The story of Ernesto Guevara, a child who was born to a well-to-do Argentine family who went on to become a medical doctor sounds like a success story. Ernesto Guevara probably isn’t a name many people recognize, add the word “Che” to the name—Ernesto “Che” Guevara—and many people recognize the name of a famed revolutionary of the 1960’s. Even now, forty-four years after his death, his name and image remain popular. To some Che Guevara is idolized as a man of the people, a freedom fighter for the downtrodden, who gave his life in the struggle to free peoples of the world to live in a “better” society; for others he was a ruthless killer who was willing to die to be a martyr for his cause. This paper will look at the life of Che Guevara and what made him the cult figure in death he could not be in life.
Ernesto Guevara—the Beginning
Ernesto Guevara was born in 1928, the eldest of five children of a wealthy middle-class Argentine family. Ernesto’s mother schooled him at home until age nine when he entered public schools. The political climate in Argentina at the time was fairly volatile but “Guevara was not remembered to have any overt political leanings as a high school student” (Petersen, 2005, Early Years section, para. 2).
After graduation from high school Ernesto took a job working in a laboratory conducting studies of soil samples in the town of Villa Maria; his family moved to Buenos Aires the following year. Shortly after the move his grandmother died and he decided to become a doctor (Petersen, 2005, Early Years section, para. 3.)
He began his medical studies at the Buenos Aires University. Up to this point in his life he could be categorized as a fairly typical middle-class young man, but change was not far away.
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Petersen, J. B. (2005). Che Guevara. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.vlib.excelsior.edu /ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=123&sid=9bec1cca-5c95-4e60-a095-110d5c5d6a68%40sessionmgr 111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=ulh&AN=17863577
Rosenberg, J. (n.d.). Fidel Castro: A biography of Fidel Castro. In About.com online. Retrieved from http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/p/castro.htm
Skoller, J. (2005). Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making history in avant-garde film. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/excelsior/docDetail.action?docID=10194389&p00=che's%20 afterlife%3A%20the%20legacy%20image.
The Motorcycle Diaries (book). (n.d.) In Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia online. Retrieved December 15, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcycle_Diaries_(book)
On July 26, 1953, the war for Cuba’s independence began, and for 6 years many Cubans fought for their freedom. The most famous of these revolutionary icons being Fidel Castro, who led the main resistance against the Cuban government. On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and the rest of the Cuban's succeeded. This revolutionary war went on to affect the entire world and Eric Selbin believes it is still affecting it. Throughout Eric Selbin's article, Conjugating the Cuban Revolution, he firmly states that the Cuban revolution is important in the past, present, and future. Selbin, however, is wrong.
In this biographical paper, I will be exploring the history of Juan Cortina, a man who is a hero or bandit depending on who you ask, his historical significance, and then exploring what we know of Juan and what we can deduce about his personality.
On the one hand, in Ernesto Guevara’s diary social injustice is easily detected, and portrayed in a quite moving way, both through some key incidents that were responsible for Ernesto’s new understanding of the world, and Ernesto’s words when narrating his own reflections about these episodes. Firstly, when Ernesto went to visit the sick old woman in Valparaiso, who suffered asthma and a heart condition, is a situation that gives a clear view of the poor reality that some people had to face everyday because they did not have even the minimum conditions to survive with dignity, and on top of that, the sadness of people turned themselves into a nuisance for their family just for the fact of being sick. Secondly, Ernesto’s encounter with the couple of communist workers harassed by their political ideas in Baquedano, who did not have a single blanket to protect themselves from the freezing cold of the desert night, enable us to see, as Ernesto wrote, the representation of the proletariat of the world. Moreover, this couple showed him the ruthless reality of so many people in Chile who were pursued, tortured and disappeared for their...
"Fidel Castro(a)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Student Resources in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma, known by many as Evo, was born on October 26, 1959 in Orinoca, Oruro. His father Dionisio Morales Choque and mother Maria Mamani had in total seven children, two of whom didn’t survive past childhood. His upbringing will later become clear foreshadowing of the way in which he would rule. The house he grew up in was an adobe house, no more than ten by thirteen feet, which had a straw roof. He began working with his father harvesting sugar cane in Argentina at age six and by age twelve he helped his father herd llamas from Oruro to Independencia, a province of Cochabamba. While continuing to herd llamas as a means of making a living, he organized a soccer team and was elected technical director of selection for the canton’s team only two years later at age sixteen. Evo then moved to Oruro in order to attend high school and paid the bills by laying bricks, baking and playing trumpet in the Royal Imperial Band. Although he attended Beltran Avila High School, he was not able to finish his schooling and completed mandatory military service in La Paz.
Castro implemented additional significant social-economical polices which further more increased his popularity with in the public order, such as attempts towards improving health care, medical facilities, and tourism, but mostly highlighting the importance of education by drastically transforming the Cuban educational system. Achieving an extraordinary change required Castro to start the “1961 literacy campaign” which called for raising the literacy rate percentage in the Cuban society, by allowing education and it’s equipment free of charge, building schools, increasing the amount of teachers per student, and making it available to all ages who desired to peruse education. These reforms where a major increase in Castro’s popularity. “The quality of life lies in knowledge”- Fidel Castro (The Right Priorities: Health, Education, and Literacy. PBS.o...
Fidel Castro was born on August 19, 1926, in Birán, Cuba. He spent most of his younger years on his father's farm with his brothers and sisters. Then, he attended Belen, a famous Jesuit boarding school, and excelled in sports, history, geography, and debate (Press 11-13). In 1945, Castro began law school at the University of Havana and became very involved in politics. Later, In July 1953, Castro led about 120 men in an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The assault failed and Batista’s troops succeeded. During the course of the battle, Castro was captured an...
The significance of this cultural research paper regarding Fidel Castro is to enlighten on his life, motives, and significant parts of his political reign. The information depicted here is to help expand knowledge and opinions on capitalist and communist governments, and to show how violent governments affect their peoples. This reflectance on Fidel Castro may even help the reader develop a more intellectual opinion on the current nuclear crisis with North Korea. This paper is framed out to highlight Fidel’s background, his early life and education, inspirations, and motivations for his political beliefs, how Fidel came into power, what Fidel organized during his leadership of Cuba, his infringements of human rights, and his death.
Fidel Castro was an illegitimate child of the upper middle class in Cuba. He was the son of the family maid and his father, who happened to be a wealthy farmer and landowner. Castro was highly educated for the twentieth century in Cuba, earning a Doctorate in Law. However his success in life did not come to him as a lawyer, but as a ruthless politician and revolutionary. When dictator, Fulgencio Batista was overthrown during the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro boldly took on the role of leader over Cuba, broke away from the domination of the United States, and put Cuba’s economy in the hands of the Soviet Union. According to Charlip, “Castro visualized a reformed Cuba, with agricultural cooperatives, industry, education and healthcare
Che Guevara attempted to have a revolution in Bolivia and Guatemala. In Mexico, he trained for his return to Cuba in 1956. The textbook also mentions how Fidel Castro formed local camps as a new revolutionary power (510). They continued to fight in urban areas. It was not until 1959 where they defeated Batista and his government. Many people were happy because Fidel Castro became the president of Cuba. The Cuban people had faith in Fidel Castro to improve the state of Cuba and benefit the people unlike Batista. The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its People state that, “In 1958 almost all Cubans agreed that a renewed Cuban nationalism would approve their future,”
Filmmaker Oliver Stone embarked on a journey across the Latin American continent pursuant to the filling of gaps left by mainstream media about the social and political movements in the southern continent. Through a series of interviews he conducted with Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Cristina Kirchner and former president Nėstor Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Raúl Castro of Cuba, Stone was able to compare firsthand information from the leaders themselves with that reported and published by the media (“Synopsis,” n.d.). It gives light to the measures these leaders had to take in order to initiate change in their respective countries, even if their public identities were at stake. Several instances in the film showed the mismatch between these two sources, pointing at the US government’s interests for greatly influencing the media for presenting biased, groundless views.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926, near Birάn in Cuba’s Eastern Oriente Province to a wealthy sugar plantation owner and a mother who was a domestic servant to his father’s first wife (Source A). Castro was the third of six children and was raised in prominently wealthy circumstances that allowed him to attend well known and well revered schools like Belen Jesuit Prep. (Source A). He was a man that could not be just labeled solely by one phrase or one convenient definition, he was loved by supporters of communist rule and he was also a face feared by many Cubans. He held multitudes of titles to countless different people, ranging from honorable military leader to a protruding symbol of the communist revolution in Latin America that was feared by the Cuban people and Americans alike.
Gunning, Tom 2000, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde.” Film and theory: An anthology, Robert Stam & Toby Miller, Blackwell, pp 229-235.
In 1959, Fidel Castro led a revolution and rose to power in Cuba. William Appleman Williams explain that Castro stated that the problem of education is one of the problems that he would take immediate steps to resolve. (Williams n.d.) Therefore, one of the social policies Castro implemented when he rose to power was his Education Reform Policy. The peak of this policy was in 1961, which Ernesto Guevara dubbed the “year of education”.
This historical investigation aims to address the question: How significant was Fidel Castro’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962?