I was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, medic, political figure, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas. As a young man studying medicine, I traveled rough throughout Latin America, bringing myself into direct contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people lived. My experiences and observations during these trips led me to the conclusion that the region's socio-economic inequalities could only be remedied by revolution, prompting myself to intensify my study of Marxism and travel to Guatemala to learn about the reforms being implemented there by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. While in Mexico in 1956, I joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement, which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrila warfare, I left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of fomenting revolutions first in Congo-Kinshasa, and then in Bolivia, where I was captured in a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. I was summarily executed, purportedly by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967. After my death, I became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of myself has received wide distribution and modification. The Maryland Institute College of Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century."