Remembering Che in Switzerland, 50 years after his death

Previous Next

Exact date unknown, 1959. Guevara in typical garb of green uniform, open shirt, holstered pistol, and cigar. (Photo: Jorge Lezcano, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Jorge Lezcano

September 1966. “Taking the bull by the horns”. Che Guevara practicing his bullfighting moves at a farm near San Andrés, a training site for his future mission in Bolivia. (Photo: Orlando Borrego, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Orlando Borrego

May 9, 1964. Che giving the closing remarks at the “Youth and Revolution” seminar at the Cuban Ministry for Industry. (Photo: unknown, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Unkown

August 25, 1963. Participating in the second edition of the chess tournament “Capablanca in Memoriam”, in Havana. (Photo: Rafael Calvo, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Rafael Cavo

February 2, 1960. Guevara gives a statement to a journalist at the José Martí airport. (Photo: unknown, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Photographer unkown

August 16, 1962. Che addressing workers at the opening of the Chulima naval shipyard on the banks of the Almendares River. (Photo: Fernando Lezcano, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Fernando Lezcano

September 18, 1960. Wearing a straw hat, Che sits next to commandante Jorge Papita Serguera, at a general assembly in Camagüey. (Photo: Rogelio Arias, Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Rogelio Arias

December 9, 1964. Boarding the plane that will take him to New York, where he would deliver a famous speech to the United Nations General Assembly. (Photo: Jorge Oller. Centro de Documentación del Periódico Granma) Jorge Oller

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3
• Picture 4
• Picture 5
• Picture 6
• Picture 7
• Picture 8

An exhibition of never-before-seen images of Ernesto Che Guevara has visited some dozen Swiss towns, as part of a celebration organised by the Swiss-Cuba Association to mark a half-century since the revolutionary’s death.

The “¡Che vive!” (“Che lives!”) exhibition features photos dating from the period following the Cuban revolution in 1959. The images have been selected from a collection of thousands that were for years conserved in the archives of the Granma newspaper, before being recently published in the work “Che: the early years. Unseen photographs 1959-1964”, by René Lechleiter and Richard Frick.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, born in 1928 in Argentina, is an emblematic figure of 20th-century history. Having developed revolutionary ideas as a medical student, he travelled to Mexico to meet the Castro brothers before taking part in the successful Cuban revolution of 1959. Following this he occupied diverse public roles in the new Cuban state, as well as travelling to Africa and elsewhere in Latin America to spread socialist ideas. He was captured and executed in Bolivia on October 9, 1967.

translated from French by Domhnall O’Sullivan, swissinfo.ch