...While pictures of Guevara's dead body were being circulated and the circumstances of his death debated, his legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his execution occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, songs and poems were written about his life and death. Even liberal elements that had felt little sympathy with Guevara's communist ideals during his lifetime expressed admiration for his spirit of self-sacrifice. He is singled out from other revolutionaries by many young people in the West because he rejected a comfortable bourgeois background to fight for those who were deprived of political power and economic stability. And when he gained power in Cuba, he gave up all the trappings of high government office in order to return to the revolutionary battlefield and, ultimately, to die.
Guevara was called "the most complete human being of our age" by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Guevara's supporters believe he may yet prove to be the most important thinker and activist in Latin America since Simón Bolívar, leader of the South American independence movement and hero to subsequent generations of nationalists throughout Latin America.
