Che Guevara, Cuba, and Guerrilla Warfare
by Zig Zag, Winter 2009
Introduction
Today, the image of Che Guevara is well known throughout the world. But how much do people really know about Che? Although his image has been made into a pop icon and commercialized in a million products, most people are probably unaware of who Che Guevara is or why he became so immortalized.
Likewise, many people have heard about Cuba so often they begin to think they know what it's all about, without really knowing. In fact, no understanding of recent Central & South American history is complete without considering the contributions made by Che, or the impacts of the Cuban Revolution.
Che Guevara
His real name was Ernesto Guevara, and he was born into a middle-class family in Argentina on June 14, 1928. As a child, he suffered from asthma and yet was an excellent athlete. Che became his nickname during the Cuban Revolution. 'Che' means friend or buddy, and was how he often addressed people (apparently a common practise in Argentina at the time).
As a young medical student, Che traveled throughout South and Central America and was deeply affected by the poverty he saw among the masses of people. Later, he was in Guatemala during the 1954 CIA-organized coup against the government, then carrying out land reforms. These experiences led him to see capitalism, and in particular US imperialism, as the greatest enemy to humanity. It also confirmed his belief that armed resistance was necessary for revolutionary change.
While in Guatemala, he met members of the Cuban July 26th Movement. The next year, in 1955, Che joined with Fidel Castro and other Cubans in Mexico preparing to invade Cuba and overthrow the military dictator, Batista.
The 1959 Cuban Revolution
Cuba is an island located in the Caribbean, some 90 miles from the US. It is 766 miles long (1,233 km), with a total land mass of 42,803 square miles (110,860 square km). The weather is tropical with temperatures ranging from 21 degrees celsius (August) to 27 degrees celsius (July). There is a dry season from November to April, and a rainy season from May to October. Cuba also lies in the path of hurricanes, which occur mostly in September & October. Today, Cuba has a population of nearly 12 million people, a mix of Taino, Spanish, and African descent. Although it is a poor country, it has the highest rates of education and health in the 'Third World'.
Cuba was colonized by the Spanish after the first settlement was established, in 1511. As in other Spanish colonies, widespread violence and disease accompanied the 'conquistadors', devastating the island's Indigenous population. For several centuries it was ruled by Spain. Cuba was one of the last American colonies to gain independence (in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, when Cuba became controlled by US interests).
Like most Central & South American countries, Cuba's land & resources were owned by rich elites & foreign interests who propped up dictatorships in order to exploit the land & people. After World War 2, workers, peasants, and students organized to fight for agrarian & political reforms. They were frequently met with harsh repression.
Fidel Castro & the July 26 Movement
On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro and other Cuban revolutionaries attempted to seize two military barracks as part of an uprising to overthrow the government. After some fighting, the rebels were defeated. Castro and his brother Raul were take prisoner and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 1954, however, the dictator General Batista, under strong political pressure, released all political prisoners in an amnesty.
Castro and others then traveled to Mexico, where they re-organized and began training under Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the 1936 Spanish Civil War. At this time, Che joined the rebels as a doctor. The group was known as the July 26th Movement, after the failed 1953 attacks.
In November 1956, the rebels made final preparations for an invasion and coordinated uprising in cities across Cuba. This was to be carried out by J 26 Movement and other revolutionary groups on the island. They expected a general strike and a quick military assault to topple the Batista regime.
From Mexico, 80 rebels boarded the Granma, an old yacht. It was so heavily loaded with supplies, however, that it arrived two days late in the south-west of Cuba. This caused the coordinated uprising to fail.
Three days after landing and making their way to the Sierra Maestra mountains, the rebels were attacked by the Cuban military. No more than 20 rebels survived and made their way to the mountains. Dispersed into small groups or alone, they wandered the area trying to link up, which they eventually did thanks to peasants who sympathized with them. Thus, the core of the guerrilla army was established.
Guerrilla War from the Mountains
In the towns and cities, Batista's forces carried out a campaign of deadly repression against those involved in the aborted uprising and their co-conspirators. In the Sierra Maestra mountains, however, Castro and his small rebel army carried out succesful attacks on small army units & garrisons. Support for the guerrillas grew among the rural population, and the rebel forces expanded.
In February 1958, Radio Rebelde was established and enabled the rebels to communicate their vision and strategy to the population. At this time, the rebel army was less than 200 at times, while the government army & police numbered as many as 40,000. Despite its size, however, the security forces were poorly equipped and trained, often retreating in the face of rebel attacks.
In July 1958, the Cuban military launched a major offensive, using 12,000 soldiers. The rebels defeated the troops in a series of small-scale fights. At the Battle of La Plata, the rebels defeated an army battalion, capturing 240 soldiers while losing just three guerrillas. In late July, however, the rebels (some 300) were nearly destroyed after they are encircled. Castro began negotiations with the army commander, and used this to gain time for the guerrillas to escape.
In late August, the rebels began their counter-offensive, descending from the mountains and well-armed thanks to the military operations earlier that summer. While some columns moved into the towns and attacked military posts, others proceed to the provincial capital of Santa Clara. First they arrived at the city of Yaguajay and captured it on Dec 30. The next day, they captured Santa Clara.
These initial defeats caused Batista to panic and flee to the Dominican Republic, on Jan 1, 1959. After this, military and police forces began surrendering and abandoning their positions. By Jan 2 the rebels had taken Havana. Following this and the establishment of a new government, hundreds of Batista agents, police and soldiers were put on public trial for human rights abuses and war crimes, including torture and murder. Scores were executed, while others were dismissed from the army or expelled from the country.
Revolution & Counter-Revolution
Prior to the revolution, some 75% of the best farm land was owned by foreign companies or individuals, most from the US. Among the first policies of the new government was to eliminate poverty, increase education, and enact land reforms. In May, the Agrarian Reform law authorized the government to begin siezing land & business from upper class Cubans. This was followed in August by measures to sieze all foreign-owned land. Large farms were taken and re-distributed to peasants in the form of land co-ops.
In response, the US imposed a trade embargo against Cuba, which it maintains to this day. In addition, the CIA began planning & organizing a counter-revolutionary force of Cubans to invade and overthrow the new government.
This force was trained & based in Guatemala, beginning in 1960.
In April 1961, just a few months after John F. Kennedy became president of the US, the invasion began with over 1,500 well-armed troops inserted by ship & landing craft on the south-west shores of Cuba, in an area known as the 'Bay of Pigs'. Another 180 were parachuted in from six CIA-supplied transport planes.
The April 17 invasion was preceded by a campaign of bombings and arsons targeting military, government and economic centres, as well as air-strikes by B-26 bombers (supplied by the CIA and painted the same colours as those of the Cuban air force).
Despite this, the Cubans had learned of the invasion plot and taken some preventive measures, including arresting and detaining hundreds of those involved before the invasion occurred. When the main landing force arrived, the Cuban air force was able to use its surviving aircraft to bomb and strafe the invasion fleet, sinking two ships.
On April 18, the CIA bombers returned and killed hundreds of Cuban soldiers as well as civilians in a series of strikes. In the end, as many as 5,000 Cubans may have died. Over 100 of the CIA-funded army died, with over 1,200 being captured. Among those killed and taken prisoner were US military personnel and civilians, all working under the direction of the CIA. The invasion had been stopped after just a few days of fighting.
Although fully aware and involved in the 'Bay of Pigs Invasion', the Kennedy administration sought to distance itself and portray the invasion as organized and carried out by Cuban exiles. The next best thing was to blame the CIA, and the top three directors were forced to resign.
In its analysis of the failed invasion, the CIA later identified several errors. One was that they believed the invasion force could retreat to the mountains and wage guerrilla war if defeated in open battle. As it turned out, they were first deployed in a swampy area & easily encircled. They were also too far from the mountains to make it on foot.
The CIA had incorrectly believed that the Cuban people would welcome them and join their insurgency. This didn't happen. As well, hundreds of co-conspirators on the island were arrested prior to the actual invasion. In the end, the failed invasion actually increased support for Castro's new government (over the next few decades, the US carried out numeorus covert operations to destabilize Cuba).
During the guerrilla struggle, Che had helped to establish schools, health clinics, small factories, Radio Rebelde, as well as other communications. He had been promoted to the rank of commandante and led a column (equivalent to a company). Highly intelligent and charismatic, he was also harsh & demanding, known for his capacity to execute collaborators & traitors. Che's forces were among those that seized Santa Clara and Havana. In 1959, Che was 31 years old.
The Impact of Cuba and Che Guevera
“From the time Che announced his intentions to export Cuba's revolution to its Latin American brethren, US political & military policy concentrated on finding and destroying the threat of Guevarist-inspired guerrilla movements” (Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. ix).
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a major crisis for the US. In the context of the 'Cold War', it placed a communist state at the very shores of the US, one that aligned itself with the Soviet Union. This would later manifest in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union moved nuclear missiles to the island.
Cuba also represented another threat to the US as an example of anti-imperialist revolution throughout South & Central America. Although there were periodic US invasions in the region, such as Nicaragua in the 1920s & '30s, most countries had been relatively 'stable' under dictators and military regimes. The Cuban revolution shattered this illusion and revealed how vulnerable these states were to domestic insurgencies & guerrilla warfare.
This fact was not lost on militants in Cuba and the rest of Southern America. Initially, Cuba welcomed delegations from these other countries and provided training and resources for their resistance movements. This was expected of a revolutionary nation as a part of international solidarity, and was a practical response to ongoing US support for reactionary regimes.
By the summer of 1959, there were several attempted infiltrations of guerrilla units into nearby Panama, the Dominican Repubic, Nicaragua, and Haiti, comprised of exiles, Cubans and other nationals. These groups had either departed from Cuba or had recieved training and support there (see Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America, pp. 30-33). They were quickly destroyed by government security forces in each country. Likewise, in November, some 80 guerrillas crossed into Paraguay from Brazil. They were either captured or killed within a week, although some survivors escaped into Argentina.
In 1960, Che published Guerrilla Warfare, a basic how-to manual on organizing & carrying out guerrilla struggle, starting with small guerrilla groups referred to later as focos (focus). The intent was to promote guerrilla movements across all of Southern America, eventually comprising one front against US imperialism that, in Che's strategy, would lead to US invasion thereby creating “One, two, many Vietnams.”
“The publication of Guerrilla Warfare in 1960 marked a dramatic moment in Latin American history and in US-Latin American relations. In this landmark book the author, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, declared war against the incumbent regimes throughout Latin America and against US imperialism. Che proclaimed for all to hear that through guerrilla warfare the dictatorships of Central America and the Caribbean would be destroyed and that Cuba would be a vanguard force in the war for liberation.
“Almost immediately the new Cuban revolutionary government that had taken power in January 1959 began to provide training and small amounts of military assistance to would-be insurrectionists in the Western Hemisphere... In response, the United States and most Latin American governments created a vast military counterinsurgency apparatus to destroy the nascent guerrilla organizations... Indeed, in many respects, it may be said that US foreign policy toward Latin America from the early 1960s until the early 1990s consisted essentially of defeating the threat, the legacy, and the legend of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara-- the most important martyr of revolutionary struggle in Latin America in the 20th century” (Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. Vii).
By 1963, guerrilla forces had been established in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, Peru, & Colombia. More would later develop in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, El Salvador and Mexico. Most were based on Guevara's foco theory, that given certain conditions a small group of rebels based in remote & rugged terrain could initiate armed struggle and serve as a catalyst for both political & military struggle aimed at overthrowing the government.
These early guerrilla groups were a mix of rebel officers and soldiers, communists (mostly ex-members of official Communist Parties), workers and students, predominantly urbanized and ladino. Some were comprised initially of former soldiers, as in Guatemala (the Rebel Armed Forces, or FAR) and Venezuela (the Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN, in 1962). All were inspired by Cuba and Che's example, and in many cases received Cuban military training and resources.
Most of these first guerrilla groups were destroyed by government counter-insurgency campaigns within a few short years. They had failed to gain the support of the population and had achieved little in building support networks. Communications and coordination were weak, not just with other social movements but within their own organization. Despite the involvement of trained military personnel, many of the groups had poor security against the counter-insurgency effort that was launched against them.
It was not only revolutionaries that had learned and applied the lessons of Cuba and Che's Guerrilla Warfare. Almost immediately, the Kennedy administration, already involved in an escalating guerrilla war in Vietnam, re-oriented the focus of the military from not only large-scale conventional or nuclear war with the USSR, but also towards counter-insurgency warfare. Both were seen as essential parts of the Cold War, with much of the fighting occurring through proxy guerrilla armies:
“Latin American policy was now clearly a part of the cold war. The US considered 'wars of national liberation' and guerrilla movements to be integral elements in an international conflict with the Soviet Union” ( Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. 26).
Under Kennedy, US Special Forces were greatly expanded. He took a personal interest in the matter and pushed through a regulation permitting the wearing of the Green Beret. He also established a Special Warfare Center at Fort Benning, Georgia (later renamed the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center).
The US also began increasing its involvement in South Vietnam, where advisers & Special Forces expanded from 800 (in 1961) to 16,000 by 1963.
In South & Central America, military & police forces were provided training in counter-insurgency by the CIA & SF along with funding, equipment, and weapons. In 1963, the US Army School of the Americas was established in Panama to train soldiers & police from across Central & South America (it was transferred to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984; by 2001 over 61,000 personnel had passed through its training courses, including many involved in massacres, torture and other human rights abuses).
“Coincident with the intellectual and high-level policy response to events in Cuba, Guerrilla Warfare, and insurgency in Latin America, the reorganized US Southern Command assumed coordination of counterinsurgency programs, arms sales and transfers, and military training programs... the Agency for International Development also contributed to the new programs with training for police in counterinsurgency programs and 'interrogation' techniques. Across Latin America, a massive US-supported counterinsurgency apparatus moved into action against the threat of 'more Cubas' in the hemisphere” ( Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. 28).
Repression against the guerrillas and social movements, beginning in the 1960s, evolved into systematic state terror involving the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Under US guidance, these security forces established broad networks of informants, surveillance, paramilitary groups, clandestine prisons and torture centers. Counter-insurgency campaigns targetted not only the guerrillas but all social movements & communities seen as supporting 'communist subversion'. State-sponsored death squads emerged, allowing the government & security forces to appear uninvolved in widespread executions, abductions and torture:
“Advisers from the State and Defense Departments and the CIA worked to reinforce local intelligence operations, schooling security forces in interrogation & guerrilla warfare techniques, providing technology & equipment and, when necessary, conducting preemptive coups. It was during this period that national intelligence agencies fortified and, in some cases created by the US-- Argentina's Securidad de Inteligencia del Estado, Chile's Direccion Nacional de Inteligencia, Brazil's Sistema Nacional de Informacoes, El Salvador's Agencia Nacional de Servicios Espaciales-- began to transform themselves into the command centers of the region's death-squad system, which throughout the 1970s and 1980s executed hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans & tortured tens of thousands more... “ (Empire's Workshop, p. 48).
Changes in Guerrilla Strategy & Methods
By 1970, the first wave of foco guerrillas had been virtually destroyed in most countries of South & Central America where they had been initiated. This did not mean the end of guerrilla warfare, however. From the early to mid-70s, those groups that had survived the repression re-organized, while new ones were established.
Some guerrillas learned from the experience of the 1960s and saw the limitations of the foco method. What had worked in Cuba in 1959 failed to achieve similar results in other countries. Not only had governments responded to the challenge of the guerrillas (with US assistance), in other regions the guerrillas found conditions that Che's theory had not even considered. For example, the need to work with Indigenous peoples in countries such as Guatemala (with over 70% of the population estimated to be Indigenous).
To better understand the limitations of Che's theory, it helps to fully grasp his foco strategy and those used by other guerrillas. Che's experience in the Cuban Revolution was that a group of 30-50 fighters could be inserted into a country --under certain conditions-- establish itself in a remote region, and quickly overthrow an oppressive regime.
The conditions required were:
- the regime must be comprised of a dictatorship in which political reform through elections or legal means is non-existent, the state itself must be seen as illegitimate;
- the state uses violence to repress movements and to control the people;
- there must be suitable terrain in rural areas in which the guerrillas can first be established;
- there must exist a high level of poverty & exploitation among the people, including the dispossesion of the masses from the land.
Che came to the conclusion that these conditions existed in virtually all Central & South American countries, and that the only thing lacking was awareness among the people that they could in fact fight and overthrow their oppressors. This awareness could be created by the guerrillas, from which the overall resistance would expand and deepen, based on both military action and political organizing carried out by the guerrillas.
Although efforts were made to coordinate with local Communist Parties and other groups, they were largely seen as no more than support networks for recruits & other resources to the guerrilla, which was the real 'focal' point of the revolution. Mass political mobilizing was not necessary in the first stages, and in any case would result from the activities of the guerrilla. One rationale for the lack of prepatory organizing was that the people were intimidated by the authorities, and only a group already armed for self-defense could be successful in mobilizing them. Most Communist Parties did not support the foco theory, which assumed their historic role & largely dismissed them as 'armchair revolutionaries'. Plagued by internal divisions and indecisiveness over armed struggle, the official Communist Party's abandoned the foco guerrillas to their fate.
This indecisiveness over armed struggle was compounded after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the USSR began its policy of 'peaceful coexistence' with the US and reduced their support for revolutionary struggles. This contributed to a split between China & the USSR, which affected Communist Parties around the world with internal divisions over which side to support.
Che's insistence that the rural countryside was the best place to begin guerrilla operations was based, in part, on Mao's guerrilla war in China, which ended in a successful revolution in 1949. Traditional Marxism-Leninism saw the city and its factory workers, students and intellectuals, as the centre of revolutionary struggles. At first Mao had followed this line, but with little success. He then realized that in China, the peasants in the rural areas were actually the best positioned & most capable to wage revolutionary guerrilla warfare. Prior to this, communists had generally considered the peasants as too backward, with little revolutionary potential.
Mao's strategy was termed protracted people's war, based on the political mobilization of the people and a mass movement in both rural and urban areas, with the guerrilla's carrying out armed resistance, all under the direction of the Communist Party. Political organizing was the basis from which military capacity was created. The Communist Party was therefore a politico-military organization, but all military actions were subordinate to an overall political strategy.
Protracted people's war has the following characteristics, which can be compared to Che's foco theory (noted above):
- The struggle is seen as protracted; it occurs over an extended time period and victory is not achieved quickly.
- It requires the political organization & mobilization of the masses (the first phase).
- It requires a guerrilla army of both regular and irregular fighters (i.e., main force & militia). The guerrillas only begin operations after the first phase has established itself, beginning with armed propaganda actions (i.e., small-scale attacks & sabotage). This enables the guerrilla to gain experience & expand through successful actions that gain new recruits & popular support.
- The guerrilla army advances to conventional warfare, destroying large enemy units and taking control of large areas.
Mao's contribution to the theories of guerrilla warfare were profound. The Vietnamese, under Chinese advice & assistance, adapted the concept to their liberation struggles against first the French and then the Americans, gaining victory in both. Like China, the Vietnamese resistance had based itself among rural peasants, with a high level of political mobilizing & organization (i.e., the National Liberation Front), without which the armed struggle could not have occurred.
In fact, after the defeat of the foco guerrillas in South & Central America (by 1970), new generations of guerrillas had largely abandoned Che's theory and turned to the concept of protracted people's war:
“By the early 1980s, the character of [the] guerrilla movements had changed significantly. None relied on Guevara's foco strategy, and most combined elements of the Nicaraguan insurrectionist model with the Vietnamese one of prolonged wars... The lessons of Nicaragua and Vietnam were added to those of Cuba for the guerrilla fighters of the 1980s” (Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. x).
Nicaragua was among the first to experience the infiltration of foco guerrillas, beginning in 1959 and continuing for several years after. It was also the most similar to Cuba, with a long-time dictatorship (the Somoza family) and intensive agricultural exploitation of rural peasants. It was one of the closest allies to US imperialism, & the Somoza's Guardia Nacional carried out widespread repression of social movements. Nicaragua also had a strong guerrilla tradition, including that of Sandino in the 1920's & '30's, with periodic outbreaks of guerrilla struggle even through the 1950's.
The first wave of foco guerrillas, however, experienced similar defeats as in other Central & South American countries. Attempts to establish focos were crushed again and again. Despite this, the FSLN (Sandinista Front for National Liberation, established in 1961) survived and was able to re-organize by the 1970's, becoming part of a mass movement that succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza regime by 1979.
The Sandinista Revolution had a similar effect on US policy as did the 1959 Cuban Revolution, leading to large increases in US military assistance to other regimes facing insurgencies, including El Salvador & Guatemala, throughout the 1980s. Beginning in 1981, the US also organized & supported counter-revolutionary guerrilla war in Nicaragua through the contras, comprised of former Guardia soldiers and mercenaries. For several years they carried out a campaign of terror & sabotage to undermine the Sandinista government.
Although the revolution succeeded in Nicaragua, it was the only one that began with foco guerrillas to do so, after 20 years of intense struggle & bloodshed, during which the foco method was transformed into a mass-based insurgency.
“By the early 1980s, Latin American revolutionaries generally rejected foquismo, although with great variations within the region, they retained commitments to different forms of armed struggle. The setbacks suffered by the 1960s and 1970s guerrilla romantics led to a significant reassessment of their strategies, tactics, political alliances, and long-term objectives. State terrorism and military repression of revolutionaries in most of S. America decimated and traumatized the political left. In contrast, the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and its support by Cuba and the Soviet Union temporarily encouraged revolutionaries in Central America and the Caribbean. Managua [capital of Nicaragua] became the headquarters for Central American revolutionaries; weapons, supplies, military training, and propaganda from the Eastern bloc, Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere sustained the Salvadoran guerrillas for a decade against a massive US military assistance program and 'low-intensity conflict' operations” ( Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p 30).
As part of conditions for continued assistance from Cuba & Nicaragua, the guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala were advised to form political-military fronts as part of a strategy of mass-based insurgency along the lines of the FSLN, resulting in the formation of the FMLN-FDR (in El Salvador) and the URNG (in Guatemala).
Che's Foco Attempts in the Congo & Bolivia
Following the Cuban Revolution (1959), Che was made a Cuban citizen. He held posts as minister of industry & president of the national bank, and traveled extensively as an 'ambassador' of the revolution. In his high-profile speeches, he criticized both official Communist Parties as well as the USSR in their failures to contribute to revolutionary movements. He was eventually forced out of Cuba, which was then dependent on support from the Soviets. After this, Che viewed the international anti-imperial struggle as being between the global North exploiting the global South.
In 1965, following his criticism of the USSR's 'peaceful co-existence' policy, Che disappeared from Cuba and traveled to the Congo, a country he saw as 'imperialism's weak link' with great potential for revolution. In April of that year, along with 13 other Cubans (later joined by 100 Afro-Cubans), Che attempted to establish a foco guerrilla in the region. He was unable to work with the Congo guerrillas however, whom he found poorly disciplined and disorganized. By the end of the year, along with six surviving Cubans, he left the Congo disheartened & suffering from dysentry & asthma.
Che's final attempt to establish another foco guerrilla was in Bolivia. Comprised of a mix of Cubans, Argentinians, Chileans, with very few from Bolivia, the National Liberation Army (ELN) was another exercise in frustration. Its' first casualty resulted from a drowning as the guerrillas attempted to cross a river. Many others became ill, including Che, who had to be carried on a stretcher for a short period. The unit became demoralized and saw numerous defections. It was also betrayed by local peasants, who informed the police as to the location of the guerrilla's camp (a result of poor security by the guerrillas).
Che had expected to face a poorly trained Bolivian army; instead, the guerrillas faced soldiers trained & advised by US Special Forces, including a battalion of Bolivian army Rangers. As with other foco experiences, the guerrillas had expected support from the Bolivian Communist Party. After some initial contact, the communists abandoned the guerrillas. They apparently resented this intervention from a largely foreign element, as well as Che's insistence that the guerrillas have control over the resistance. Nor were the guerrillas able to gain the support of peasants, who were predominantly Indigenous.
After some initial success against the army in its attempts to hunt down the guerrillas, Che's guerrillas were defeated in October 1967. He himself was captured and executed on October 9, 1967. He was 39 years old at the time of his death.
“After Che's death in 1967 at the hands of US-trained Bolivian counterinsurgency forces, the legacy of revolutionary guerrilla warfare and the legend, even mystification, of Che, the heroic guerrillero, inspired new generations of revolutionaries from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, while US foreign policy continued to emphasize the eradication of Che's legacy” (Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, p. ix).
Sources
Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, with Case Studies by Brian Loveman and Thomas S. Davies, Scholarly Resources Inc., Wilmington DE 1997 (Third Edition).
Includes Che's Guerrilla Warfare (1960), “Guerrilla Warfare; A Method” (1963) and his “Message to the Tricontinental” (1967), as well as numerous case studies by Loveman and Davies.
Empire's Workshop; Latin America, the US, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Greg Grandin, Owl Books/Henry Holt & Co., New York 2007
Rural Guerrillas in Latin America, Richard Gott, Penguin Books, London 1973.
One of the earliest and most detailed accounts of rural guerrilla movements in Central & South America during the 1950s & '60s.
