Just Finished Reading: The Motorcycle Diaries – Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

This has been in my pile-of-books since I saw the movie of the same name (although I understand that the movie concentrated on the diaries of Che’s friend and companion Alberto Granado). Taken as a straight travelogue this is interesting enough. Two young men in their 20’s set out on a journey across South America with far too little planning and far too high expectations of ultimate success. Both of them write diaries of their adventures which are eventually published. The defining thing about both books – though I have yet to read the Granado account – is that one of the young men later becomes a defining icon of the 1960’s. For one of the adventurous young men is the 23 year old Ernest Guevara – later known throughout the world simply as ‘Che’ (which is apparently the widely used slang name in Latin America for anyone from Argentina).

Whilst very readable and often funny I did find this slim volume a little disappointing. The film certainly made great play of the events during the epic journey that shaped Che’s later revolutionary radicalism. There were several instances mentioned in this book where the treatment both of the poor and the native population caused Che to examine closely some of the oppressive regimes they motored through but there was nothing like the flash of realisation I was expecting. This is not the story of how Ernesto became Che but the story of how two friends managed to stop from killing themselves on a badly thought out and poorly planed adventure. Despite the fact that this book will not really help you understand how a young doctor to be became a revolutionary, this is still an interesting read. It represents a snap-shot of South American life in 1952 and can stand on that alone. It also puts some context into the pre-Che personality of a future revolutionary which, again, is interesting in itself. Just don’t, as I did, expect it to tell you much about why he was so central to the Cuban revolution and why he died in Bolivia fighting for what he believed in.