Read the text on the right and then review the Documents below:

•	For images of Che Guevara, see Image 1 and Image 2. How did Che portray himself? Why did this image appeal to so many throughout the three world order? To who in particular in each world order would his image appeal?
•	To read about Che's message go to Document 1 and Document 2. How did Che's message blend with the image he created of himself? How did his message challenge the three world order?
•	Read Document 3 and Document 4. Both of these Documents highlight the platforms of discontent groups in the United States during the 1960's. Do you think these groups were receptive or even influenced by Che's message? Why or why not? Document 5 is a declassified CIA memorandum from 1965 describing Che Guevara. What does it reveal about the limitations of Che's vision and message? Why do you think Che's goal of revolution in the third world ultimately failed?

Radicalizing the Third World: Che Guevara

The Cuban Revolution was a turning point in the making of the Third World. After 1959, the Castro regime championed liberation for the Third World from the First World, and embraced socialism as a radical solution to underdevelopment. By rejecting the power of capitalist industrial societies, Castro and his followers thereby promoted revolution, and not reform, as a way to achieve Third World liberation. The symbol of this new spirit of revolution was Castro’s closest lieutenant, Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928–1967). Che wanted to unite the Third World as a socialist, postcolonial bloc, and thereby to undermine the capitalist world led by the United States.

"El Che," as he was known, grew up in Argentina and traveled widely around Latin America as a student. Shortly after receiving his medical degree in 1953, he set off once again, arriving in Guatemala in time to witness the CIAbacked overthrow of the progressive Jacobo Arbenz government in 1954. Thereafter, Guevara became increasingly bitter about American influences in Latin America. He joined Castro’s forces and helped topple the pro-American regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1958. After 1959, he held several posts in the Cuban government, but he grew increasingly restive for more action. Latin America, according to Guevara, should become the source of "many Vietnams" and should challenge the world power of the United States. Soon his casual military uniform, his patchy beard, his cigar, and his moral energy became legendary symbols of revolt.

The image of the guerrilla fighter as savior appealed to young people around the world. Che Guevara published a manual in 1960, Guerrilla Warfare, to instruct radicals on how to mount a successful revolution. Although Mao Zedong and North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap had also published blueprints for peasant-based revolutions, Che was able to draw on the more recent and successful experiences of the Cuban struggle. If Cuba could radicalize the Third World, any underdeveloped society could. Che told his radical readers to blend in with the urban and especially the rural poor to create a "people’s army" and to strike blows at the weakest points in the established order. He enjoined men in particular to lead the crusade to show the poor that their misery could be reversed through heroic violence. Women, too, had a role to play in revolution. According to Guevara, they could cook for, nurse, and serve as helpmates for fighters. For all of Guevara’s radicalism, he did not transcend conventional models of relations between the sexes. Not surprisingly, the image of the armed freedom fighter for Third World liberation appealed mainly to young men.

The idea of revolution as a way to overcome underdevelopment and free Third World societies spread beyond Latin America. Che became Castro’s envoy to world meetings and summits of Third World state leaders, where he celebrated the Cuban road to freedom. The Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev recognized the power of Che’s message and in 1961 proclaimed his support for all "wars of national liberation." Che himself exported his model to Africa, seeking to link Africa and Latin America in a common front against American and European capitalism. Che led a group of Cuban guerrillas to join Congolese rebels under Laurent Kabila to fight the CIA- and South African-backed regimes in south-central Africa. The expedition failed, presaging the diff iculties of throwing badly prepared rebels against armies trained in counterinsurgency techniques. Che, disgusted at Kabila’s ineptitude and cowardice, withdrew, though Cuban forces remained involved in African struggles into the 1980s.

Che relocated to Latin America, where he believed that "many Vietnams" might be created. He set up his center of operations in highland Bolivia in 1966, among South America’s poorest and most downtrodden Indians. "We have to create another Vietnam in the Americas with its center in Bolivia," he proclaimed. Guevara did not, however, know the local Indian language, and he had little logistical support. He and his two dozen fighters launched their continental war in absolute isolation. It took little time for the Bolivian army and CIA operators to surround and capture the small band of exhausted rebels. After a brief interrogation, Bolivian off icers ordered that the guerrilla commander be killed on the spot. The executioner first shot the fighter’s arms and legs; with Che agonizing on the ground, biting his fist to stifle his cries, another bullet penetrated his thorax. As Che’s lungs f illed with blood, he died.

Third World governments blocked radical options just as they had done with Che Guevara’s movement. Only in Nicaragua-twenty years after Castro’s victory-would rebels ever take control, and this exception had more to do with the degree of despotism exercised by the ruling Somoza family than with the appeal of radicalism. In Africa and Asia, too, Third World revolution became a rarity. Militaries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa learned to fight guerrillas with new technology and new counterinsurgency techniques. And all too often, poor people found guerrilla commanders as despotic as their governments.