Che Guevara in the context of "Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution"

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Born in Birán, the son of a wealthy Spanish farmer, Castro adopted leftist and anti-imperialist ideas while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, Castro travelled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother, Raúl Castro, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic embargo, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962.

The Cuban Revolution (Spanish: Revolución cubana) was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew the emerging Cuban democracy and consolidated power. Among those who opposed the coup was Fidel Castro, then a young lawyer, who initially tried to challenge the takeover through legal means in the Cuban courts. When these efforts failed, Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl led an armed assault on the Moncada Barracks, a Cuban military post, on 26 July 1953.

Following the attack's failure, Fidel Castro and his co-conspirators were arrested and formed the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) in detention. At his trial, Fidel Castro launched into a two-hour speech that won him national fame as he laid out his grievances against the Batista dictatorship. In an attempt to win public approval, Batista granted amnesty to the surviving Moncada Barracks attackers and the Castros fled into exile. During their exile, the Castros consolidated their strategy in Mexico and subsequently reentered Cuba in 1956, accompanied by Che Guevara, whom they had encountered during their time in Mexico.

The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a 2004 biographical coming-of-age road film directed by Walter Salles from a screenplay by José Rivera, based on Che Guevara's 1995 memoir of the same name and Alberto Granado's memoir Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary. The film recounts the 1952 expedition, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and Granado, observing the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. Through the trip both of them witness the social classes struggle in Latin America.

It stars Gael García Bernal (who had previously played Che in the 2002 miniseries Fidel) as Guevara, and Rodrigo de la Serna as Granado (Serna himself is second-cousin to Guevara on his maternal side).