Che Guevara was an Argentinian physician who became a political activist when apalled by the poverty and oppression he witnessed during his travels in Latin America. He gave up medicine and became a committed and fearless Communist, and eventually, a brutal and ruthless revolutionary.

Castro was trained as a lawyer, the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner. I don't know where he got his inspiration. There was grinding poverty and political brutality in Cuba, but it was nowhere near as bad as in other Latin American countries. Indeed, it is said that Cuba's economy was the most prosperous and advanced in Latin America, after Argentina. I believe revolution generally arises where it can, not where it is most needed, and the middle and upper classes play a major role in its development because they have the education and organizational training.

I don't know who funded the Cuban revolution, but I know a lot of the money was private, even business money, that came from moderates and even conservative elements opposed to Batista, who, after all, was a brutal dictator (something which critics of Castro should never forget). A lot of the money came from America, most came from Cuba. Castro and his allies kept their Communist sympathies quiet, but after the revolution, it was pretty clear where he was going. He began a purge of many of his own Sierra Maestra comrades who didn't like where the revolution was headed. It is rumored that even Camilo Cienfuegos, the third leg of the Castro-Guevara triumvirate, was assasinated because of political differences. He supposedly died in a plane crash.

The world is a complicated place. Nothing is simple, and most events we will never learn the full truth of, and even if we do, we may not be able to believe it. It's why I don't believe in conspiracies, they are to simple to be useful, and too easy to be true.