“The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey” by Ernesto Che Guevara
One day in the 1950s, a 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna decided to travel across Latin America on a motorcycle alongside a buddy, a 29-year-old biochemist Alberto Granado. They began their adventure from inside their native Argentina (December 1951) and proceeded to Chile (February 1952), Peru (March 1952), Colombia (June 1952), Venezuela (July 1952), and Miami by plane (Late July 1952), before returning back to Argentina by plane on August 1952.
Both men had decided to do this travel after one drunken night talking BS, with minimum planning, and they did so with only limited understanding of the continent from the history books.
This book is Ernesto’s diary entries from this trip. And it shows the rich cultures that they encountered, the interesting and kind people that they met, and the many crazy stories they had especially with their unreliable Norton motorbike La Poderosa II (“the mighty one”). It is filled with energy and wonder, bizarre antics from being broke, even humor and epic stupidness from many travel-adventure stories.
Stories such as entering Pachamams Kingdom and chewed coca leaves, visiting the ancient city of Cuzco, visiting Machu Picchu, getting into a local newspaper in Chile, visiting a leper colony, sleeping at strangers’ homes, many strangers’ homes, hitchhiking to everywhere (after La Poderosa totally collapsed), assisting fire fighters rescuing animals from fire, working as a crew member at a boat, walking across desert, meeting an indigenous village, sailing down the Amazon River using a made-up raft, fell asleep in their raft and accidentally entered the Brazil’s side of Amazon, joining a local football match, playing another football match in Peru (this time alongside a butch-looking nun), and another football match in Colombia (where he as a goalkeeper saved a penalty in a cup final that they joined).
And like plenty of other travel-adventure stories they also had numerous unfortunate shortcomings, such as falling from their bike several times, had a diarrhea, got trampled by a horse, got their path disrupted by a landslide, running away from an unpaid meal, being chased by furious dancers in a village, finding themselves in a politically heated Colombia with several open revolts in the countryside, had a flat tire in Venezuela, had numerous asthma attacks throughout the journey, and very often being hungry and needed the mercy from the locals to feed them.
But more importantly, the diary also shows the development of Ernesto’s views on the often-unreported everyday realities of the majority of the people in that continent. Starting with the sick elderly woman that he met in Valparaíso, then the poor miners in Chuquicamata, and perhaps the most touching the friendly Indians or Mestizos who saved them when they were so close to freezing to death. Indeed, during this trip, he also saw all sorts of poverty and injustices from the ground up that opened his eyes and awakened his political views, making this trip his formative journey that has since turned him into the fabled Che Guevara.
After this trip, Ernesto formally graduated as a doctor in 1953 and almost immediately set for another journey around Latin America, from Bolivia (where he witnessed the Bolivian Revolution), to Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala (where he met Antonio Lopez, a young Cuban revolutionary). In Guatemala 1954 he saw the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz by US-backed forces (unleashed by the United Fruit Company), an event that profoundly radicalized his political views, where he then escaped to Mexico and contacted the group of Cuban revolutionary exiles.
In 1955 he finally met Fidel Castro and immediately enlisted in the Cuban guerilla expedition to overthrow the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, earning the nickname “Che” (a popular form of conversational address in Argentina). After Batista eventually fled on 1 January 1959, Che filled several positions in the new Cuban government, first as head of the Department of Industry of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, then as president of the National Bank, Minister of Industry, as well as becoming a central leader of the political organization that in 1965 became the Communist Party of Cuba. Che also represented Cuba around the world, heading several delegations and speaking at the UN and other international forums.
Che left Cuba in April 1965, initially to lead another guerilla mission to support the Congo revolution. But he returned to Cuba secretly in December 1965 to prepare for another guerilla force for Bolivia, only to be wounded, captured, and eventually killed by CIA-trained Bolivian troops on 8 October 1967, at the age of 39.
It is pretty astonishing that 16 years prior to his tragic death Ernesto was travelling from Buenos Aires at the south to Caracas at the northern tip of Latin America as a young and free doctor. But the Ernesto that left Argentina was not the same person that arrived in Venezuela more than half a year later.
It is actually a story that inspired me to take on a backpacking journey on a shoestring during my university years (in Europe, for 3 weeks, where I eventually met my future wife), after I first watched The Motorcycle Diaries movie more than 2 decades ago. It was (and still is) one of my top favourite movies of all time.
THE CHAOS THEORY 