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60 free Che Guevara trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Che Guevara trivia quiz covers the Argentine doctor who became the most reproduced face of the twentieth century. The easy questions cover the basics: the country he was born in, what he studied, the famous journey he took with a friend, the revolution he joined, the country he died in and the photograph that ended up on a million T-shirts. From there it moves through the asthma, the rugby nickname, the chess, the leper colony on the Amazon, the coup in Guatemala that turned him into a Marxist, and the night in Mexico City when he signed up with Fidel Castro before dawn. The harder end covers the Granma landing, Radio Rebelde, the Battle of Las Mercedes, Santa Clara, the executions at La Cabaña, the banknotes he signed 'Che', the literacy campaign, the tour of Asia and the visit to Hiroshima, the trip to Moscow to sign the missile deal, the UN speech and the bazooka fired at it from the East River, the Algiers speech, the alias he used in the Congo, the failed year in Bolivia, the schoolhouse at La Higuera, the sergeant who shot him and the tobacco pouch that identified his bones in 1997. Every answer was checked against Guevara's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Fidel Castro and Cuba quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was Che Guevara born?
Argentina
He was born in Rosario in 1928, the eldest of five children in an upper-class family with Spanish, Basque and Irish roots.
Q 02Which chronic condition afflicted Guevara throughout his life?
Asthma
It ended his teenage plan to sell insecticide after a severe reaction, and hampered him in the Congo and Bolivia.
Q 03Which sport earned the young Guevara the nickname 'Fuser', for his aggressive play?
Rugby union
It contracted El Furibundo (furious) and his mother's surname, de la Serna; he played fly-half.
Q 04Which two poems could Guevara recite by heart?
Kipling's 'If—' and Hernández's 'Martín Fierro'
The family home held 3,000 books; he learned chess from his father and played tournaments at 12.
Q 05How did a 1958 CIA personality report describe Guevara?
'Quite well read' and 'fairly intellectual for a Latino'
His notebooks contained sketches of Buddha, Aristotle, Freud and Nietzsche.
Q 06What did Guevara study at the University of Buenos Aires from 1948?
Medicine
He got his degree in June 1953 after taking a year off for his motorcycle trip.
Q 07How long was Guevara's solo 1950 motorised-bicycle trip through his country's north?
4,500 km
He then worked six months as a nurse on merchant ships before the bigger journey of 1952.
Q 08With which friend did Guevara make his 1952 motorcycle journey across South America?
Alberto Granado
The nine-month, 8,000-km trip ended with volunteer work at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru.
Q 09In what year was The Motorcycle Diaries, Guevara's account of the 1952 trip, finally published?
1995
It became a New York Times bestseller and a 2004 film.
Q 10Which Chilean copper mine's working conditions angered Guevara during his 1952 journey?
Chuquicamata
He also met a shivering communist couple in the Atacama who did not own a blanket.
Q 11On whose image did Guevara swear in 1953 not to rest until the 'octopuses' of United Fruit were vanquished?
Joseph Stalin's
Stalin had just died; Guevara used an aggressive tone to frighten his conservative aunt.
Q 12Which Guatemalan president's CIA-backed 1954 overthrow cemented Guevara's anti-US views?
Jacobo Árbenz
Árbenz had taken 225,000 acres of uncultivated land from the United Fruit Company.
Q 13How did Guevara acquire the nickname 'Che'?
From his frequent use of an Argentine filler word
Q 21Which clandestine broadcaster did Guevara help create in February 1958?
Radio Rebelde
He had noticed how effective the CIA's radio had been in toppling Árbenz in Guatemala.
Q 22Which city did Guevara's column capture on New Year's Eve 1958, in the decisive victory of the revolution?
Santa Clara
His men were outnumbered 10 to 1; Batista fled Havana at 3 a.m. the next morning.
Q 23On what date did Guevara enter Havana to take control of the capital?
2 January 1959
Castro took six more days, rallying crowds in city after city on the way.
He picked it up among Cuban exiles in Guatemala; 'che' works like 'eh' in English.
Q 14Which Peruvian economist introduced Guevara to the Árbenz government and later became his first wife?
Hilda Gadea
They married in Mexico in September 1955 and divorced in 1959.
Q 15Who introduced Guevara to Raúl Castro in Mexico City in June 1955?
Ñico López
After one long night's talk with Fidel, Guevara had signed up to the 26th of July Movement before daybreak.
Q 16What role had Guevara planned to fill in Castro's expedition before being called 'the best guerrilla of them all'?
Combat medic
He scored highest on the guerrilla training tests despite the 15-hour mountain marches.
Q 17When Batista's troops attacked the Granma party, what did Guevara pick up instead of his medical supplies?
A box of ammunition
He later called it a symbolic moment; only 22 of the 82 men found each other afterwards.
Q 18What did Guevara call 'the most painful days of the war' in the Sierra Maestra?
When mosquito bites gave him walnut-sized cysts
He had an allergy to the bites; morale and supplies were also at their lowest.
Q 19What nickname did Time magazine give Guevara around 1960?
'Castro's brain'
In the Sierra he had built grenade factories, bread ovens, schools and clinics.
Q 20Which peasant guide, who sold the rebels' position for ten thousand pesos, did Guevara personally shoot?
Eutimio Guerra
His clinical diary entry noted the .32 pistol and the exit wound; he later rewrote it as the parable 'Death of a Traitor'.
Q 24Which fortress prison did Castro put Guevara in command of for five months in 1959?
La Cabaña
He reviewed appeals from the revolutionary tribunals; his jurisdictional death toll there is put at 55 to 105.
Q 25Which police chief's execution, ordered by Guevara, was one of the first killings ever broadcast on television?
Colonel Rojas
His family had been sent a letter of safe departure and were watching when he was put before the firing squad.
Q 26How did Cuba's new government honour Guevara in February 1959?
Proclaimed him a citizen by birth
He renounced the honorary citizenship in his 1965 farewell letter.
Q 27Whom did Guevara marry on 2 June 1959 in a civil ceremony at La Cabaña?
Aleida March
A Cuban member of the 26th of July Movement, she had lived with him since 1958; he had five children from his two marriages.
Q 28On his 1959 Asia tour, which Japanese city did Guevara insist on visiting instead of laying a wreath for the war dead?
Hiroshima
He called Truman a 'macabre clown' and wrote home: 'In order to fight better for peace, one must look at Hiroshima.'
Q 29How did Guevara sign Cuba's banknotes as President of the National Bank?
'Che'
The gesture horrified financiers and signalled his contempt for money.
Q 30At whose memorial service in March 1960 did Alberto Korda take the photograph Guerrillero Heroico?
The victims of the La Coubre explosion
The Maryland Institute College of Art has called it 'the most famous photograph in the world'.