Ernesto “Che” Guevara was killed in Bolivia on Oct. 9, 1967, and the February 1968 issue of Evergreen Review contained a special section commemorating his life. It was in 1955, in Mexico, that Che met Fidel Castro and joined his guerrilla force to enter Cuba and fight the corrupt Fulgencio Batista regime. On Nov. 25, 1956, Castro’s group of 82 men embarked on a leaky vessel, the Granma, for a slow voyage to the island. They landed—starved and worn out from seasickness—on Dec. 2 at the swampy Las Colorados beach. The bedraggled army was eventually victorious, ousting the dictator and putting the revolutionaries in power.
Once Castro’s leftist government was stabilized, Che set off for Bolivia to join the guerrillas there. In a letter dated April 1, 1965, also included in Evergreen, Che wrote to Castro bidding him farewell. “I feel,” he said, “that I have fulfilled the...
