“Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend” by Patrick Symmes
This is a highly amusing book where the author, journalist Patrick Symmes, traced back the journey that Ernesto Guevara and his buddy Alberto Granado took in 1952. Armed with a little more than Ernesto’s and Alberto’s diaries of the trip, in 1996 Symmes rode his BMW R80 G/S motorcycle and followed the footsteps that both Ernesto and Alberto took nearly 50 years before, searching for the people they met and places that they visited.
And it was pretty impressive, as he met Chichina herself (Ernesto’s girlfriend that they visited in the trip), traced down Oscar Von Puttkamer (whose family hosted Guevara and Granado during their trip), visited the fire station where the 2 boys helped to save a cat in a house fire, got himself written in a small town newspaper in Chile (just like Ernesto and Alberto), visited the lepers hospital that the 2 boys had come to see in Peru, among many others, including drinking himself blind in Cuba at the end of the trip with none other than Alberto Granado himself.
Along the journey, Symmes fill up the political, economic, and social contexts of each country that he visited; describing what’s going on during the 2 boys’ trip in 1952 and what have happened since then. Starting from the background of Ernesto’s family, his upbringing, even giving the context of Germans living in Argentina (which predated the fleeing Nazis). He then provided the explanation of the Chilean economic miracle (where as it turns out the rich got richer and the poor get poorer), the brutality of the Pinochet regime, and later told the stories of everyday struggles of people in Peru and Bolivia.
And as the trip proceeds he also paints a clearer picture on what happened with Ernesto that turned him into the fabled Che Guevara not long after the 1952 trip. To his credit, Symmes isn’t one of those groupie or blind follower of Che, but an objective journalist that can see both the positive and negative parts of things, including on Che’s conducts. Which makes this book objectively pleasing. And perhaps the best part of this book is, you don’t really need to read Ernesto’s diary beforehand (or watch The Motorcycle Diaries movie) as this book also narrates the 2 boys’ journey alongside his.
Moreover, the book is also Symmes’ tale of adventure by his own right, with him being a “gringo”, driving past the steepest mountains and the driest deserts, through wild animals and thieves and guerilla fighters. With crazy stories such as running out of gas in an Argentine desert, falling from the motorcycle and fracturing a rib cage, got bitten by a dog, meeting Douglas Tompkins (the founder of North Face and Esprit) and hanging out with him for a while, eating at a whorehouse, sleeping on top of a mass grave, sleeping at an abandoned gas station, witnessing rain in the Atacama desert (yes, there’s no recorded rain there, but there are short burst of rains every now and then), fell in love with almost every woman he met in Peru, visiting a prison to speak with the Shining Path revolutionaries, interviewing a man who was one of Che’s soldiers in Cuban revolution, speaking with Alberto Diaz Gutierrez (the photographer who took that most-famous picture of Che one overcast day in March 1960 – that became the icon of Che Guevarra), and so much more.
Near the end of the book, when Symmes was in Bolivia (Che’s final resting place long after the 1952 trip), he encountered several more books about Guevara: one written by his father, the other one written by Che’s travel companion in 1954, while Symmes also found Che’s diary in Bolivia. And it provides a much clearer picture over the Ernesto of 1952 that evolved into the Che of 1966, who became world famous for being the number 1 Guerilla, who has amassed a giant ego, and a lust for cold bloodedness.
All in all, the book is so very well written, even poetic at times, with bits of comedy every now and then that makes it thoroughly enjoyable to read. Absolutely superb.
THE CHAOS THEORY 