The Worker's Republic of Cuba was established in 1958, when Fidel Castro and his guerrillas overthrew the pro-Fascist dictator, Fulgencio Batista. They had arrived from Mexico on a small boat, and waged war upon the regime for several year prior to victory. Fidel Castro, and several of his comrades, had arrived in Mexico as a refugee, and was soon impressed by the Latin American type of Trotskyism practiced in the country. Most of all, however, it was the influence of the Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who he befriended in Mexico City, that changed his ideological views.