[00:06] His face is recognized all over the world.
[00:09] The young medical student
who became a revolutionary icon.
[00:13] But was Che Guevara 
a heroic champion of the poor
[00:16] or a ruthless warlord 
who left a legacy of repression?
[00:21] Order, order.
[00:22] Hey, where have I seen that guy before?
[00:25] Ahem, your Honor, this is Ernesto Che Guevara.
[00:29] In the early 1950s,
[00:30] he left behind a privileged life 
as a medical student in Argentina
[00:35] to travel through rural Latin America.
[00:38] The poverty and misery he witnessed
convinced him that saving lives
[00:41] required more than medicine.
[00:44] So he became a terrorist
[00:45] seeking to violently overthrow 
the region's governments.
[00:48] What?
[00:50] The region's governments 
were brutal oligarchies.
[00:52] Colonialism may have formally ended,
[00:54] but elites still controlled 
all the wealth.
[00:57] American corporations bought up land
originally seized from indigenous people
[01:02] and used it for profit and export,
[01:04] even keeping most of it uncultivated
while locals starved.
[01:09] Couldn't they vote to change that?
[01:11] Oh, they tried, your Honor.
[01:12] In 1953, Che came to Guatemala
[01:15] under the democratically-elected 
government of President Árbenz.
[01:19] Árbenz passed reforms to redistribute
[01:22] some of this uncultivated 
land back to the people
[01:25] while compensating the landowners.
[01:27] But he was overthrown 
in a CIA-sponsored coup.
[01:31] The military was protecting against
the seizure of private property
[01:34] and communist takeover.
[01:36] They were protecting corporate profits
[01:38] and Che saw that they would use
the fear of communism
[01:41] to overthrow any government
that threatened those profits.
[01:45] So he took the lessons of Guatemala
with him to Mexico.
[01:48] There, he met exiled Cuban revolutionaries
[01:51] and decided to help them 
liberate their country.
[01:53] You mean help Fidel Castro 
turn a vibrant Cuba into a dictatorship.
[01:58] Dictatorship was what Cuba 
had before the revolution.
[02:01] Fulgencio Batista was a tyrant
who came to power in a military coup.
[02:05] He turned Havana into a luxury playground
for foreigners
[02:09] while keeping Cubans mired in poverty and
killing thousands in police crackdowns.
[02:15] Even President Kennedy called it
the worst example
[02:17] of "economic colonization, humiliation,
and exploitation in the world."
[02:23] Whatever Batista's faults,
[02:25] it can't compare to the totalitarian
nightmare Castro would create.
[02:29] Forced labor camps, torture of prisoners,
no freedom to speak or to leave.
[02:35] But this isn't the trial 
of Fidel Castro, is it?
[02:38] Che Guevara was instrumental in helping
Castro seize power.
[02:42] As a commander in his guerilla army,
[02:44] he unleashed a reign of terror
across the countryside,
[02:48] killing any suspected spies or dissenters.
[02:51] He also helped peasants build
health clinics and schools,
[02:55] taught them to read,
[02:56] and even recited poetry to them.
[02:58] His harsh discipline was necessary
against a much stronger enemy
[03:01] who didn't hesitate to burn entire
villages suspected of aiding the rebels.
[03:06] Let's not forget that the new regime
held mass executions
[03:09] and killed hundreds 
of people without trial
[03:12] as soon as they took power in 1959.
[03:15] The executed were officials
and collaborators
[03:18] who had tormented 
the masses under Batista.
[03:21] The people supported 
this revolutionary justice.
[03:24] Which people?
[03:25] An angry mob crying for blood
does not a democracy make.
[03:29] And that's not even mentioning
the forced labor camps,
[03:32] arbitrary arrests,
[03:34] and repression of LGBT people
that continued long after the revolution.
[03:39] There's a reason people kept
risking their lives to flee,
[03:42] often with nothing but the clothes
on their backs.
[03:45] So was that all this Che brought to Cuba?
[03:47] Just another violent dictatorship?
[03:49] Not at all.
[03:50] He oversaw land redistribution,
[03:52] helped established universal education,
[03:54] and organized volunteer literacy brigades
that raised Cuba's literacy rate to 96%,
[04:01] still one of the highest in the world.
[04:03] Which allowed the government to control
what information everyone received.
[04:07] Guevara's idealistic incompetence
as Finance Minister
[04:10] caused massive drops in productivity
[04:13] when he replaced worker pay raises
with moral certificates.
[04:18] He suppressed all press freedom,
[04:19] declaring that newspapers 
were instruments of the oligarchy.
[04:23] And it was he who urged Castro
to host Soviet nuclear weapons,
[04:27] leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis
[04:30] that brought the world
to the brink of destruction.
[04:33] He was a leader, not a bureaucrat.
[04:35] That's why he eventually left to spread
the revolution abroad.
[04:38] Which didn't go well.
[04:40] He failed to rally rebels in the Congo
[04:42] and went to Bolivia 
even when the Soviets disapproved.
[04:45] The Bolivian Government, 
with the help of the CIA,
[04:48] was able to capture and neutralize
this terrorist in 1967,
[04:53] before he could do much damage.
[04:55] While doing plenty of damage themselves
in the process.
[04:58] So that was the end of it?
[04:59] Not at all. As Che said, 
the revolution is immortal.
[05:03] He was publicly mourned in cities
all over the world.
[05:06] Not by the Cubans who managed to escape.
[05:08] And his story would inspire 
young activists for generations to come.
[05:12] Ha. A trendy symbol of rebellion for those
who never had to live under his regime.
[05:18] Symbols of revolution 
may become commodified,
[05:20] but the idea of a more just world remains.
[05:24] Maybe, but I'm not sharing my coffee.
[05:27] Che Guevara was captured and
executed by government forces in Bolivia.
[05:32] His remains would not be found
for another 30 years.
[05:35] But did he die a hero 
or had he already become a villain?
[05:39] And should revolutions be judged
by their ideals or their outcomes?
[05:44] These are the questions we face
when we put history on trial.