THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

cultural and economic entity, the liberation of which
would require an intercontinental strategy.
In 1953 Guevara went to Guatemala, where Jacobo
Arbenz headed a progressive regime that was attempting
to bring about a social revolution. (Around this time
Guevara acquired his nickname, from a verbal mannerism
of Argentines who punctuate their speech with the inter-
jection che.) The overthrow of the Arbenz regime in 1954
in a coup supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency persuaded Guevara that the United States would
always oppose progressive leftist governments. This con-
viction became the cornerstone of his plans to bring about
socialism by means of a worldwide revolution.
He left Guatemala for Mexico, where he met the
Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, political exiles who
were preparing an attempt to overthrow the dictatorship
of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. Guevara joined Fidel Castro’s
force, which landed in the Cuban province of Oriente late
in November 1956. Immediately detected by Batista’s
army, they were almost wiped out. The few survivors,
including the wounded Guevara and Raúl and Fidel Castro,
reached the Sierra Maestra, where they became the nucleus
of a guerrilla army. The rebels slowly gained in strength,
seizing weapons from Batista’s forces and winning support
and new recruits, and Guevara became one of Castro’s
most-trusted aides. Guevara later recorded the two years
spent overthrowing Batista’s government in Pasajes de la
guerra revolucionaria (1963; Reminiscences of the Cuban
Revolutionary War, 1968).
After Castro’s victorious troops entered Havana on
January 2, 1959, and established a Marxist government,
Guevara became a Cuban citizen, as prominent in the new
government as he had been in the revolutionary army, rep-
resenting Cuba on many commercial missions. He also