Guerrilla Warfare
Book Author Che Guevara
DescriptionThirty years after his death, university students throughout Latin America still wear T-shirts
emblazoned with Che Guevara's image. Workers carry placards and banners featuring him as they
march through the streets demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Zapatista guerrillas
in southern Mexico paint murals depicting Che together with Emiliano Zapata and Indian heros. In
Cuba, vendors sell Che watches to tourists. Not only has he captured the popular imagination, but
recently several authors have written lengthy biographies detailing the revolutionary's life. 1 In the face
of a political milieu that considers socialism to be a discredited ideology, what explains this continued
international fascination with a guerrilla leader and romantic revolutionary who died in a failed attempt
to spark a hemispheric Marxist insurrection?
Che's life represents a selfless dedication to the concerns of the underclass, a struggle to encourage
people to place the needs of the broader society above their own narrow personal wishes and desires,
and a willingness to make extensive personal sacrifices to achieve a more just and equable social order.
Che made the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs. With his death in October of 1967 at the hands of the
military in Bolivia he became a martyr and a prophet for leftist causes and beliefs