Other than being the country where Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara was killed, most North Americans know little about Bolivia.
The landlocked country is surrounded by Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. Today, it is South America’s poorest nation. But in the 1960s, Bolivia was going to be the launchpad of Che Guevara’s socialist revolution.
Born in Argentina, Ernesto “Che” Guevara became radicalized by the poverty, hunger and disease he saw while traveling South America as a young medical student. He got involved in social reforms enacted by Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, which were resisted by the United States.
When Arbenz was overthrown by a CIA-assisted coup at the behest of the United Fruit Company, Che Guevara began a personal mission to destroy what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States.
When Guevara was living in Mexico City, he met Raul and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht Gramma with the intention of ousting US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara rose quickly among the ranks of the insurgents, got promoted to second-in-command to Fidel Castro, and was pivotal in the two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime. He played a number of key roles in the new socialist government.
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