatical zeal, and in the end he paid the ultimate price for his cause.Ĭhe Guevara: A Revolutionary Life shuttles between the revolutionary capitals of Havana and Algiers to the battlegrounds of Bolivia and the Congo from the halls of power in Moscow and Washington to the exile havens of Miami, Mexico and Guatemala, in a gripping tale of revolution, international intrigue and covert operations.

Che Guevara's dream was an epic one - to unite Latin America and the rest of the developing world through armed revolution, and to end once and for all the poverty, injustice and petty nationalisms that had bled it for centuries. He became a myth in his own lifetime and an international martyr-figure upon his death he was a revolutionary fighter, a military strategist, a social philosopher, an economist, a medical doctor and a friend and confidant of Fidel Castro.

Che by Jon Lee Anderson