Chronology of Ernesto Che Guevara
June 14, 1928 Ernesto Guevara is born in Rosario, Argentina, of parents Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna; he will be the oldest of five children.
January–July 1952 Ernesto Guevara travels around Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado on the motorbike, La Poderosa. The journal from this trip is posthumously published as The Motorcycle Diaries.
March 10, 1952 General Fulgencio Batista carries out a coup d’état in Cuba.
July 7, 1953 After graduating from medical school, Ernesto Guevara sets off again to travel through Latin America. He visits Bolivia, observing the aftermath of the 1952 revolution, and Peru where he revisits the Inca city of Machu-Picchu.
July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful armed attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, launching the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Batista regime.
December 1953 Ernesto Guevara meets a group of Cuban survivors of the Moncada attack in San José, Costa Rica.
December 24, 1953 Ernesto Guevara arrives in Guatemala, then under the popularly elected government of Jacobo Árbenz.
January–June 1954 While in Guatemala, he studies Marxism and becomes involved in the community of Latin American political exiles who are active there. This group includes exiled Cuban revolutionaries and Hilda Gadea, a revolutionary intellectual from Peru.
June 27, 1954 President Árbenz resigns in response to a military coup by Carlos Castillo Armas that was part of the CIA’s “Operation Success.”
August 1954 Mercenary troops backed by the CIA enter Guatemala and begin the brutal repression of Árbenz supporters. Ernesto Guevara seeks political asylum in the Argentine embassy in Guatemala City.
September 18, 1954 Ernesto Guevara reaches Mexico after fleeing Guatemala. He finds part-time work in the Children’s and General hospitals and supplements his income with photography and some editorial work for Agencia Latina (an Argentine press agency).
July 1955 Ernesto Guevara meets Fidel Castro in Mexico City and immediately agrees to join the planned guerrilla expedition. The Cubans nickname him “Che,” an Argentine term of greeting.
August 18, 1955 Ernesto Guevara marries Hilda Gadea in Mexico. Their daughter, Hildita, is born the following February. The marriage soon falls apart.
June 24, 1956 Ernesto Guevara is arrested along with a group of Cuban revolutionaries, rounded up by the Mexican government to thwart a supposed conspiracy to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Ernesto is one of the last to be released from prison and, defying an order to leave Mexico, goes underground.
November 25, 1956 Eighty-two combatants, including Che Guevara as troop doctor, sail for Cuba aboard the Granma.
December 2, 1956 The Granma reaches Cuba at Las Coloradas in Oriente Province. After an initial setback, the guerrilla struggle begins.
December 28, 1958 Che Guevara’s guerrilla column initiates an audacious attack on Batista’s forces in Santa Clara.
January 1, 1959 Batista flees Cuba. Santa Clara falls to the Rebel Army. Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos arrive in Havana the next day.
January 8, 1959 Fidel Castro arrives in Havana.
February 9, 1959 Che Guevara is declared a Cuban citizen. He is later appointed head of the Department of Industry of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) and president of the National Bank of Cuba and takes major responsibility for the industrialization and transformation of the Cuban economy.
March 14, 1965 Che Guevara returns to Cuba after a tour of Africa and shortly afterwards drops from public view.
April 1, 1965 Che Guevara delivers a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. He subsequently leaves Cuba on a Cuban-sponsored internationalist mission in the (former Belgian) Congo, Africa.
November 21, 1965 Che Guevara leaves the Congo, and begins writing up his account of the mission, which he describes as “a failure.”
December 1965 Fidel Castro arranges for Che Guevara to return to Cuba in secret. Che Guevara prepares for the expedition to Bolivia.
November 4, 1966 Che Guevara arrives in Bolivia in disguise.
March 23, 1967 The first guerrilla military action takes place with combatants successfully ambushing a Bolivian army column.
April 16, 1967 Che Guevara’s Message to the Tricontinental is published, calling for the creation of “two, three, many Vietnams.”
May 1967 US Special Forces arrive in Bolivia to train counterinsurgency troops of the Bolivian army.
October 8, 1967 The remaining 17 guerrillas are trapped by army troops and conduct a desperate battle in El Yuro ravine. Che Guevara is seriously wounded and captured.
October 9, 1967 Che Guevara and two other captured guerrillas are murdered by Bolivian soldiers following instructions from the Bolivian government and Washington. The remains of Che Guevara and the other guerrillas are secretly buried in Bolivia.
July 1, 1968 Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary is published in Cuba and is distributed free of charge to the Cuban people, while it is simultaneously published in many countries.
July 1997 Che Guevara’s remains are returned to Cuba and buried in a memorial in Santa Clara, along with the remains of other guerrilla fighters who died in Bolivia.