The Travels of che guevara

In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. His "hunger to explore the world" led him to intersperse his collegiate pursuits with two long introspective journeys that would fundamentally change the way he viewed himself and the contemporary economic conditions in Latin America. The first expedition in 1950 was a 4,500 kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he installed a small engine. This was followed in 1951 by a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi) continental motorcycle trek through most of South America. For the latter, he took a year off from his studies to embark with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River.

Who was Mao Zedong?

Mao Zedong was at the head of a Communist government in China during the year 1949 when it finally forced the Nationalists to retread to Taiwan. Mao, or as he was known during this time period, the Great Leader Chairman Mao, announced: “The Chinese people have stood up.” However, Mao had a long way to go before China, one of the largest nations in the world, would be on an even technological and economical foothold with the rest of the developed world.

Mao was able to empower China as an independent nation. Previously, China had been extremely weak to the outside world. So-called Western “democracies” would often use a better equipped army to force open unfair trade routes or make money in other unfair ways. Also, England used its superior military to win the Opium war. However, under Mao, despite the fact that China was still economically and technologically behind other nations, Mao was able to create an army that stalemated one of the world’s superpowers, the U.S. Also, during this time period, undue foreign influences greatly diminished, and China’s military strength grew greatly, becoming one of the nations to have successfully detonated the Atomic bomb. Mao was able to make China a powerful military nation capable of defending itself against outside invaders, something that no previous imperial dynasty had been able to successfully accomplish.

Despite Mao’s failures, he did manage to unite the country as one and to start the process of bringing China up to speed with the rest of the world. He built up an industrial force by forcing people to work on factories and farms. As a leader and a motivator, he was able to spurn his nation into attempting to increase production and becoming superior to the Western nations. However, as a Chairman who frequently felt threatened by others, he also initiated many violent movements to cement his control of the Communist Party and of an entire nation. Mao Zedong laid the foundation for China to come onto the world stage, and Deng Xiaoping and other reformers built upon that foundation to create the economic and political skyscraper China is today.