Ernesto Ché Guevara

 "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine," Che Guevara said. He is a comrade to so many because so many today are burning with indignation.

I cannot see myself as a teacher, even in primary school. (Ernesto Guevara, 1955, as cited in Taibo 1997: 60)

I am not a teacher; I am just one of many men struggling today to build a new Cuba… (Ernesto Che Guevara, 1964, as cited in Guevara 2003a: 378)

Wherever Che went, there was a school; there was a school in Africa, a school in Bolivia, a school in the Sierra Maestra, a school in Las Villas. Wherever Che began a campaign, alongside it came instruction, education. (Villegas 1997a: 12)

It is important to see…Che…as a teacher, as an educator. (Victor Dreke as cited in Gálvez 1999: 77)

Che was a communist. He believed that work was an important aspect of our humanity. He realised that increasing production was essential for a functionning socialist society. One cannot share equall when there is not enough to eat.

Che Guevara said that the "two pillars of the construction of socialism are the following: the education of the new man and woman and the development of technology." As a leader, he was known for setting an example of working as absolutely hard as possible, of refusing privileges, of offering to or simply doing the hardest task, worked long hours on Sunday in the cane fields and on various construction sites. He wanted to show that volunteer labour was an example of non-alienating labour. 

Che Guevara tried to conduct himself in the ways he believed others should follow!
According to Galloway (2006), Che Guevara represents what today's politicians conspicuously lack: idealism, self-sacrifice and a deep connection with young people. That's why his image is an enduring inspiration.   

Che Guevara was a Cuban revolutionary and political leader. He was trained as a physician at the Univ. of Buenos Aires. He took part (1952) in riots against the dictator Juan Peron in Argentina, joined agitators in Bolivia, and worked in a leper colony. 

In 1953 he went to Guatemala, joined the leftist regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and when Arbenz was overthrown (1954) fled to Mexico, where he met Fidel Castro and other Cuban rebels. At heart a revolutionary rather than an administrator, he left Cuba in 1965 to foster revolutionary activity in the Congo and other countries. In 1967, directing an ineffective guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded, captured, and executed by government troops. 

 "There are no frontiers in this struggle to the death," Che told an international conference in 1965. "We cannot remain indifferent in the face of what occurs in any part of the world. A victory for any country against imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is our defeat." In a refutation of every right-wing stereotype, he added that, "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."

Guevara wrote Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Man and Socialism in Cuba (1967), Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1968), and The African Dream (2001), a forthright account of the failed Congo rebellion.


Holst, J. D. (2009). The pedagogy of Ernesto Che Guevara. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 28(2), 149-173. doi:10.1080/02601370902757026


Che Guevara. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition [serial online]. July 2010;:1. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed March 11, 2011.

Galloway, G. (2006). A very modern icon. New Statesman (London, England: 1996), 135, 44-6. Retrieved from OmniFile Full Text Select database