Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key
roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted
as war criminals during the revolutionary
tribunals,[9]
instituting agrarian reform as minister of
industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional
director for Cuba’s armed forces,
and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism.
Such positions allowed him to play a central role in training the
militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion[10]
and bringing to Cuba the Sovietnuclear-armedballistic missiles which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[11]
Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal
manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir
about his youthful motorcycle journey across
South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions, first
unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later
in Bolivia,
where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and
executed.[12]
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure,
polarized in the collective imagination in a
multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and
films. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most
influential people of the 20th century,[13]
while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico
(shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world."[14]
People Wallpapers
