Che Guevara Research Paper

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, you either love him or hate him there is no middle. People either admire him as a freedom fighter or despise him as a guerilla war-fare terrorist. However, all opinions aside, the facts are that Che Guevara had a very set of ideals of how society should work. Che Guevara was a firm believer in communism and believed the political system of communism would lead to the liberation of the Latin American people from foreign influence and control, empower the poor and working class who he believed were not represented by the pre-existing governments, and make for a more morally just society. Che Guevara was not born with these ideas. Che and Alberto Granado took a motorcycle tour of Latin America as young college students.

Che valued his education and saw it as an important and necessary tool for the liberation of oppressed people later on in life. In Cuba he launched a massive literacy campaign. He gave a higher percentage of the government income, in Cuba, to the minister of education which allowed for “The Creation of 10,000 schoolrooms and the appointment of 10,000 new teachers” (Guevara The Real Meaning of the Alliance for Progress pg 289). This allowed Cuba to become “…first country in Latin America that fully satisfies the needs of primary instruction for the entire student population” (Guevara The Real Meaning of the Alliance for Progress pg 289) in 1968. This is an incredible feat seeing how the communist revolution, lead be Fidel Castro and Che Guevara did not take control until January of 1959. All Che Guevara’s thoughts on education reform and the importance education plays on liberating people can easily be traced to his own education and how he felt about education when he was young. His experiences during The Motorcycle Diaries may have opened his eyes to what was wrong with the world but it was his education that allowed for him to do something about the wrongs committed in Latin America. Che Guevara’s education can also be seen as a first step to a very gradual and natural progression to his later political reforms.

While in Cuba he perceived the United States as a threat. “On July 26 of this year, counterrevolutionary groups armed at the Guantanamo naval base were waiting for Commander raul Castro at two strategic places in order to assassinate him.” (Guevara Real Meaning of Alliance for Progress pg 273) This statement shows how Che Guevara portrays the United States as an uncooperative country that was against the revolution in Cuba and set in seeing its demise. This is not anything new to Che Guevara’s thoughts. In his earlier life he perceived the United States as a imperialistic country guilty of attempting to establishing neo-colonialism in South America for the United States own personal interest in their attempt to extinguish the spread of communism and promote capitalist societies in South America that were reliant on the United States. “The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back…it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interest appear threatened.” (Guevara The Motorcycle Diaries pg 89) This statement, made by Che Guevara while in his twenties, in Chile demonstrates his dislike of the United States and his disapproval of the United States evolvement with the South American countries’ governments, specifically their economic policies. The fact that Che Guevara held bitterness and hostility towards the United States