George Washington Biography - Pre-Revolutionary Military Career

In the early 1750s, France and Britain were at peace. However, the French military had begun occupying much of the Ohio Valley, protecting the King's land interests and fur trappers and French settlers. But the border lands of this area were unclear and prone to dispute between the two countries. Washington showed early signs of natural leadership and shortly after Lawrence's death, Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, Robert Dinwiddie, appointed Washington adjutant with a rank of major in the Virginia militia. 

On October 31, 1753, Dinwiddie sent Washington to Fort LeBoeuf, at what is now Waterford, Pennsylvania, to warn the French to remove themselves from land claimed by Britain. The French politely refused and Washington made a hasty ride back to Williamsburg, Virginia's colonial capitol. Dinwiddie sent Washington back with troops and they set up a post at Great Meadows. Washington's small force attacked a French post at Fort Duquesne killing the commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and nine others and taking the rest prisoners. The French and Indian War had begun.
The French counter attacked and drove Washington and his men back to his post at Great Meadows (later named "Fort Necessity.") After a full day siege, Washington surrendered and was soon released and returned to Williamsburg, promising not to build another fort on the Ohio River. Though a little embarrassed at being captured, he was grateful to receive the thanks from the House of Burgesses and see his name mentioned in the London gazettes.
Washington was given the honorary rank of colonel and joined British General Edward Braddock's army in Virginia in 1755. The British had devised a plan for a three-prong assault on French forces attacking Fort Duquesne, Fort Niagara and Crown Point. During the encounter, the French and their Indian allies ambushed Braddock, who was mortally wounded. Washington escaped injury with four bullet holes in his cloak and two horses shot out from under him.

Though he fought bravely, he could do little to turn back the rout and led the broken army back to safety. In August, 1755, Washington was made commander of all Virginia troops at age 23. He was sent to the frontier to patrol and protect nearly 400 miles of border with some 700 ill-disciplined colonial troops and a Virginia colonial legislature unwilling to support him. It was a frustrating assignment. His health failed in the closing months of 1757 and he was sent home with dysentery.
In 1758, Washington returned to duty on another expedition to capture Fort Duquesne. A friendly fire incident took place killing 14 and wounding 26 of Washington's men. However, the British were able to score a major victory, capturing Fort Duquesne and control the Ohio Valley. Washington retired from his Virginia regiment in December 1758. His experience during the war was generally frustrating, with decisions made excessively slow, poor support from the colonial legislature, and poorly trained recruits. Washington applied for a commission with the British Army but was turned down. In December 1758, he resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon disillusioned.
A month after leaving the army, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow, who was only a few months older than he. Martha brought to the marriage a considerable fortune: an 18,000-acre estate, from which George personally acquired 6,000 acres. With this and land he was granted for his military service, Washington became one of the more wealthy landowners in Virginia. The marriage also brought Martha's two young children, John (Jacky) and Martha (Patsy), ages 6 and 4, respectively. Washington lavished great affection on both of them, and was heartbroken when Patsy died just before the Revolution. Jacky died during the Revolution, and George adopted two of his children.
From his retirement from the Virginia militia until the start of the Revolution, George Washington devoted himself to the care and development of his land holdings, attending the rotation of crops, managing livestock and keeping up with the latest scientific advances. He loved the landed gentry's life of horseback riding, fox hunts, fishing, and cotillions. He worked six days a week, often taking off his coat and performing manual labor with his workers. He was an innovative and responsible landowner, breeding cattle and horses and tending to his fruit orchards. While he kept over 100 slaves, he was said to dislike the institution, but accepted the fact that slavery was the law. He also entered politics and was elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1758.

George Washington Biography - Early Life and Family

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Washington served as a general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies during the American Revolution, and later became the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He died on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

Early Life and Family

George Washington could trace his family's presence in North America to his great-grandfather, John Washington, who migrated from England to Virginia. The family held some distinction in England and was granted land by Henry VIII. Much of the family’s wealth was lost during the Puritan revolution and in 1657 George’s grandfather, Lawrence Washington, migrated to Virginia. Little information is available about the family in North America until George’s father, Augustine, who was born in 1694.
Augustine Washington was an ambitious man who acquired land and slaves, built mills, and grew tobacco. For a time, he had an interest in opening iron mines. He married his first wife, Jane Butler and they had three children. Jane died in 1729 and Augustine married Mary Ball in 1731. George was the eldest of Augustine and Mary’s six children, all of which survived into adulthood. The family lived on Pope's Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia. They were moderately prosperous members of Virginia's "middling class."
Augustine moved the family up the Potomac River to another Washington family home, Little Hunting Creek Plantation, (later renamed Mount Vernon) in 1735 and then moved again in 1738 to Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia, where George Washington spent much of his youth.

Little is known about George Washington's childhood, which fostered many of the fables later biographers manufactured to fill in the gap. Among these are the stories that Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac and after chopping down his father's prize cherry tree, he openly confessed to the crime. It is known that from age seven to fifteen, George was home schooled and studied with the local church sexton and later a schoolmaster in practical math, geography, Latin and the English classics. But much of the knowledge he would use the rest of his life was through his acquaintance with backwoodsmen and the plantation foreman. By his early teens, he had mastered growing tobacco, stock raising and surveying.
George Washington’s father died when he was 11 and he became the ward of his half-brother, Lawrence, who gave him a good upbringing. Lawrence had inherited the family's Little Hunting Creek Plantation and married Anne Fairfax, the daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, patriarch of the well to do Fairfax family. Under her tutorage, George was schooled in the finer aspects of colonial culture.
In 1748, when he was 16, George traveled with a surveying party plotting land in Virginia’s western territory. The following year, aided by Lord Fairfax, Washington received an appointment as official surveyor of Culpeper County. 

For two years he was very busy surveying the land in Culpeper, Frederick and Augusta counties. The experience made him resourceful and toughened his body and mind. It also piqued his interest in western land holdings, an interest that endured throughout his life with speculative land purchases and a belief that the future of the nation lay in colonizing the West.
In July, 1752, George Washington's brother, Lawrence, died of tuberculosis making him the heir apparent of the Washington lands. Lawrence’s only child, Sarah, died two months later and Washington became the head of one of Virginia's most prominent estates, Mount Vernon. He was 20 years old. Throughout his life, he would hold farming as one of the most honorable professions and he was most proud of Mount Vernon. He would gradually increase his landholdings there to about 8,000 acres.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929-1968) (1)

Martin Luther King, Jr., made history, but he was also transformed by his deep family roots in the African-American Baptist church, his formative experiences in his hometown of Atlanta, his theological studies, his varied models of religious and political leadership, and his extensive network of contacts in the peace and social justice movements of his time. Although King was only thirty-nine at the time of his death, his life was remarkable for the ways it reflected and inspired so many of the twentieth century’s major intellectual, cultural, and political developments.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King Jr., named Michael King at birth, was born in Atlanta and spent his first twelve years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents, the Reverend Michael King and Alberta Williams King, shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel (A. D.) Williams and Jeannie Celeste Williams. After Rev. Williams’ death in 1931, his son-in-law became Ebenezer Baptist Church’s new pastor and gradually established himself as a major figure in state and national Baptist groups. The elder King began referring to himself (and later to his son) as Martin Luther King.

King’s formative experiences not only immersed him in the affairs of Ebenezer but also introduced him to the African-American social gospel tradition exemplified by his father and grandfather, both of whom were leaders of the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Depression-era breadlines heightened King’s awareness of economic inequities, and his father’s leadership of campaigns against racial discrimination in voting and teachers’ salaries provided a model for the younger King’s own politically engaged ministry. He resisted religious emotionalism and as a teenager questioned some facets of Baptist doctrine, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
During his undergraduate years at Atlanta’s Morehouse College from 1944 to 1948, King gradually overcame his initial reluctance to accept his inherited calling. Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays influenced King’s spiritual development, encouraging him to view Christianity as a potential force for progressive social change. Religion professor George Kelsey exposed him to biblical criticism and, according to King’s autobiographical sketch, taught him “that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape” (Papers 1:43). King admired both educators as deeply religious yet also learned men and by the end of his junior year, such academic role models and the example of his father led King to enter the ministry. He described his decision as a response to an “inner urge” calling him to “serve humanity” (Papers 1:363). He was ordained during his final semester at Morehouse, and by this time King had also taken his first steps toward political activism. He had responded to the postwar wave of anti-black violence by proclaiming in a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Constitution that African Americans were “entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens” (Papers 1:121).  During his senior year King joined the Intercollegiate Council, an interracial student discussion group that met monthly at Atlanta’s Emory University.

After leaving Morehouse, King increased his understanding of liberal Christian thought while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania from 1948 to 1951. Initially uncritical of liberal theology, he gradually moved toward Reinhold Niebuhr’s neoorthodoxy, which emphasized the intractability of social evil. Mentored by local minister, J. Pius Barbour, he reacted skeptically to a presentation on pacifism by Fellowship of Reconciliation leader A. J. Muste. Moreover, by the end of his seminary studies King had become increasingly dissatisfied with the abstract conceptions of God held by some modern theologians and identified himself instead with the theologians who affirmed personalism, or a belief in the personality of God. Even as he continued to question and modify his own religious beliefs, he complied an outstanding academic record and graduated at the top of his class.

In 1951 King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University’s School of Theology, which was dominated by personalist theologians such as Edgar Brightman and L. Harold DeWolf. The papers (including his dissertation) that King wrote during his years at Boston displayed little originality, and some contained extensive plagiarism; but his readings enabled him to formulate an eclectic yet coherent theological perspective. By the time he completed his doctoral studies in 1955, King had refined his exceptional ability to draw upon a wide range of theological and philosophical texts to express his views with force and precision. His ability to infuse his oratory with borrowed theological insights became evident in his expanding preaching activities in Boston-area-churches and at Ebenezer, where he assisted his father during school vacations.

During his stay in Boston, King also met and courted Coretta Scott, an Alabama-born Antioch College graduate who was then a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On 18 June 1953 the two students were married in Marion, Alabama, where Scott’s family lived.

Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, when Montgomery black leaders, such as Jo Ann Robinson, E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP official Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to head the new group. In his role as the primary spokesman of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to forge a distinctive protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and skillful appeals for white support. With the encouragement of Bayard Rustin, Glenn Smiley, William Stuart Nelson and other veteran pacifists, King also became a firm advocate of Mohandas Gandhi’s precepts of nonviolence, which he combined with Christian social gospel ideas.

After the United States Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation laws in Browder v. Gayle in late 1956, King sought to expand the nonviolent civil rights movement throughout the South. In 1957 he joined with C. K. Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth and T .J. Jemison in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with King as president to coordinate civil rights activities throughout the region. Publication of Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) further contributed to King’s rapid emergence as a national civil rights leader. Even as he expanded his influence, however, King acted cautiously. Rather than immediately seeking to stimulate mass desegregation protests in the South, King stressed the goal of achieving black voting rights when he addressed an audience at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

King’s rise to fame was not without personal consequences. In 1958 King was the victim of his first assassination attempt. Although his house had been bombed several times during the Montgomery bus boycott, it was while signing copies of Stride Toward Freedom that Izola Ware Curry stabbed him with a letter opener. Surgery to remove it was successful, but King had to recuperate for several months, giving up all protest activity.

One of the key aspects of King’s leadership was his ability to establish support from many types of organizations including labor unions, peace organizations, southern reform organizations, and religious groups. As early as 1956, labor unions, such as the United Packinghouse Workers and the United Auto Workers contributed to the MIA and peace activists such as Homer Jack alerted their associates to the activities of the MIA. Activists from southern organizations such as Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School and Anne Braden’s Southern Conference Education Fund were in frequent contact with King. In addition, his extensive ties to the National Baptist Convention provided support from churches all over the nation; and his advisor, Stanley Levison insured broad support from Jewish groups.

King’s recognition of the link between segregation and colonialism resulted in alliances with groups fighting oppression outside the U.S., especially in Africa. In March 1957, King traveled to Ghana at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah to attend the nation’s independence ceremony. Shortly after returning from Ghana King joined the American Committee on Africa agreeing to serve as vice chairman of an International Sponsoring Committee for a day of protest against South Africa’s apartheid government. Later at a SCLC sponsored event honoring Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya, King further articulated the connections between the African-American freedom struggle and those abroad: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” (Papers 5:204).

During 1959 he increased his understanding of Gandhian ideas during a month-long visit to India sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. With Coretta and MIA historian Lawrence D. Reddick in tow, King meet with many Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Writing after his return, King stated, “I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (Papers 5:233).

Early the following year he moved his family, which now included two children,Yolanda and Martin Luther King, III, to Atlanta in order to be nearer SCLC headquarters in that city and to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church. (The Kings’ third child, Dexter, was born in 1961; their fourth, Bernice, was born in 1963.) Soon after King’s arrival in Atlanta, the southern civil rights movement gained new impetus from the student-led lunch counter sit-in movement that spread throughout the region during 1960. The sit-ins brought into existence a new protest group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which would often push King toward greater militancy. King came in contact with students, especially those from Nashville such as John Lewis, James Bevel and Diane Nash who had been trained in nonviolent tactics by James Lawson. In October 1960 King’s arrest during a student-initiated protest in Atlanta became an issue in the national presidential campaign when Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy called Coretta King to express his concern. The successful efforts of Kennedy supporters to secure King’s release contributed to the Democratic candidate’s narrow victory over Republican candidate Richard Nixon.
King’s decision to move to Atlanta was partly caused by SCLC’s lack of success during the late 1950s. Associate director Ella Baker had complained that the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship suffered from lack of attention from King. SCLC leaders hoped that with King now in Atlanta, programming would be improved. The hiring of Wyatt T. Walker as executive director in 1960 was also seen as a step toward bringing efficiency to the organization, while the addition of Dorothy Cotton and Andrew Young to the staff infused new leadership after SCLC took over the administration of the Citizenship Education program pioneered by Septima Clark. Attorney Clarence Jones also began to assist King and SCLC with legal matters and to act as King’s advisor. 

 King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929-1968) (2)

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Che Guevara Biography(2)

 Che Guevara Biography
· 1957

On January they attack the barracks of La Plata. Che: "La Plata was our first victory. It was clear to everybody that a rebel-army existed and was ready for battle. To us it was the confirmation of the chances to the final victory." The ambushes and fights increased. The army bombarded. In April he organises, in order of Fidel extended contacts with the farmers, to create points of support in the area. Year's later Che writes: "The guerrilla and the farmers gradually became one, without anyone could tell when this unity really had performed. I only know that these contacts with the farmers in the mountains made the spontaneous decision turn quickly into a devoted and serious relation. The suffering and sincere inhabitants of the Sierra Maestra have never known how important their part was in the creation of our revolutionary ideology."
In July Che begins to alphabetise Joel, Israel and other guerrilla's. The others also are organised in circles of study about the history of Cuba, the characteristics of the army of tyranny and the importance of the armoured battle. On July 21 Fidel nominated Che commander. About this Che writes: "In a very informal way I was nominated commander of the second colonne of the guerrilla-army (. . .) The dose vanity that anyone has inside of him, made me the proudest man on the world that day."
On September 17, five army-trucks fall into an ambush of the rebels.

· 1958

On January 6 Che writes to Fidel: "I already said that these merits would always be counted for: showing that in America the armoured battle with the support of the people is possible."
In February Che gets interviewed in front of the microphones of "Radio El Mundo" from Buenos Aires: "I'm simply here because I think that the only way to liberate America of the dictators is to defeat them. I'll give all the help I can to make them go down, the sooner the better."
"Aren't you afraid that your intervention will be regarded as a foreign interference?"    
"First of all I don't regard only Argentina as my native country but whole of America. For this I would like to call up to examples such as Marti, and it is exactly on his land of birth that I would make his doctrine come true. Besides you can't call it interference if I want to give myself personally and totally - up to my blood - to a case that seems right to me and that is completely that of the people. A people that wants to get liberated of a tyranny that on itself cheers the armoured interference of a foreign power with aeroplanes, weapons and military advisors. Up to now not even one country accused the North-American interference in Cuban affairs, not one newspaper accuses the Yankees of helping Batista slaughtering his people."
On May 24 and 25 dictatorial troops attacked two mines in Sierra Maestra. It is the beginning of a big offensive. Hostile troops made a forced entry in several points in the Sierra Maestra and threaten to advance. In addition they occupy the supply and communication-lines. The next few days Che participates in a counter-attack that debouch into a defeat for the enemy, a force of over 10,000 men.
On August 21 Fidel writes: "The mission to conduct a brigade from the Sierra Maestra to the province 'Las Villas' and to operate there according to the strategic plan of the Rebel-army, is assigned to Commander Ernesto Che Guevara. (. . .) He is also appointed as head of all units of the 'M-26 de julio' that are operating in this province, in the cities as well as in the countryside. (. . .) The eight brigade has for a strategic object to attack the enemy continuously in the centre of Cuba and to intercept the hostile troop-movements over land from west to east until they are crippled completely."
On December 16 the bridge over the river Falcon by the Central Road is blown up, by that, all cities at the east of Santa Clara, were unable to be reached from Havana. On December 26 Che writes: "The war is won, the enemy has come loudly to his knees, in the east we keep 10.000 soldiers in captivity. Those of Camoguey have no longer a way out. All of this is the result of only one thing: our effort." The next day he decides to march to Santa Clara.
The international press informs the world that Che had died. 'Radio Rebelde' on the contrary sends word: "Latest news of primary importance! Great victory for the eight brigade of Las Villas. Troops under guidance of Ernesto Che Guevara conquered a blinded train and 300 fully equipped soldiers were captured."
· 1959

By day-brake of New-Year dictator Batista fled the country. Che Guevara gets the Cuban nationality on February 9.
From July till August he travels as head of an official delegation to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt where he meets Nasser. The trip goes on to India, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Pakistan. They turn back via Eastern and Western Europe to close up in Morocco. On his return Che declares to be surprised for the sympathy that the Cuban revolution evoked all over the world.
On October 17 Che advises university students to: "(. . .) get contact with the people, not to 'help' them with knowledge or what so ever - like an aristocratic lady that hand out a coin of money to a beggar - but to become participants of the revolutionary forces that rule over Cuba today. To place your shoulders under the extension of the revolution and, at the same time, to get experience that might be more important than all interesting things that you learn in your lessons." On November 23 he introduces the first 'day of voluntary labour' in Cuba.

· 1960
At the end of 1960 the U.S. establishes a complete trading-embargo against Cuba. Che leads an official Cuban delegation in a tour to different socialistic countries: from the Soviet-Union and Eastern Europe to China and Northern Korea. From there, back to the Soviet-Union, Eastern-Germany and Czecho-Slovakia. Early '61 the U.S. breaks all diplomatic relations with Cuba.

· 1961
On April 15 are the Cuban airports bombed by U.S. -planes. On April 17 there is the invasions in the Bay of Pigs: 1,500 CIA-mercenaries attack Cuba supported by the American fleet and airforce. The contra's want to cause a revolt of the people. In barely 72 hours they get completely defeated by the Cuban nation. 1.200 of them are being captured.

· 1964
May 17: confronted with new acts of sabotage of the imperialism in a harbour in the south he says: "We have rendezvous with history, and we simply can not permit ourselves to be afraid! We must maintain the same enthusiasm and faith. Build factories with our left hand, aim the rifle with the right hand and crush the worms with our heels."
In August he talks about the situation in Congo: "What is happening in Africa, where only two years ago the prime minister of Congo was murdered and quartered, where North-American monopolies have installed themselves and the battle to own Congo has turn loose? Why? Because there is copper and radioactive minerals in their soil, because Congo has exceptionally strategic raw materials? Therefor a leader of the people, who was so naïve to believe in justice without render himself an account of the fact that justice gets expelled by power, got murdered. That is how he became a martyr of his people."
Later on Che speaks to the general meetings of the UN in New York. He accuses in powerful terms the part of the UN in the murder of Lumumba and to help to get in the saddle, Tshombe as Congolese president, it was the same man that had tried to tear off the province Katanga of the rest of the Congolese nation. "All free people of the world must be prepared to declare to revenge the Congolese crime."

· 1965
Che arrives in Brazzaville on New Years day and begins with an official African journey. When he gets back in Cuba he convokes a secret conference with a hundred comrades who have great battle-experience. They are the future participants of the international mission in Congo. On February he arrives in Dar El Salaam together with different African revolutionary leaders who asked Cuba for weapons, training and finance. There he also meets Laurent Kabila and his general staff. They agree that the main African enemy is the North-American imperialism. In reply to Kabila's question to train guerrilla's in Cuba, Che says no. He explains the advantage of training on their proper terrain.
On March 31 Che writes a letter of goodbye to Fidel Castro. Later it will seem that Che, naturally clandestine, went to Congo. The U.S. abuse the fact that Che does not longer appear in public to spread the rumour that he have been liquidated by Fidel because of heavy ideological conflicts in the highest leadership in Cuba. In their broadcast to China the U.S. claim that Che was murdered because of his pro-Chinese point of view, and in the broadcasts to the East they claim the opposite.
On March 24 Che arrives from Tanzania near the harbour of Kigoma at the shore of the Lake Tanganyika. He disembarks with 14 Cubans outside the harbour to avoid the Belgian mercenaries patrol. Doing that they land in the water. From there he reaches Kibamba in Congo. On May 9 he succeeds making contact with the first group of guerrilla's. He explains them that he has come to give them a guerrilla education, on demand of Gastón Soumaliot and Laurent Kabila to Fidel Castro. He wants to fight on their side in operations they decide. He is at their disposal. He starts with a school of warriors that gets the name "La Base".
On July 7 Che Guevara meets Laurent Kabila who promises to accompany him in a visit to several fronts on the inland. Kabila however leaves for Kigoma and the visits are getting postponed. On August 16, 7 soldiers die in an ambush of the guerrilla, among them two Belgian non-commissioned officers and three South-Africans.
In November the situation seems at the different fronts — among other things because of continuous discussions between the various revolutionary leaders — so confused that more and more guerrilla's leave the battle. Together with the Congolese the decision is made that the Cubans will retreat. The mission took seven months in which Cubans participated in over 50 actions.
· 1966
In July Che travels in the greatest secrecy to Havana, were he prepares a new mission to Bolivia in consultation with Fidel.
Across Moscow, Prague and Vienna Che Guevara travels via Brazil to Bolivia were he arrives on November 3.

· 1967
Che writes: "As I thought the attitude of Monje (the under-secretary of the Bolivian KP) was avoiding and later traitorous. His party is already getting armed against us. I don't know where that will take him but it will not slow us down, and maybe in long terms it will be an advantage for us, I'm almost sure of that. The most honest and competitive people will stand on our side, although they have to go true a severe crisis of their conscience. So far Guavara has reacted well. We'll see how he and his people will line up (. . .) The actual phase of the guerrilla will now begin, we will test our troops. Time will tell which are the perspectives of the Bolivian revolution. Of all things that were planned the recruit of Bolivian comrades in battle was the slowest."
In March the analysis goes as followed: "This month there was no lack of incidents, but the total looks like this: phase of consolidation and purification of the guerrilla, slow development with few elements that came from Cuba - and they don't perform badly - and elements of Guavvara's group who were very weakly in general (two deserters, one loose-tongued whom we kept as prisoners, three that got scratches and two weaklings). Now the phase begins of actions with an exact and spectacular attack. We have to hit the road much sooner as I wanted, and with the burden of four possible talebearers. The situation is not good but a new stage of test begins for the guerrilla and it will do her good if they overcome it. The guerrilla consists of 29 Bolivians, 16 Cubans and 3 Peruvians."
In the months that follow Che and his man get more and more count off communication problems with La Paz and Cuba through which they finally have to operate completely isolated. To get connected with the farmers is much harder than they have thought. About that he writes in May: "The farmers still don't join us, although it seems that slowly they don't fear us anymore and they seem to admire us. It is a slow and patient process." In June he writes: "The farmers are still aloof. It is a vicious circle: to attract them we must have more actions in populated areas, but therefor we need more man. (. . .) The army stands nowhere in her military task, but it does dangerous work with the farmers that we may not leave without interference. If not all farmers will become tale-bearers, out of fear or because of the lies they tell them about our intentions."

In the meantime the U.S. supplies more weapons and advisors to the Bolivian army. The land gets harassed with ever more strikes and the fame of Che's man rises in Bolivian and world press every day: "On political field the official statement of the government is, that I'm really in Bolivia and not murdered in Cuba, the most important. They even add that the army has to deal with perfectly trained guerrilla's, among them even Vietcong's who had defeated the best trained American marines."
In September the guerrilla gets further isolated and they have many losses in an ambush of the army. On October 8, in the village La Higuera, Che and two comrades fall into the hands of the army. Two comrades die. A Bolivian colonel and a Cuban, who works for the CIA, come on the spot by helicopter. On higher command they decide to slaughter Che and his comrades Willy Cuba and Juan Pablo Chang immediately. A Bolivian soldier does the job, his eyes turned sidewise. While international press barons offer up to $125,000 for the diary of Che, Bolivian revolutionaries make sure that copies of it reach Cuba the same year. Doing that the CIA-plan fails of making anti-communistic propaganda with falsifications of the original.

Che Guevara Quotes

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Che Guevara Biography

· Young Ernesto Guevara

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is born June 14, 1928 in Rosario, one of the most important cities in Argentina, in a well off family. A family with aristocratic roots but socialistic ideas.
In 1937, Ernesto is 9 years old and goes to the third grade of primary school; he follows up engagingly the Spanish Civil war. On a map he indicates the military evolution.
In 1947, Ernesto Guevara meets the young Berta Gilda Infante, also known as Tita. She is a member of the Argentine Communistic Youth. They build up a profound friendship. Together they read Marxist texts and discuss the actualities.
In 1948, Ernesto, who is 20 years old at that time, undergoes an examination at the faculty of medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. In March he passes for the examinations of the first year, in June for those of the second year and in December for those from the third year.
January 1 1950, Ernesto Guevara attempts his first voyage. He traverses the northern provinces of Argentina on a bicycle on which he adjusted a small motor. He arrives at San Francisco del Chahar, near Córdoba, where his friend Alberto Granado runs the dispensary of the leper-centre. With the patients he has long conversations about their disease.
He continues his university studies and is above all interested in the scientific research for allergies, asthma, leprosy and nutritive theory.
While he is studying, he works as a male nurse on trading and petroleum ships of the Argentine national shipping-company. Like that he travels from the south of Argentina to Brazil, Venezuela and Trinidad.

· A journey through Latin America
In October he decides to make his first trip through Latin-America. Together with Alberto Granado he leaves in January 1952 on an old 'Norton' 500-cc motorbike.
In Valparaiso Chile he writes in his diary: "We are looking for the bottom part of the town. We talk to many beggars. Our noses inhale attentively the misery."
About Chile he writes: "The most important effort that needs to be done is to get rid of the uncomfortable 'Yankee-friend'. It is especially at this moment an immense task, because of the great amount of dollars they have invested here and the convenience of using economical pressure whenever they believe their interests are being threatened."
On March 24 they arrive at the Peruvian Tacna. After a discussion about the poverty in the region, he refers in his notes to the words of José Marti: "I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world."

On May 1 they arrive in Lima. Che meets doctor Hugo Pesce, a Peruvian scientist, and director of the national leprosy program and an important Marxist. They discuss several nights until the morning comes. Year's later Che puts that these conversations were very important for the change in his attitude towards life and the society.
On May 17 he leaves for the leper-centre of San Pablo in the Peruvian Amazon forest. He arrives on June 7. During his visit to this place, he complaints about the miserable way that the people of that region and the sick have to live. There were no clothes, almost no food and no medication. After working there for a few weeks, he leaves for Leticia, Colombia via the Amazon River.
July 17 he arrives in Caracas. There he decides to go back to Buenos Aires to finish his studies in medical science. He travels with a cargo-plane via Miami, where the technical problems with the aeroplane give him a delay of one month. To survive, he works as a waiter and he washes dishes in a bar. On regular base he is apprehended and questioned by the police. They ask him if he, his mother or father are communist. He is back in Buenos Aires on August 31.

· On his way to the revolution
Che Guevara finished his studies early 1953. He gets summoned for military duty but he was rejected. On July 7 he goes by slow train to La Paz, Bolivia, 6000km further. Che arrives at Panama late October. He is indignant about the submissive attitude of the Panamese leaders towards the U.S. In Costa Rica he learns about the domination of United Fruit and the exploitation and of the misery that is the result of it. In a letter to his aunt Beatriz he writes: "In El Paso I traversed the vast domains of United Fruit. Once more I was able to convince myself how criminal the capitalistic octopuses are. On a picture of our old and bewailed comrade Stalin, I swore not to rest before these capitalistic octopuses are destroyed. In Guatemala I want to get perfect in becoming an authentic revolutionary."
Via Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, Che arrives late December at Guatemala where Jacobo Arbenz leads a revolutionary process. In a letter to his mother he writes: "I've finally reached my aim . . . If everything goes well, I think I will stay here for about 2 years."

· 1954
June 14-16. Che sees how North American Aeroplanes fly over Guatemala and bomb down the military installations and the poor popular quarters. He writes: "This incident has united all Guatemalese with their government and with all who, just like me, were attracted by Guatemala." The U.S. chooses Castillo Armas as 'leader' of the coup.
June 18, 1954. He lives to see de coup d'état against the Arbenz government, planned and executed by the U.S. He transports weapons and tries to assemble some youths to fight; he helps to bring political leaders in safety. On June 20 Che writes to his mother: "These attacks, together with the lies of the international press, have woken the indifferent. A combative climate rules. I have applied as a voluntary for the medical help services and I have registered in the youth-brigade to get a military education and to go there where necessary."
On June 26 the national radio declares the resignation of president Arbenz and the exile of almost all-political leaders and their families. This causes a great commotion with the revolutionary people. Che puts it like this: "In Guatemala it was necessary to fight but almost no one fought. Resistance had to be put up and almost no one wanted to do it."
Repression breaks loose. Latin-American embassies are getting filled with political refugees. Che is indicated as a dangerous Argentine communist and may not remain in Guatemala.

· 1955

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Early 1955 Che Guevara finds work as a doctor in the "Hospital Central" of Mexico City.
In June he meets Raul Castro. They become friends. On July 8 Fidel Castro arrives in the Mexican capital. About their first meeting Che said: "I've met him during one of the cool nights in Mexico and I remember that our first conversation was about international politics."
That same night - towards morning - I was one of the future participants of the expedition with the Granma." Fidel Castro about that meeting: "He knew much about the Marxism-Leninism, self-thought, very eager to learn, he was a convinced. When we met Che he was already an educated revolutionary."

· 1956
On June 24, the Mexican police have arrested Che together with Cuban comrades.
On July 3 the press agency UPI notifies: "The Argentine doctor Guevara will be deported to his land of origin, because of his presumed participation of the failed conspiracy against the Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista." The Mexican ex-president Lázaro Cárdenas interferes to defend the Cuban revolutionaries. Late July the last, among them Che Guevara, are released. They continue their revolutionary activities in clandestinely.

· With Fidel Castro to Cuba
November 25: the yacht Granma leaves in a stormy night with on board 82 man from the mouth of the river Tuxpán in Mexico.
On December 2 they landed in Los Cayelos, at the East Coast. The next day the Cuban and Latin-American newspapers announced about the expedition: " . . . Fidel Castro, Ernesto Guevara, Raul Castro and all other members of the expedition have perished . . ." Their arrival is noticed and they get hunted. The group splits. On December 5 in Alegría del Pino, Che gets ambushed. Later on he writes about this: "I've got wounded in my neck. I stayed alive thanks to my luck of a cat. A box of bullets I was carrying close to my chest stopped a bullet of a machine gun and it ricochets up to my neck."
With the help of other he could escape in the sugarcane fields. In these circumstances Che had to make the, so often told about, choice between his duty as a doctor and his duty as a revolutionary soldier. To escape he had to choose between a backpack filled with medications and a crate of bullets. It was impossible to take them both. Che takes the crate with bullets and hurries into the sugarcane. Later they leave a great deal of their cargo with a farmer. On December 21 Che's group arrives at a coffee plantation where Fidel is already waiting for a couple of days.

Che Guevara Biography(2)
 Che Guevara Quotes

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