Havana ( CNN ) -- More than 50 years after the fact , Cuba has published the diary that Ernesto `` Che '' Guevara kept during the armed struggle that he waged alongside Fidel Castro from the Sierra Maestra mountains . `` Diary of a Combatant '' recounts Guevara 's experiences from coming ashore in Cuba on December 2 , 1956 , until shortly before the bearded rebels declared victory January 1 , 1959 . According to Guevara 's widow , Aleida March , the goal is `` to show his work , his thoughts , his life , so that the Cuban people and the entire world get to know him and do n't distort things anymore . '' The book was edited by the Che Guevara Studies Center , which is directed by March , and published by Australia 's Ocean Press/Ocean Sur . Researchers said that Guevara kept his diary in hand-written notebooks and that part of the reason they put off publishing the diary was because some of the notebooks were missing . `` Where are the notebooks ? We don¹t know , and there are a lot of different versions , '' Maria del Carmen Ariet , a leading researcher from the Che Guevara Studies Center , said at a press conference to launch the book . But she also said that much of the material was included in `` Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War , '' a more polished account of his time in the Sierra Maestra mountains that Guevara published in 1963 . `` We 'd have to ask if he really wanted the 'Diary of a Combatant ' published , '' she said . Some of Guevara 's other diaries have been commercially successful , most notably `` The Motorcycle Diaries , '' the memoir of a 23-year-old medical student on a road trip in Latin America . Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928 and met Castro in 1955 in Mexico City , where he was plotting his return to Cuba to overthrow Fulgencio Batista . During the guerrilla fighting in the mountains , Guevara was the first subordinate to be promoted to the rank of `` comandante '' by Castro . He went on to become Cuba 's Central Bank chief before heading to Africa and then Bolivia to continue armed struggles . He was killed in 1967 .
`` Diary of a Combatant '' spans period between 1956 and 1959 . It includes accounts of armed struggle beside Fidel Castro in Cuba . Much of the material was published in a 1963 book .