When he finished medical school, he said, “See, you thought I couldn’t do it, but I graduated. So pack your bags, because we're gonna be leaving soon.”

 

Ernesto and Calica head for Bolivia, along the way they meet other young travelers. They were students, they had invited us to see Guatemala. Ernesto is intrigued by the students’ political fervor and the situation in Guatemala, where President Jacobo Arbenz is attempting to bring about a social revolution to a land reform. Arbenz was intent on nationalizing the unused land of the major U.S banana and fruit companies, particularly United Fruit. And of course United Fruit was a company that had very close ties to the Eisenhower and his Administration.

 

The Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has been on the board of United Fruit, John Foster Dulles was a brother of Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA. United Fruit paid a very skilled public relation specialist to kind of whip up a frenzy about the threat of communism in this small impoverished country -- Guatemala

 

December 24th, 1953, it is amid this charged atmosphere that Ernesto first arrives in Guatemala.

Soon he is introduced to a Peruvian woman named Hilda Gadea. Hilda immediately became besotted with him. She even went to the point, where she pawns some Jewelry in order to keep him in his hostels, and eventually they began sleeping together. Hilda introduces Ernesto to followers of a 26-year-old Cuban lawyer named Fidel Castro. He had led an attack on the Moncada Military Barracks, the 2nd largest military garrison in Cuba. In an audacious attempt to overthrow Cuba's President--General Fulgencio Batista.

 

Many of the people who attacked the barracks, a lot are homeless students. Workers' organizers, a lot of them are killed, tortured, killed. The ones who survived including Fidel Castro and his brother were sentenced to prison. Castro was serving a 15 years sentence. But Ernesto was deeply impressed with this man. Unlike his Cuban friends, Ernesto was not committed to any cause of ideology. But the ouster of Guatemala President Arbenz changes his view.

 

The first CIA sponsored coup in Latin America took place in Guatemala in 1954, and essentially the army got scared and told Arbanz that he had to resign, and he did.

 

Castio Amas seized his place in power on June 27th, 1954. He seen by many as an American puppet. He begins arresting suspected communists, and anyone connected to the old regime. Threatened with jail and possibly execution, Ernesto takes refuge at the Argentine Embassy. He came away convinced that the United States was --as he famously later called it-- the enemy of humanity.

 

"Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán succumb before the cold premeditated aggression of the U.S.A, hidden behind the smoke screen of continental propaganda." Ernesto now considers himself a Marxist. Communism seemed to offer a way forward and a ready-made  ideology for the kind of new society that can arise from the ashes of the old.

 

Ernesto Guevara, he left Guatemala a very radicalized individual, looking now for a revolution he could fight in.

September, 1954, like many other leftists, Ernesto heads for Mexico City, where former President Cardenez had successfully nationalized his oil fields in the 1930s.