ERNESTO GUEVARA DE LA SERNA was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. During his medical studies in Buenos Aires, he took a trip with his friend Alberto Granado on an old Norton motorcycle through all of Latin America, the basis for The Motorcycle Diaries. In 1954, he became involved in political activity in Guatemala and was an eyewitness to the overthrow of the elected government in a CIA-organized coup. In Mexico City, Che linked up with exiled Cuban revolutionaries and met Fidel Castro in 1955. He would go on to become a Rebel Army commander, a key leader of the new revolutionary government, and a central leader of what would become the Communist Party of Cuba.

ALEIDA GUEVARA MARCH, MD, is a Cuban physician who is the eldest daughter of four children born to Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his second wife, Aleida March. She is a doctor of medicine, based at the William Soler Children's Hospital in Havana. She has also worked as a physician in Angola, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.