Guerrillero Heroico
Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928 – 1967) was an Argentinean Marxist who rose to prominence during the Cuban Revolution, and gained international fame thereafter as a guerrilla warfare innovator, author, and diplomat. His image became a romantic icon of anti imperialism, and after his death, he was regarded as a martyr by leftists worldwide.
Born in Argentina in 1928, Guevara was raised in a leftist environment. An asthmatic who nonetheless excelled in athletics, he studied medicine, and as a young man spent his holidays motorcycling through South America in the early 1950s. In his travels, he encountered conditions of dire poverty, inequality, and injustice, that radicalized and set him on the path to Marxism.
By 1955, Guevara had relocated to Mexico, where he met and befriended Fidel Castro, who was planning to overthrow the Cuban regime, and accompanied him and a small force to Cuba in 1956 to launch a revolution. He became one of Castro’s main advisors, and commanded revolutionary forces in guerrilla warfare, leading them to final victory and the seizure of the island in 1959.
His iconic photo was taken on March 5th, 1960, by photographer Alberto Korda, who was covering a funeral for victims of a freighter that had exploded in Havana’s harbor. Korda focused on Fidel Castro, and only shot two frames of Guevara as an afterthought. His newspaper published only Castro’s shots, and Guevara’s were returned to Korda.
It remained relatively obscure for seven years, until a wealthy Italian got a hold of it and helped make it famous. When Guevara was killed soon thereafter by the Bolivian army with CIA help, the Cuban regime embraced him as a martyr and revolutionary symbol, and Korda’s photo was the perfect revolutionary romantic image. The photo rocketed to global fame as Guerrillero Heroico (“Heroic Guerrilla Fighter”), becoming a shorthand symbol for rebellion and one of the most recognizable images of all time.