Che Guevara

Che Guevara at the La Coubre memorial service. Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960

I had not heard about Che Guevara until I saw the movie 'The Motorcycle Dairies'. I had heard about the book and the movie 'The Motorcycle Dairies' though. So last year, when we had spotted the DVD in the landmark book store, we bought it instantly.

The movie starts with a 23 year old Ernesto Guevara (as he was called then), taking a year off from his medical studies to take a tour across South America with his 29 year old friend, Alberto Granado in the year 1952. Guevara along with Granado undertook this journey on an old motorcycle and went across Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and to Miami, before returning home to Buenos Aires.

As he travelled through the various countries, he moved by the conditions of the people he met. He was greatly enraged by the poor conditions of the people working in the copper mines in Chile. The persecuted communist couple (who did not even own a blanket,) with whom he needed to spend a night in the Atacama Desert moved him to no ends. He saw capitalism and Imperialism as the cause for all oppression in South America. By the end of his travel, he saw Latin America not as a collection of nations but as a single entity having a ‘Latino’ heritage and having similar issues to handle.

As a last part of their journey, Guevara and Granado spent a few weeks working at the leprosium in the Amazon Rain Forest. (Those days leprosy was considered as incurable and contagious. Hence people who had leprosy (called lepers) were kept in a separate place called the leprosium, which would typically be located at a place cut off from the general civilization or on a highway, where it would be easy to collect funds for the running of the leprosium.) The poor conditions of the lepers and the camaraderie shown between the ostracized lepers deeply affected them both. The movie ends with both of them returning back from the leprosium and Guevara getting back to his studies and Granado joining a leprosium in Venezuela. Guevara went on to complete his medical studies and become a doctor in 1953. The complete journey took them 9 months and and a travel of 8000 miles.

Guevara’s experiences on his motorcycle journey impacted him enough to want to do something about it. He got involved in Marxist activities to abolish capitalism and imperialism. He joined hands with Fidel Castro and was one of the key members who led the Cuban revolution that revolted against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. As a result of the revolution, Batista was ousted and Fidel Castro went on to form a government on the Communist lines. Che Guevara became the second in line to him.

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the “Bay of Pigs Invasion” and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 “Cuban Missile Crisis”.

Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed on October 9, 1967.

His execution was perceived as martyrdom by many and he became an inspiration for many leftist movements across the globe. Times magazine named him as one of the 100 most influencial people of the 20th century in 1999.

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Source : Wikipedia, The Motorcycle Dairies( movie ).