Che Guevara

"I feel something in life!

Not just a great interior force

but also the power to transmit it to others.

It's a fatalistic sense of my mission which frees me from all fears.

"Ernesto Che Guevara.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is born in Rosario, Argentina on 14 May 1928.

But it's a day on which Ernesto will never celebrate his birthday.

There is a different date on his birth certificate: 14 June.

With a white lie, his parents had decided to hide

a pregnancy out of wedlock.

His mother,

Celia de la Serna, is the heir of a family

of landowners related to the aristocracy of Spain and the New World.

A rebellious girl with aristocratic grace,

in Buenos Aires she is one of the first women to wear short hair.

She drives a car, signs cheques and crosses her legs in public.

His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch,

is a nice and good-looking young man.

He has inherited the silver of his great grandfather,

who took part in the Gold Rush in California.

He is exuberant and very imaginative.

The de la Serna family are different from others.

They're chaotic, generous and intellectually restless.

Little Ernest, as he was nicknamed,

spends the first two years of his life in an immense garden.

Until one day in the spring of 1930,

a day which was to have a significant effect on his future personality.

On 2 May 1930,

after bathing in the frozen water of a swimming pool,

he suffers his first asthma attack.

It's the beginning of a curse which over the years

will force him to forge an iron-like determination.

In 1943 the de la Sernas move to

Buenos Aires and Ernesto starts high school.

World War II is still raging in Europe and his parents support

the solidarity movements for the fight against Nazism.

But Ernesto has yet to become involved in politics.

"I didn't get involved in community activities during

my adolescence and I didn't take part in political

or student campaigns in Argentina."

Deeply affected by the death of his grandmother in 1947,

Ernesto decides to study medicine at the University of Buenos Aires.

Exempt from military service because of his asthma,

Ernesto the student plays tennis and golf but excels at rugby.

He plays for Estudiantes of Cordoba with the nickname

'fuser', an abbreviation of 'the furious de la Serna'.

With his inborn enthusiasm, despite his asthma,

he becomes the leader of the team.

He also found a magazine called 'Tackle'

and his byline is 'Chancho' (pig).

He often boasts that he rarely washes himself and that

he once wore the same rugby shirt for 25 weeks in a row.

He takes up a position as a nurse on a tanker,

works in the communal slaughterhouses and then at the university library.

With a companion, he invents an insecticide

which he hopes to commercialize.

At the same time, he takes up an interest in politics.

It is the consequence of his readings,

and perhaps also because of the turbulent times he's living in.

The succession of coups d'etat,

the rise of Peron in Argentina, and so on...

So Ernesto starts frequenting a group of Marxists at university,

but never joins the party.

University disappoints him. He was looking for a vocation...

They spoke to him of a career.

During the university vacation he decides to visit

his friend Alberto Granado on the Sierra to the north of Cordoba.

A medicine graduate,

Alberto works in a leper hospital in San Francisco de Chanar.

Ernesto fixes an engine to his bicycle to make the 850-kilometre journey.

The only things he takes with him are a spare tire,

a few clothes and a book.

Cuba, 2 March 1952. Military coup d'etat.

Supported by the United States,

Colonel Fulghensio Batista comes to power.

The island is nicknamed 'the brothel of America'.

Gambling, prostitution and cabaret,

Cuba is a playground for rich Americans.

Foreigners control the entire economy of the island.

Strongly Americanized,

capital city Havana is relatively prosperous.

Huge shanty towns surround the capital.

It's a completely different reality:

50% of the population is illiterate and the people

in the countryside live in the most absolute

conditions of hardship and poverty.

Pillaging, corruption. Batista is an unscrupulous dictator.

A man of the United States,

he is the guarantor of their interests on the island.

At the end of his holidays, Ernesto returns to Buenos Aires.

He crosses the bush and often shares the life of the gauchos.

Ernesto is 23 years old and has almost finished his studies in medicine.

Hungry for discoveries and adventures,

Ernesto decides to undertake another initiatory journey across

the whole of Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado.

On 29 December 1952 they get on an old Norton motorbike, 'the mighty'.

On departure, his father drops his revolver among the equipment.

Doctor Granado and his assistant Guevara pass

by Chile as they cross the Andes.

The Norton motorbike is already breaking down.

They hitchhike as far as Valparaiso,

where they secretly board a freighter.

They go up towards Bolivia and visit

the enormous mines exploited by the United States,

which reveals to them the enormous socio-political

injustice in the treatment of South American workers.

Their journey continues towards Peru,

Lake Titicaca, Cuzco, Machu Picchu and then in the

direction of the Amazon,

where they land at the San Pablo leper hospital.

"That aimless journey around our

America changed me more than I thought."

After traveling together for 7 months, the 2 friends separate.

Ernesto has just one dollar in his pocket

and promises his mother Celia that he will return home

to finish his studies.

The freighter that takes him back to

Buenos Aires is forced to dock in Miami.

While he waits for the ship to be repaired

Ernesto Guevara has to survive for 20 days with just one dollar.

He completes his doctorate in record time.

But Doctor Guevara doesn't care a bit about this prestigious title.

He can't wait to set off again.

Ernesto arrives in Guatemala, where something new is happening.

President Jacopo Arbenz, a progressivist military man,

has promised a vast programme of reforms.

The most important idea is that of bringing to an end the existence

of large estates and nationalizing the properties of United Fruit,

a very powerful US company.

With the support of the Eisenhower administration,

the local oligarchy is against the idea.

"Along the way I had the chance to see the

United Fruit properties.

Once again I was convinced of how terrible these

capitalist octopuses are.

I will improve myself and acquire

what I need to become an authentic revolutionary."

In December 1953 Ernesto settles in the capital

and meets several Cuban exiles who have taken

refuge in Guatemala after a failed insurrection attempt

led by Fidel Castro against the Batista regime.

Led by a young Cuban lawyer,

Fidel Castro, they tried to capture the Moncada barracks.

The armed assault resulted in carnage

and their leader was captured and condemned to fifteen years in prison.

In remembrance of the Moncada assault,

the group decide to call themselves the '26 July Movement'.

15 June 1954. The Eisenhower administration gives

the go-ahead to 'Operation Success',

a CIA plan which has financed the opposition to the government

and trained a paramilitary force to invade the country.

The situation precipitates in the space of a few weeks.

Jacopo Arbenz resigns and leaves the country in the hands

of a new military government which is loyal to

American strategic interests.

These are dangerous times for supporters of

Arbenz' progressivist government.

Ernesto decides to move to Mexico,

where his life reaches a turning point.

While Cuba is rocked by the student protests against

Batista's corrupt regime, Fidel Castro is unexpectedly

freed from prison and immediately joins his companions in Mexico.

7 July 1955. Mexico City.

"Meeting Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro was a political event.

An intelligent boy, he's very sure of himself and is

extraordinarily courageous.

I think there's mutual respect between us."

When Ernesto meets the volcanic Fidel,

it's love at first sight.

Castro is looking for a doctor to join the group of revolutionaries

that will land in Cuba to overthrow dictator Batista.

Guevara doesn't think twice.

"He will carry out the revolution.

We're in perfect harmony. I would only give everything

of myself for someone like him."

At that time, Ernesto was financially dependent on Hilda Gadea,

a woman who belonged to the left wing of the Peruvian party

which was there in exile.

Just after he meets Fidel Castro,

Hilda tells Che that she's pregnant.

He writes in his diary that he would have married her out of dignity.

"From 15 February 1956 I am a father.

My Communist soul expands in an excessive manner,

the baby girl came out just like Mao Zedong.

At the moment she weighs less than Mao, but she will grow."

At last, Castro finds a boat to reach Cuba.

The 'Granma' is an old cabin cruiser.

On board there are 79 Cuban revolutionaries

and three foreigners: Globetrotting Argentine doctor

Ernesto Guevara, Dominican Ramon Mejias,

also known as Pichirillo, and Italian Gino Done who,

out of work after the war, takes flight.

Everything is ready for departure.

2 December 1956...

"It wasn't a landing, it was a shipwreck."

The 82 people that land on the Cuban coastline are

decimated by the initial skirmishes with the army.

The dozen that survive hide in the Sierra Maestra,

a massif 130 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide.

Up against a 4,000-strong modern army,