Che Guevara: Address to the United Nations General Assembly

On December 11, 1964, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) traveled to New York City to give an Address to the United Nations General Assembly as head of the Cuban delegation to that organization. By this time “Che” had become a figure of international stature. He was convinced that the economic inequalities that afflicted Latin America were the result of imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation, primarily by the United States, and the only solution to these problems was Marxist revolution—a theme he stressed in his address to the UN General Assembly. He had played a key role in the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista. Following the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, he was Cuba's minister of industries and president of that country's national bank, and he traveled the world to sell the Cuban Socialist model to other nations. He helped train the military forces that repelled the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (with the goal of deposing Castro) in April 1961, and he was instrumental in forging Cuban-Soviet relations, which brought to Cuba the Soviet-made nuclear missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. In an effort to foment revolution abroad, he traveled to Bolivia, where he was seized by Bolivian military forces and executed on October 9, 1967.