Ernesto Che Guevara - Latin America Diaries: The Sequel to The Motorcycle Diaries

CHE GUEVARA PUBLISHING PROJECT

THE DIARIES:

The Motorcycle Diaries (1952)

Latin America Diaries (1953)

Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1956-59)

Congo Diary (1965)

The Bolivian Diary (1966-67)

ALSO AVAILABLE:

Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara

Che Guevara Reader

Global Justice

Self-Portrait: A Photographic and Literary Memoir

Marx & Engels: A Biographical Introduction

Our America and Theirs

The Great Debate on Political Economy and Revolution

The Awakening of Latin America

ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

Latin America Diaries

Otra Vez or a second look at Latin America

Foreword by Alberto Granado

Cover design ::maybe

Cover image: Ernesto Che Guevara on Popocatpetl volcano, Mexico

Copyright 2011 Aleida March

Copyright 2011 Ocean Press

Copyright 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center

Photos copyright 2011 Che Guevara Studies Center

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-9870779-7-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2011922103

First edition published in 2011

Published in Spanish as Otra Vez 978-1-920888-78-7

PUBLISHED BY OCEAN PRESS

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Mexico, Cuba and Latin America: Ocean Sur

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Contents

June 14, 1928 Ernesto Guevara is born in Rosario, Argentina, of parents Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna; he will be the oldest of five children.

JanuaryJuly 1952 Ernesto Guevara travels around Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado on the motorbike, La Poderosa. The journal from this trip is posthumously published as The Motorcycle Diaries.

March 10, 1952 General Fulgencio Batista carries out a coup dtat in Cuba.

July 7, 1953 After graduating from medical school, Ernesto Guevara sets off again to travel through Latin America. He visits Bolivia, observing the aftermath of the 1952 revolution, and Peru where he revisits the Inca city of Machu-Picchu.

July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful armed attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, launching the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Batista regime.

December 1953 Ernesto Guevara meets a group of Cuban survivors of the Moncada attack in San Jos, Costa Rica.

December 24, 1953 Ernesto Guevara arrives in Guatemala, then under the popularly elected government of Jacobo rbenz.

JanuaryJune 1954 While in Guatemala, he studies Marxism and becomes involved in the community of Latin American political exiles who are active there. This group includes exiled Cuban revolutionaries and Hilda Gadea, a revolutionary intellectual from Peru.

June 27, 1954 President rbenz resigns in response to a military coup by Carlos Castillo Armas that was part of the CIAs Operation Success.

August 1954 Mercenary troops backed by the CIA enter Guatemala and begin the brutal repression of rbenz supporters. Ernesto Guevara seeks political asylum in the Argentine embassy in Guatemala City.

September 18, 1954 Ernesto Guevara reaches Mexico after fleeing Guatemala. He finds part-time work in the Childrens and General hospitals and supplements his income with photography and some editorial work for Agencia Latina (an Argentine press agency).

July 1955 Ernesto Guevara meets Fidel Castro in Mexico City and immediately agrees to join the planned guerrilla expedition. The Cubans nickname him Che, an Argentine term of greeting.

August 18, 1955 Ernesto Guevara marries Hilda Gadea in Mexico. Their daughter, Hildita, is born the following February. The marriage soon falls apart.

June 24, 1956 Ernesto Guevara is arrested along with a group of Cuban revolutionaries, rounded up by the Mexican government to thwart a supposed conspiracy to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Ernesto is one of the last to be released from prison and, defying an order to leave Mexico, goes underground.

November 25, 1956 Eighty-two combatants, including Che Guevara as troop doctor, sail for Cuba aboard the Granma.

December 2, 1956 The Granma reaches Cuba at Las Coloradas in Oriente Province. After an initial setback, the guerrilla struggle begins.

December 28, 1958 Che Guevaras guerrilla column initiates an audacious attack on Batistas forces in Santa Clara.

January 1, 1959 Batista flees Cuba. Santa Clara falls to the Rebel Army. Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos arrive in Havana the next day.

January 8, 1959 Fidel Castro arrives in Havana.