Book Review of Che Guevaras The Motorcycle Diaries

Book review of Che Guevaras The motorcycle diaries

Che Guevara is probably the greatest guerrilla of all time, a legendary revolutionary, an icon for The rebels, Fidel Castros right hand, Cuban diplomat, tactician, a physician. Even though this book is about Ernesto Guevara or Che as he is fondly known to the world, its not about the Che we know off. This book is about the road trip that he took with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. This book is about Che a 23 year old medical student going on a road trip and discovering himself, discovering the world outside his protective shell. This book introduces us to a Che who was clumsy kid who is on a road trip to South America with his friend on a 500cc motorcycle or The mighty one. The book is just a compilation of letters and diaries that Che worte during his 9 month long trip to South America. It was later in his life that he acknowledged that this road trip was one of his lifes turning points. So this book is about Ernesto Guevara transitioning to become Che as we know of him today. Beware of the title which says Motorcycle diaries. Its more of symbolic and the bike is shown to be ruined in the first 100 pages of the book. Henceforth they have been shown to have used all sorts of other travelling mediums like rafts, horses, etc thereby covering 8000 miles. The book is about a 23 year old kid who is hell bent on going on this road trip as against his parents will, even though it might have jeopardized his final year in med school. He undergoes several hardships during the course of this trip like accidents, moneyless, asthma, etc but still manages to continue with his journey. Seldom has a book come which strikes the right cords as much as this one does. Being a sort of biography the book still manages to stay away from being redundant and self glorification. Instead what we come to know about Che is quiet surprising. The book has some funny incidents and misadventures that the duo has in due course of the journey. A particularly funny incident is when they just start their journey and fall of at the first turning. Now I dont know how true that was and maybe the writer used his creative liberty to add some believable fiction. But the incident is very symbolic of not just what the treacherous journey holds but also what he does in the future during revolution. Guevara on this road trip travelled with his friend Alberto Granado from Buenos Aires down the Atlantic coast of Argentina, across the Pampa, through the Andes and into Chile, the north to Peru, Columbia to arrive in Caracas. His personal archive in Havana it is described as; 'the extraordinary change which takes place in him as he discovers Latin

America, gets right to its very heart and develops a sense of identity which makes him a precursor of the new history of America.' If reader is well verse with Ches exploits then he would be able to read between the lines to the references for the same. The transition of Che starts when he witnesses a dying woman in Valparaiso who is diseased and hence cant work too. Guevera is shown to have his first brush with the plight of the lower society and the tragedies circumscribing them. Post this comes the copper mine chapters when they arrive at Antofagasta. Here Guevara meets communist workers of the mine. During this period the Communist Party was illegal and repressed. Communists were imprisoned, denied the right to vote and many had just disappeared "and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea." To their plight Che describes, "Its a great pity that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the communist vermin, is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope. To this plight of the Chile, he completely blamed the America and describes his views of overthrowing this control that the US had by flexing its financial muscle. Ches next point is that in Peru where he goes to leper colony where the leprosy patients are quarantined from the society. A particular instance when he celebrates hhis birthday with these people is very moving and stands out as one of the moments where Ches march towards greatness was initiated. His connect with those patients makes for a very moving read. Many believe that this political and social awakening has very much to do with this face-to-face contact with poverty, exploitation, illness, and suffering. The book successfully puts all the pieces together at decent and sometimes slower pace but eventually the bigger picture post these finer points feels satisfying and complete. The book was released on 9/24/2004 by Ocean Press, New York and has been the best seller for seven years. The book indeed is an awe-inspiring one and hence remains highly recommended.

References:
1. The Motorcycle Diaries By Ernesto Guevara New York, Ocean Press, 2004. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara