Latin America was today paying tribute to Che Guevara, the Marxist freedom fighter who was shot dead in Bolivia 40 years ago.

The iconic photograph of Guevara's face, eyes gazing upwards in revolutionary fervour, framed by long hair and a soldier's beret with a single star, has become a global symbol of the struggle for freedom from political oppressors, adorning countless T-shirts, watches and posters in student bedsits.

Fidel Castro was too ill to make a public appearance at the rallies in honour of the man who helped him to seize the presidency of Cuba, but wrote a newspaper column from his sickbed praising Guevara for sowing the seeds of social conscience in Latin America.

"I make a halt in day-to-day combat to bow my head, with respect and gratitude, before the exceptional fighter who fell 40 years ago," Mr Castro wrote.

Among a host of commemorative events, Aleida March, Guevara's widow, and two daughters, Celia and Aleida, joined 10,000 students and workers for an early morning ceremony at his mausoleum in Santa Clara, the Cuban city that he helped to liberate in 1958 in the decisive battle of the Cuban revolution.

"Che was loved, in spite of being stern and demanding," said Tomas Alba, 80, who fought under Guevara's command. He added: "We would give our life for him."

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president, was hosting a commemoration at Pico del Aguila, which Guevara visited in 1952, while in Bolivia President Evo Morales was leading a ceremony at the town of Vallegrande where Guevara's bones were found in a mass grave.

Other events were being held in Guatemala and Mexico, where he briefly lived.

Born Ernesto Guevara in the Argentinian city of Rosario in 1928, Che trained as a doctor before being caught up in the political conflicts sweeping Latin America.

His conversion to revolutionary Marxism began after he traveled across the region in 1952 and 1953, and was shocked at the economic disparities in the region.

His life changed dramatically when he met Fidel Castro and his brother Raul in Mexico in 1955, and became convinced that violence was the only way to overturn an unjust social order.

He quickly joined the Castros' armed uprising against the then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. After their revolution triumphed in January 1959, Guevara was appointed Cuba's supreme prosecutor, in charge of the trials and executions of hundreds of people linked to the previous regime.

He later held the posts of industry minister and governor of Cuba's central bank, when he advocated nationalising private businesses.

He dreamed of a classless society where wages would be made unnecessary and money abolished. Today he is pictured on Cuba's banknotes, where his fervour for promoting unpaid voluntary work, by toiling shirtless on building sites or hauling sacks of sugar, is commemorated with a picture of him cutting sugar cane with a machete.

The photograph that has cemented his reputation was taken in 1960 by Alberto Korda, a Cuban photographer.

In his spare time, he wrote books about the theory and practice of guerilla warfare. Growing restless and not content to rest on his laurels in Cuba, Guevara sought to spread revolution around the world, travelling in 1965 to the Congo with a group of Cuban revolutionaries to join up with Marxist guerillas there.

In late 1966 he set off once more, this time to start a new anti-US guerilla movement in the jungles of eastern Bolivia, hoping to create "two, three, many Vietnams" in Latin America.

But after 11 months at the head of a small band of rebels who failed to find mass support, he was captured by US-backed Bolivian soldiers on October 8 1967. He was shot in a schoolroom the following day, and his bullet-ridden corpse was put on display in a laundry, eyes wide open. He was 39.

His early death helped to create the heroic myth, which was fuelled by the exploitation of Korda's photo by businessmen seeking to cash in on the tide of popular Leftism sweeping Europe in the 1960s.

In 1997 his body was exhumed from its unmarked resting place and taken back to Cuba, where a mausoleum was built to house it.

Guevara's detractors described today's memorial events as sickening. "We feel sick about this grand show that goes on every year on the anniversary of his death," said Gary Prado, 68, the commander of the Bolivian army unit which captured Guevara.

"Rather than honour a man who came to invade the country, we should honour the armed forces, the soldiers who defended the country."

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