After his bitter experience in Guatemala (when the democratically elected president, Jacob Arbenz was overthrown by a military coup, helped by the American CIA), Che Guevara was committed to purging Cuba's existing army. From January 1959 (to June 1959) at La Cabaña military fortress he presided over the trials and executions of Batista's army and police officers who had committed crimes during the regime.
In Cuba, most of the population supported the events, but outside Cuba an uproar was created, people talked about red terror and called Che "the butcher of La Cabaña".

Che considered literacy one of the most important things, both for his troops and for the Cuban people, so a huge literary campaign started in the country.
In January 1959 he became head of the Department of Training of FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias - Revolutinary Armed Forces) and he created the Military-Cultural Academy which gave his soldiers classes in civics, history, geography, economics, Latin American politics and current affairs. He gave lessons on basic history of socialism to his own officers.
He founded a newspaper, La Cabaña Libre and wrote articles in the magazine Verde Olivo (the magazine of FAR). He set up Prensa Latina, a press agency with the Argentinian Jorge Ricardo Masetti and the Uruguayan Carlos Maria Gutiérrez - to rival the US media domination.

1959 - eleven countries: Egypt, Syria, India, Burma, Japan, Indonesia, Ceylon, Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Sudan and Morocco.

7 October 1959 Che Guevara was named head of the new Department of Industrialisation and he became the member of the Countil of Ministers as well.

He became one of the three members on the Economic Commission of the National Directorate of ORI (later PURS - United Party of Socialist Revolution), the highest-level organisation determining the Revolution's development strategy.

26 November 1959 Che Guevara became president of the National Bank of Cuba. (The story goes: on a late night meeting of the Council of Ministers, Fidel Castro asked for a "good economist" to take over presidency of the National Bank. Che Guevara raised his hand, then Castro said with surprise: "Che, I didn't know you were a good economist!" and Che replied: "Oh, I thought you asked for a good communist!"
Che surrounded himself with bank professionals, introduced import-export licences, withdrew Cuba's gold supplies from the USA, withdrew Cuba from international financial institutions dominated by the USA, oversaw the establishment of a planning institution to direct trade with the Soviet bloc and managed the nationalisation of the banking system in Cuba. One of his most important projects was the change of banknotes (August 1961).

John Gerassi: "The first question he asked of his subordinates when he took over the bank was "Where has Cuba deposited its gold reserves and dollars?" When he was told "In Fort Knox", he immediately decided to sell, converting the gold reserves into currencies which were exported to Canadian and Swiss banks. Thanks to this foresightedness, Cuba was not caught in a bind - indeed, it would have been bankrupt - when the United States seized all Cuba's assets in the United States."

February 1961 Guevara was named Minister of Industries
August 1961 new banknotes were introduced and old banknotes had to be changed - to regain control of the money supply, stop capital flight and remove the source of funding for the counter-revolution.

In the first year of the Revolution 37 new schools were built (while in the previous 57 years, only one school was built, in Havana). Thanks to the revolutionary government, education facilities were free or workers were paid to study - for the first time, anyone could attent school and study, no matter what their financial situation or colour of skin was like.

Che Guevara rejected the ministerial salary and accepted only the 190 pesos paid monthly to soldiers of the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces).

Che Guevara spent most of day working, he often had meetings after midnight. Once he had a meeting at 3 a.m. with Alexis Codina, economic head of flour industry, and when Codina entered, he saw that Che was standing with the top drawing of a filing cabinet pulled out, leaning on the sharp metal corner, reading a report that he had to discuss at 8 a.m. "He explained that if he sat on the armchair, he would fall asleep, which is why he made himself uncomfortable."

After the six-day working week, every Sunday ministry workers went to do some voluntary labour from dawn to midday (on sugar cane fields, factories, plants or on building sites). Once a month, after the voluntary work - often without time to return home, have a shower and change clothes - Che, his vice ministers and branch directors had a meeting that started at 2 p.m. and often lasted till midnight.

Valdés Gravalosa was editor of the magazine Nuestra Industria and every month he met Che who personally revised the drafts of the following issues, making observations and criticising errors so it could be corrected before publication. Once Che complained that his photograph appeared four times in one issue. "I never put in a photo of him again!"