Che Guevara and guerrilla warfare

Abstract

Che Guevara’s life as a public figure (1959-1967) coincided with the golden years of the Cuban Revolution. Ernesto Guevara became Che Guevara, a glorified revolutionary guerrilla comandante and theoretician of guerrilla warfare in this short period. Especially during the sixties his texts on guerrilla strategy were studied and applied by many insurgents in Latin America and the Caribbean. Paradoxically, he supervised or was directly in charge of three ill-fated guerrilla campaigns in Bolivia/Argentina (1963/64), the Congo (1965), and again Bolivia (1966/67). The themes of this article are (1) a discussion about the use and evolution of the rural foco approach, for many followers the guiding doctrine of armed insurgency; (2) Che’s three guerrilla campaigns and the reasons for failure; (3) the rural foco approach as implemented by other Latin American guerrilla leaders; and (4) some concluding remarks about post-foco guerrilla warfare in the region.