Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

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Ernesto

'Che'

Guevara

year: (1928-1967) Latin American Revolutionary

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Ernesto 'Che' Guevara worked and studied medicine in various parts of Latin America, teaming up with Fidel Castro in 1959 to force a revolution in Cuba. After the revolution, Guevara was second only to Castro in power. In 1965 he left Cuba and travelled the world, working unsuccessfully toward Marxist/Leninist revolutions in the Congo and Bolivia. Known for his flamboyance and ruthless dedication to revolution, Guevara became an anti-capitalist icon in the 1960s. He was captured in Bolivia by U.S.-backed military forces and executed in 1967.

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If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love.

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man. [facing his assassin]

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!

I would rather die standing up, then live life on my knees.

It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.

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.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.

There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.

To accomplish much you must first lose everything.

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms .

Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.