Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, surgeon, writer, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. His stylized visage, as a significant character of the Cuban Revolution, has become a ubiquitous countercultural emblem of defiance and global insignia in popular culture.

Guevara traveled throughout South America as a young medical student and was politicized by the poverty, starvation, and disease he witnessed. Later in Mexico City, Guevara met Raul and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and went to Cuba on the yacht Granma with the purpose of ousting Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was supported by the United States. Guevara quickly rose to prominence among the guerrillas, was appointed second-in-command, and played a key part in the two-year guerrilla campaign that brought down the Batista regime.

Guevara was a significant figure in the new Cuban government after the revolution. Among these were reviewing appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as Minister of Industries, spearheading a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as President of the National Bank, and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traveling the world as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Guevara was also a prolific writer and diarist, having written a seminal guerrilla warfare manual as well as a best-selling memoir about his adolescent continental motorbike adventure. Guevara fled Cuba in 1965 to promote continental revolutions in Africa and South America, first in Congo-Kinshasa and then in Bolivia, where he was caught and ruthlessly killed by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces.

Guevara is a revered historical figure through a plethora of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Guevara has become a defining symbol of different left-wing movements. His adversaries on the political right, on the other hand, accuse him of encouraging authoritarianism and endorsing violence against his political opponents. Despite debates about his legacy, Time magazine ranked him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and the Maryland Institute College of Art cited an Alberto Korda portrait of him, titled Guerrillero Heroico, as "the most famous photograph in the world."