He was born on 14 June 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, into a liberal, middleclass family. He is the first of five children. As a child he suffers from asthma, and will do so for the rest of his life.
1947 - He begins studying for a degree in medicine at the University of Buenos Aires.
1952 - Guevara participates in riots against Argentine President Juan Peron.
1953 - Guevara completes his medical degree in March. He travels to Bolivia and then to Guatemala, which is governed by the reformist administration of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. While in Guatemala Guevara meets his first wife, Hilda, an exiled Peruvian Marxist. The couple will later divorce.
1954 - The Guatemalan Government is overthrown by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed coup in June 1954.After helping in the resistance against the coup, Guevara flees to Mexico City, where he works in the General Hospital and teaches on the medical faculty of the National University.
1955 - While in Mexico he meets Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary. Castro is in self-imposed exile following his early release from a prison sentence imposed after his abortive attempt to overthrow the Batista regime on 26 July 1953.
1956 - From his base in Mexico, Castro forms the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. Guevara joins the group as a medic and trains with them in guerrilla warfare techniques.
1957 – He is made a commander of one of the largest of the five guerrilla columns.
1958 - The US provides Batista with US$1 million in military aid. The US has become the dominant economic force in Cuba, which is treated as an international playground. However, the revolution cannot be stopped.
1959 - With the guerilla forces pressing in, Batista flees the country on New Year’s Day. Castro's 3,000 guerrillas have defeated a 30,000 strong professional army. Guevara enters Havana on 2 January.
1960 - In February Castro signs a trade agreement with the Soviet Union. In May Cuba and the Soviet Union establishes diplomatic relations. During the year, Guevara completes his book 'Guerra de guerrillas' (Guerrilla warfare). The book will become a manual for revolutionary groups in Latin America and elsewhere.
1961 - The US officially breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba on 3 January and intensifies attempts to destabilize the Castro government.
1962 - In February the US extends the trade restrictions on Cuba. The restrictions are extended even further in March.
1963 - US economic and social restrictions on Cuba are tightened further still.
1964 - Tensions within the Cuban Government over Guevara's economic policies continue and are heightened by his enthusiasm for carrying the revolution beyond Cuba into other parts of Latin America and to Africa.
1965 - At the start of the new year Guevara is still moving, to the Congo, then to Guinea, Ghana, Dahomey, Algiers, Paris, Tanzania and Peking. In February, while addressing the Tricontinental Conference at Algiers, he hints at his disillusionment with the established socialist countries, implying that they are exploiting underdeveloped nations for their own ends.
1966 - Guevara returns to Cuba in March, but quickly travels on to Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia, where he joins and becomes a leader of a communist guerrilla movement attempting to overthrow the country's military government.
1967 - The guerrilla band has some initial success but receives little support from the local people.On 8 October Guevara is wounded in the foot and captured near Vallegrande, in the mountains of central Bolivia. "I'm Che Guevara and I'm worth more to you alive than dead," he tells his captors. Around noon the following day, and against the CIA's wishes, Guevara is executed with four gunshots to his chest. His last words are reported to be, "I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."
Guevara is dead at the age of 39.
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