ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA was profoundly radicalised when as a young doctor traversing Latin America for the second time, a journey he later describes in Latin America Diaries/Otra Vez, he witnessed first the Bolivian Revolution, and then, in Guatemala, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Árbenz by US-backed forces. After escaping to Mexico, Guevara met up with a group of Cuban revolutionaries exiled in Mexico City led by Fidel Castro and immediately enlisted in their planned expedition to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Cubans nicknamed him “Che”. The group set sail for Cuba on 25 November 1956, aboard the yacht Granma, with Che as the group’s doctor. Within several months, Fidel appointed him a commander of the Rebel Army, though he also continued to minister to wounded guerrilla fighters and captured Batista soldiers.

After General Batista fled Cuba on 1 January 1959, Che became one of the key leaders of the new revolutionary government. He was also the most important representative of the Cuban revolution internationally, heading numerous delegations and earning a reputation as a passionate and articulate spokesperson for Third World peoples. In April 1965, Che left Cuba to lead a guerrilla mission of some 200 Cuban soldiers to support the revolutionary struggle in Congo, a mission recounted here. The book is characterised by Che’s brutal, disciplined honesty, as he recounts the succession of failures and dead ends that characterised the mission, analysing each one, and never losing sight of his innate optimism and clarity of mission. After returning to Cuba in December 1965, Che prepared another guerrilla force, this time for Bolivia, where he arrived in November 1966 with a small group, intending to challenge the country’s military dictatorship. He was captured there by US-trained counterinsurgency forces on 8 October 1967, and murdered in cold blood the next day.