1928 – 1940

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on 14th June 1928 in the city of Rosario, Argentina. He is the firstborn to the couple formed by Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa. The birth of Ernesto in Rosario is a chance occurrence. His parents had left the area of Misiones, where they resided, for Buenos Aires several days earlier. However, since Celia was not feeling well, they decided to stay in Rosario in a house at 480 Entre Rios St. After several days in Rosario, Ernesto’s parents return with their child to Misiones, where they had a mate plantation in Port Caraguatay, close to the border of Brazil and Paraguay. The house where the family lived was located on a hill; the floor, walls and rood were made of wood.

On 2nd of May 1930, while spending a rather cool day with his parents at the San Isidro Nautical Club, Ernesto had his first asthma attack. This disease would continue to affect him all his life, but it was never a limitation for him. Later, for several years, Ernesto’s parents moved to several places in Argentina, searching for an adequate climate that would attenuate the frequent asthma crises that the small child suffered. First they lived in Buenos Aires and then they moved to the province of Cordoba. They settled in the city of Alta Gracia. His asthma bouts worsened in 1931 and after navigating with his parents along the Parana river were more frequent.

Taught by his mother, Ernesto starts to read and write. One of his first letter was the one he sent to his aunt Beatriz,dated January 22nd, 1933.

“Dear Beatriz, the surprise is that I can swim, precisely on your birthday I learned how to swim. Kisses from Ernestico”

Because of his asthma Ernesto did not start school at the established age. For some time, his mother taught him his first lessons. She also started to teach him French. In 1935 Ernesto started attending the Jose de San Martin School in Alta Gracia in second grade. The Guevara family continued to grow with the birth of another two children, Roberto (May 18th, 1931) and Ana Maria (January 28th, 1934). Ernesto used to go on the excursion with his parents in the hills near Alta Gracia. He loved the countryside, nature and the animals.

In July 1936, just before Ernesto turned eight, the fighting started between the republicans and the fascists in Spain. The events in Spain awakened the interest of the family and of the friends that visited their home. The involvement of his uncle, Cayetano Cordoba Iturburu as a war correspondent exerted on him special influence. Young Ernesto used to listen attentively to talk on the development of the war in Spain. He went as far as to put small flags on a map to indicate new developments in the Spanish Civil War. Also in the games with other children in the backyard of the house where Guevaras lived, Ernesto reproduced the actions of the Spanish patriots. They dug holes and in the imaginary battles they cried:

"Onward Militia !! Long live the Spanish republic!!"

Che's adolescence

1941 – 1950

In 1941, although he continued to live in Alta Gracia, Ernesto enrolled in the “Dean Funes” School in Cordoba. It was a liberal school, where discrimination was not admitted. He commuted daily over 35 kilometers from Alta Gracia to Cordoba. His family then decided to move to the latter. There he met Tomas, Alberto and Gregorio Granado and Gustavo Roca. He kept his passion for reading. He read Sigmund Freud, Pablo Neruda, Horacio Quiroga, Jose Ingenieros, Anatole France, Jack London, Carlos Gustavo Jung, Alfredo Adler and also a short version of Karl Marx “The Capital”.

In 1942, after his fourteenth birthday, Ernesto asked his father’s permission to go with his younger brother Roberto to work in the grape harvest at a nearby vineyard during holidays. For several days they worked in the harvest, but he then had to interrupt it and returned home due to continuous asthma attacks. Ernesto learned of the abuse dispensed on the workers and even had an argument with the farm owner when he refused to pay them all the wages for the days they had worked.The man alleged that the youngster had not honoured their commitment of working all the days they had planned.

In 1947, when his grandmother fell terminally ill in March, Ernesto immediately left for Buenos Aires. He spent 17 days by her side. After witnessing her grandmother’s agony and death, he decided to quit studying engineering that he had begun a year earlier, and went for medicine. The family moved to the Argentine capital. They lived in the home formerly occupied by Ernesto’s grandmother, on Arenales and Uriburu streets.

He studied hard between 12 and 14 hours a day at the library with the aim to finish his medicine studies earlier. He attained this the following year when he passed in May all the subjects for the first year, in June all those of the second year and in December he finished the third year. In December 1947 Ernesto enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires with record 59345.

"…And when I took my first steps to become a doctor, when I began studying medicine, most of the concepts I now have as a revolutionary were absent from the storehouse of my ideas. I wanted to be successful like everybody else; I dreamt of being a famous researcher, I dreamt of working tirelessly to achieve something that, ultimately, would not be made available to the whole of mankind, but at that moment it would have been a personal victory. I was, as we all are, a child of my milieu…"

While Ernesto was studying medicine he was also working in different places, among them the municipality of Buenos Aires and on a merchant ship where he worked as a nurse. His first trip abroad was on an oil ship that sailed from the port of Comodoro Rivadavia. He traveled to Trinidad and Tobago. During this period he worked at the Institute of Allergy Research, owned by Salvador Pissani, an outstanding specialist, with whom he made friends.

1950-1953

In January 1950 he began his journey through several provinces in northern Argentina on a bicycle to which he had adapted a small engine. He toured over 4500 kilometers. El Grafico, a sports magazine in Argentina, published a picture of Ernesto on the motorbike he used for the journey. The company that manufactured the engine Ernesto adapted to his bicycle, tried to use it for advertising claiming it was very strong since Ernesto had gone on such a long tour using its power. On 29th December 1950 he started out on a long tour of several countries in Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado. They departed from the city of Cordoba on a motorbike they christened “Powerful II”. In Chile, the motorcycle broke down and they had to leave it in Santiago and carried on their journey using other means of transportation. They both traveled and visited towns of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. They covered a distance of 9000 kilometers. During this long trip, they visited the leper communities of Huambo and San Pablo and worked there, sharing the life with the sick ones.

In July 1951 they arrived in Venezuela. Granado decided to stay in Caracas and work as a doctor. Ernesto returned to Argentina to finish his studies and promised to meet with Granad later in Venezuelan capital. His meeting with the miners in Chuquicamata influenced greatly his political views. he witnessed how the US companies exploited the miners and the miserable life they lived. On 6th January 1952 Ernesto and Granado arrived at Villa Gesel to the North of Mar del Plata city. In his travel notes he described what his friend felt when he saw the ocean for the first time, as well as his thought about the sea.

"The fool moon rests over the sea and covers the waves with silver reflections. Seated on a dune, we watched the continuous sway of the waves with different moods. For me, the sea was always a confidant, a friend who absorbs everything that you tell him without ever revealing the secret confided to him and who gives the best of advice; a noise whose significance each one of us interprets as we can. For Alberto, it is a new spectacle that causes a strange disturbance in him whose reflections are perceived in the attentive look with which he follows the development of each of the waves that come to die on the beach. Approaching thirty years Alberto discovers the Atlantic Ocean and feels at that moment the importance of the discovery, which opens a myriad of roads for him leading to all the points of the globe."

On 14th June 1952 Che turned 24 together with the sick and the medical staff of the San Pablo leper community in Peru. During his stay in that centre both Ernesto and Alberto shared and exchanged their views with the patients with whom they also played sports. With respect to his time in the leper community, Ernesto wrote:

"All the love and caring just consist on coming to them without gloves and medical attire, shaking their hands as any other neighbor and sitting together for a chat about anything or playing football with them…."

On 31st Aug 1952, after staying more than a month in North American territory and due to the breakage of the plane he was flying on, he returns to Buenos Aires. In Argentina he rewrites his travel notes in which he details the experiences lived during the journey with Granado through several Latin American countries.

"The personage who wrote this notes died when he again stepped on Argentine soil. The one ordering and polishing them, I, I am not me; at least I am not the same inner me. That wandering without course through our Monumental America has changed me more than I thought."

Between September 1952 and April 1953, he made a great effort to be able to graduate as a doctor. The course curriculum included 30 subjects. After he returned from the trip with Granado he had to pass almost half of the subjects. On April 11th, 1953 he took his last exam (Clinical Neurology) before graduating from Medical School. On June 12th, 1953 Ernesto got his medical degree. Although he could get a certain placement in a Buenos Aires clinic, he was still interested in going to Venezuela to meet up with his friend Alberto Granado. 

(ICAP) 05-07-2007