Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

On October 9 2007, it will be 40 years since the death of the Argentine-born hero of Latin American revolutionaries, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna the man the world knows more commonly as, simply, Che.

Four decades ago he was killed one afternoon, allegedly screaming at his executioner: 'Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man. And yet, his name is more inescapable than ever. Recent news reports claimed a former CIA operative planned to auction a lock of Guevara's hair, snipped before the revolutionary was buried. In September this year, a Mexican publishing firm printed what it claimed were the contents of a notebook found on his body and locked for years in a Bolivian army vault. Titled The Green Notebook Of Che, it held no battle plans or secret codes. What it did have was a collection of his favourite poetry, mostly love poems.

Maybe the contents of that tattered book hold a key to why Che Guevara continues to be held in such reverence. Revolutionaries with a fondness for love poetry have always seemed larger than life. Maybe that is why his gaunt profile taken from an iconic photograph by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda continues to adorn everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs. Then again, the status of some world figures can never be easily explained.No one who knew little Ernesto, born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, northern Argentina, of Spanish and Irish ancestory, would have predicted his rise to cult status. The eldest of five children, he often suffered from bouts of asthma, even while excelling as an athlete. His aggressive rugby playing is what got him the nickname 'Fuser' combining 'El Furibundo' ('The Raging') with his mother's surname, Serna. His adolescence was ordinary, filled as it was with a passion for poetry and photography. After entering the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine, Ernesto began travelling around Latin America. Taking a year off from their studies, he and his friend Alberto Granado decided to see South America on a motorcycle, and then volunteer at a colony in Peru. That trip became the basis of a successful movie in 2004, The Motorcycle Diaries.

The trip was eye opening in a number of ways. It exposed the young man to widespread poverty and oppression in Latin America. Influenced by Marxist literature, this is when he came up with a solution to counter all the injustice he came across armed revolution. Returning to Argentina, Ernesto completed his medical studies before resuming his travels across Central and South America. In 1953, he decided to set up base in Guatemala, to familiarise himself with reforms implemented there by then president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. A letter to his aunt revealed his intention: 'I will perfect myself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary' . While helping out at a local hospital, he also began spending time with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro. Interestingly, it is during this time he got his famous nickname, 'Che' the Argentine equivalent of 'hey' or 'pal'.

Eventually, when the CIA overthrew the Arbenz regime, Guevara was convinced the United States was an imperialist power. It only cemented his view that armed struggle was the only solution. In Mexico, 1956, Guevara was attracted to Fidel Castro's movement, and eventually helped it seize power from Cuban dictator General Fulgencio Batista three years later. In the months that followed, after being proclaimed 'a Cuban citizen by birth' in recognition of his role, he was given the task of overseeing the trials of suspected war criminals from the previous regime. Some reports which would continue to haunt his legacy ever after suggest between 156 and 550 people were executed on his orders.Refusing the salary due to him as a member of the Cuban government as the minister of industries, in order to set an example, Che's stature as a commander grew rapidly.

On the personal front, he divorced his wife Hilda Gadea with whom he had had a long relationship, and a daughter in 1956 and married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of Castro's movement. The years that followed saw him travel the world, from New York to Paris, Egypt to Ireland, Prague to China. He gave interviews to the press, appeared on television programmes, even dined with the Rockefellers all before disappearing from public view soon after returning to Cuba.Apparently, Guevara decided to leave Cuba in 1965 to foment revolutions first in Congo-Kinshasa (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), then in Bolivia. In his search for 'new battlefields' , he resigned from all positions in government and renounced his Cuban citizenship. For two years, his whereabouts remained secret. As f you are real fan pls read the motercycle dairies or else see he movies, which was close to his idealogy i believe