“They Fought without Holding Back”

As the first of the postwar social revolutions in Latin America, Bolivia’s popular insurrection captured the attention of observers around the hemisphere. A young traveler at the time was Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who would later meet his death in Bolivia while attempting to repeat the insurrectionary feat of 1952 and that of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba a few years later. In 1953, Guevara wrote a letter to a friend, expressing his budding admiration for the heroic sacrifice of insurgent Bolivian workers.