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Historic Schemes that Backfired in Catastrophic Fashion

Khalid Elhassan April 30, 2021 36 min

Battleship USS West Virginia sunk and burning at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, with the battleship USS Tennessee in the background. History on the Net

Che Guevara, right, on a raft in the Amazon in 1952. Che Guevara Study Center, Havana

27. This Plan to Spark a Communist Revolution in South America Backfired Badly

Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928 – 1967) rose to prominence during the Cuban Revolution. He gained international fame thereafter as a guerrilla warfare innovator, author, and diplomat. His image became a romantic icon of anti-imperialism, and after his death, he became a martyr to many worldwide. Things were going well for “el Che”, until he concocted an ambitious plan to spark a revolution in South America, that he would hoped would turn all of Latin America communist. It backfired on him, big time.

Alberto Korda’s ‘Guerrillero Heroico’ photo of Che Guevara. Che Guevara Museum, Havana

Born in Argentina in 1928, Guevara was raised in a progressive environment, and from early on, he developed an affinity for the poor and downtrodden. Despite being an asthmatic, he managed to excel in athletics. After graduating high school, he studied medicine, and as a young man in the 1950s, he spent his holidays motorcycling through South America. In his travels, he encountered conditions of dire poverty, inequality, and injustice, that radicalized and set him on the path to Marxism.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.