Domitila Chúngara
Though Domitila did place much of her inspiration on Marx and other revolutionary thinkers, her guiding light —in a more peaceful manner— was ‘Che’ Guevara. In a sense, Domitila achieved what ‘Che’ Guevara was never able to fulfill in Bolivia: her fight became the people’s fight, and the people triumphed. In the midst of her political career, Domitila gave one of her most famous quotes: “I want to leave future generations the only valid inheritance: a free country and social justice.”
Che Guevara
Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. At 3 am on January 1, 1959, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with Guevara, Fulgencio Batista boarded a plane in Havana and fled for the Dominican Republic, along with an amassed "fortune of more than $300,000,000 through graft and payoffs". The following day on January 2, Guevara entered Havana to take final control of the capital. Fidel Castro took six more days to arrive, as he stopped to rally support in several large cities on his way to rolling victoriously into Havana on January 8, 1959. The final death toll from the two years of revolutionary fighting was 2,000 people.