My Life with Che: The Making of a Revolutionary Book

Che Guevara's first wife, Hilda Gadea, paints a personal portrait of the legendary figure, revealing his lesser known side as a romantic wanderer, a philosopher and doting suitor and father. Ernesto Guevara and Hilda Gadea met in Guatemala as members of the political-exile community. Later they were forced to flee to Mexico, where their relationship grew stronger and where, stimulated by Hilda, Che's convictions were shaped. In Hilda's account, their life together is filled with joy, and the excitement of involvement with the Castros and other Cuban refugees. Gadea was with Guevara during a tumultuous period in his life, which turned him from an intellectual theorist to a dedicated revolutionary. Against this backdrop, she offers insight into their long courtship, five years of marriage, and the birth of their daughter, Hildita. Gradually the character of this influential leader is revealed by the woman who knew him best, providing a vital key to the comprehension of Che's legendary qualities.

Kirkus Reviews

A candid, serious memoir by the iconic revolutionary's first wife. Gadea met Ernesto Guevara-the nickname "Che" came later-in Guatemala on December 20, 1953. She was a Peruvian political exile working as a government economist; he was a recent medical-school graduate eager to travel and learn about Latin American politics before returning to his native Argentina. A kinship developed between the like-minded two, as they shared Marxist tomes and ideas on how to resist the imperialist oligarchies controlling most of Latin America. Guevara favored the Soviet and Chinese models for a more just society and fervently espoused Sartre and Freud; Gadea introduced him to Walt Whitman's poetry, helped him find a job and put off his entreaties to get married. It was through Gadea, she claims quite plausibly, that Guevara met the group of Cubans who had participated in the famous July 26, 1953, assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, among them Raul and Fidel Castro. Gadea was briefly jailed after a CIA-backed military coup overthrew Guatemala's liberal president in January 1954, and the couple fled to Mexico City, where they reunited with the Castro brothers. The coup convinced them all that only armed struggle could liberate the people, and they began to plan the assault on Cuba's Batista regime that led to the revolutionaries' historic triumph in 1959. Gadea and Guevara married and had a daughter, Hildita, but the revolution ultimately separated them. He boarded the Granma in November 1956 for Castro's audacious invasion of Cuba, and by the time Gadea finally arrived in Havana in 1959, Guevara had another woman; they divorced five months later. Gadea died in 1974, and the text offers noinformation about when this memoir was originally published or why this English-language version is now available. An intelligent, tender look at Guevara's human side. See also second wife Aleida March's just-published (in Spanish) Evocation.