wrote Che Guevara to his parents in March of 1965, as he was about to embark on the final stage of his adventurous voyage through life. The revolution to which he made a decisive contribution; the communist utopia he wanted to build (and could not construct) through the power of his will; the two, three, many Vietnams that he dreamed about and could not ignite; the thousands of young men and women who took to the mountains in emulation of him, to create the “new man” or meet death as martyrs; the sequel of desolation and slaughter left by the guerrilla wars and their suppression from Mexico to Argentina—all of it was vaguely predicted within the course of history long before November 25, 1956, the day that Che and Fidel Castro and a handful of comrades set off from the coast of Mexico in a barely seaworthy boat headed for Cuba. The history of Latin America foreshadowed—almost in the religious sense of the term—a figure like Che Guevara. And he duly arrived, at the right time and place.
