10 Mind-Blowing Facts About Che Guevara

7. He Was A Warrior With A Taste For Poetry, Philosophy And Chess

Writer, memoirist, poet, mathematician, philosopher... For a man famed for his brilliance in guerrilla warfare, Che Guevara had many refined tastes.

From his early days at school, Che was a high achiever. Clearly intelligent, he was a skilled mathematician and chess player, participating in tournaments from the age of 12. Whilst going on to write memoirs about travels, philosophy and warfare, Che was a passionate poet throughout his teenage years - fondly recalling the works of Western classics like John Keats and Walter Whitman and other Latin American writers like Cesar Vallerjo and Jorge Icazo. It was perhaps inevitable that Che would become a literary enthusiast, considering his childhood home was housing a reported three thousand books on topics as wide ranging as Che's thirst for knowledge.

However, Che had a remarkable ability to relate issues of psychology, philosophy and mathematics into his later exploits of the Cuban revolution. His manuals on guerrilla warfare undoubtedly draw from psychological theory and political theory from authors like Karl Marx, whilst his translation of moral principles into economics elevates Che as a man of war, and a man of learning. He was so smart, in fact, that the CIA grew curious, creating a file on the man they deemed 'fairly well-read for a Latino'.