The first half of this was pretty engaging, but I think if Che were not an iconic revolutionary probably this book would not still be so widely available. It goes a bit long on history for a while after midway, and then becomes more list-like. (This and this and this happened.) Without the included letters home it would have lost most of its flavor. I don’t know about Guevara’s life history, but in this story he is young and doesn’t seem to have yet committed to The Cause. However, you can see in these pages his bent of mind and what motivated him to go Left and to turn militant. If for only that, this makes the book an interesting read, and gives it an historical significance. Now that the Cold War is over and all the propaganda that warped our worldviews has been transformed into something else absurd, it feels more mainstream and less counter cultural to sympathize with Che’s later revolutionary efforts. It’s difficult to see the quotidian suffering and the class and racial injustice he witnessed in this trip and not expect an intelligent person to try to remedy them if given a chance. But ultimately that’s not what the book is about. He’s not making some kind of case. It’s just a road book. Two hobo youths out seeing the world, and visiting leper colonies along the way.

The last two pages do not fit the rest of the book. They feel like an addenda to me, even hagiographic

Wow I had no idea about Che Guevara's early life. the tale of running arount South Merica and ending up in Cuba is truly amazing, if not heroic stuff, even though he doesn't come across that way to himself.

Alberto Korda’s iconic photo of Che Guevara, moustached and capped, staring away into the distance, is arguably the most easily recognizable symbol of revolution around the world. I've seen that hundreds of times, on everything from T-shirts to coasters, satchels to posters to other stuff that has nothing even remotely to do with Che, Latin America, or revolution. That photo, incidentally, was also what prompted me to read Che’s The Motorcycle Diaries in the first place (no, I haven't seen the movie, but probably will now).

And what a throughly engrossing little book this is. In 1952, just about to complete his medical degree and become a doctor, the then-24 year old Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his friend, the leprologist Alberto Granado, set off on a motorcycle named La Poderosa (‘The Mighty One’, a hilariously inappropriate name, as it turned out) across South America. This diary, its entries interspersed with the occasional letter from Che to his mother back home, recounts the duo’s travels, across Argentina, into the Andes to Chile, through Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, finally ending in Caracas.

Occasionally, we see a glimpse of the revolutionary this footloose and fancy free young man was to become. When he writes about the plight of the native South Americans, the exploitation of the land by European and North American corporates and governments. When he describes the havoc wreaked on the land and its indigenous people by the conquistadors, or the wide gap between the wealthy and the poor. When he talks about the horrific copper mines of Chuquicamata..

But, in its main, this is a travelogue that combines free-spirited backpacking (with our two heroes begging their way, for everything from food to lodging to transport, across the continent) with hair-raising adventure (sharing a truck with a herd of cattle, through the highest roads in the Andes? Check. Going down the Amazon on a raft? Check. Trekking across the desert? Check—even if that last one was an effort that petered out swiftly). There is humour here, fun, and some interesting insights into the times, the continent, and the man himself.

My only grouse with The Motorcycle Diaries was that Guevara tends to be too brief at times. For instance, we do not get to know how and exactly where he and Granado parted ways; he is similarly laconic about the planning of the trip, and of his own condition (we do know, through occasional mentions of it, that Guevara suffered almost continuously from asthma all through the trip, but why he undertook it despite that condition, remains unanswered). A little more fleshing out, and this could've been an even better book. Still, one of the more enthralling memoirs I've read.

n  “The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If you intend to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.”n

This is my third time reading it, and I still can’t come up with a decent review. Well, so be it.

The premise of this memoir is too simple to demand any synopsis at all. But for those who don’t know, it’s about THE legendary motorcycle journey and how that evolved Ernesto as a person, changing his perspective towards life as a whole. Of course, this alone will be sufficiently intriguing for anyone who has even heard the name of Che Guevara.

n  “I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel...”n

I remember when I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the first time, I thought of comparing these two. But while that one was about self-discovery combined with philosophy, this one has a coming-of-age element in it that works wonders. For Ernesto was already becoming a doctor, and not for the cliché selfish reasons, but this journey changed him in the way that no institution could’ve with all the ideologies dating back from Hippocrates.

The whole point of this memoir is, however, to break the myth. Ernesto Che Guevara has become such a legend that nowadays kids wear his face on shirts because they’re ‘cool’… irrelevant of whether they have ever heard his name before or not. But his words somehow showcase him as a next-door neighbour all the time, though.

n  “This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”n

What I wasn’t expecting the first time I read it, I still clearly remember, was any sort of descriptive prowess. But that is done throughout the entire couple hundred pages rather smoothly: there’s an almost perfect balance of all the elements you can ask for in a book like this: adventure, humour, philosophical outlook and at some point, what will feel like random scribblings. It is hilarious in some parts while in other parts it gets deadly serious, but the whole time extremely energetic, almost to the part where it gets hyper-realistic.

n  “I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.”n


Of course, people with polarizing political ideologies also tend to dehumanize the acts of Che Guevara, as they also do with any notable political personalities. From a personal pov, I don’t see the point. The first book on politics I ever read was the Communist Manifesto, and that was followed by loads of other books by Marx and Engels. Now if I’m being entirely honest, the reason I read those, one after another wasn’t that I had adapted that particular ideology, but because I loved those people as authors (and also because the local library was strictly communist with even the CPIM flag on the door).

As I grew up and read books from different political pov, all that I have come to conclude is that none of them is without their flaws. And it’s kind of pointless to bash any particular ideology without having a specific amount of knowledge about it, and most people tend to do only that. And that’s not about to change anytime soon, as well.. definitely not as long as people aren’t forced to believe that democracy is a tool to come closer, not to fight against one another.

Either way, truth be told, art & human emotions all rank much, much higher than politics or religion. Of course, art and culture are hugely modified by both of these, but the majority of the time (the majority being 99.99%) it ends up becoming a barrier. And Ernesto Che Guevara’s works are not mere reflections of his ideologies. If it had been a mere chronology of events without any literary merits, it would never have become one of my favourite autobiographical works.

n  “All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly--not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice.”n

I’m not telling you to read this book, though. But, in general, it’s depressing to see people not reading books because they hate the author. I mean, I know J.K. Rowling is transphobic. But if you don’t read Harry Potter for that reason, you’re a goddamn fool.

très heureuse de connaître le récit de l’intérieur. je croyais cependant que 100% était tiré du journal du che, or il y a des parties qui ont été écrites a posteriori. On voit quand même l’évolution de la pensée de guevara mais moins que je ne m’y attendais!

The Motorcycle Diaries is a memoir of the revolutionary Marxist Ernesto Che Guevara, before his days of revolution and violence, as he travels across Latin America in his motorbike with his friend, Alberto Granado.

The book is like a coming-of-age story, a story of self-realisation as well as political realisation. It didn't really move me to my core, but it was still interesting to see the world through his eyes; the poverty, the injustice, the discrimination that people suffered from.

قبل از اینکه چگوارا به رهبر انقلاب کوبا بدل شود، یک دانشجوی پزشکی درونگرا بود که در بوینس آیرس زندگی ساده ای داشت.زندگی او در سال 1952 دچار تحول شد، علی رغم اینکه تا فارغ التحصیلی اش چیزی نمانده بود، تصمیم گرفت تا از درس خواندن دست بکشد و به دوستاش آلبرتو گرانادو، برای سفری در دل قاره ی آمریکا ملحق شود.سفر آن ها که با یک موتورسیکلت قدیمی آغاز شد و با ماشین و قایق سواری ادامه یافت، حدود 7 ماه طول کشید و آن ها توانستند سفری 7500 مایلی داشته باشند.وقتی سفر آن ها با رسیدن به کاراکاس به پایان رسید، چه گوارا دیگر آن چه گوارا در ابتدای سفر نبود.«خاطرات موتورسیکلت»، مقتبس از سفرنامه ی چه گوارا و کتاب گرانادو است و داستان همان سفر را شرح مى دهد

23-year-old dude takes a break from his medical studies to explore Latin America while on his way to volunteer at a leper colony, showing glimmers of the revolutionary perspective eloquently spelled out by Hélder Câmara:

n  "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”n

“A journey, a number of journeys. Ernesto Guevara in search of adventure, Ernesto Guevara in search of America, Ernesto Guevara in search of Che. On this journey of journeys, solitude found solidarity, ‘I’ turned into ‘we’.” —Eduardo Galeano

”His awareness grows that what poor people need is not so much his scientific knowledge as a physician, but rather his strength and persistence in trying to bring about the social change that would enable them to live with the dignity that had been taken from them and trampled on for centuries.” --Aleida Guevara March, preface.

Reflections:
--The content itself is raw and episodic, as you would expect from a travel diary by a 23-year-old seeking adventure. The sociopolitical musings are brief.
--As the inspiring Vijay Prashad notes in this illustrative lecture on writing about communism (https://youtu.be/AVoFFnyEY_w), no one is born a radical, let alone a revolutionary. As Galeano repeats, this is a journey... We are all born into the status quo world and adopt (in varying degrees) many of its contradictions. We ceaselessly struggle with this with a combination of individualist escape plans, subservience, and if we are lucky and put in the effort, imagination for alternatives that dig into the root contradictions (i.e. radical).
--Thus, it is curious how people make or fail to make this transition. How do we each rearrange our privileges on the occasions of mounting contradiction? Apart from the middle-class perspective, I found my mind wandering to contemplating Guevara’s liberal scientist education.

…Working partially in public health, I always find it curious how “educated” healthcare professionals often compartmentalize their expertise, resulting in narrow social imagination (this is particularly egregious in global health). What are the most visceral ways to expose the contradictions of public health in the context of profit over people, and how do we then present a re-imagined context?
...COVID and the Anthropocene are providing further emphases, but without persuasive alternatives we can expect cynicism and thus subservience. To paraphrase Julian Assange, human’s ability to adapt is our greatest strength and weakness; strength when overcoming obstacles, and weakness when tolerating abuses.
…Working partially in Information Technology, I also think of the glaring contradictions here (i.e. automation and rapid changes creating structural unemployment and unimaginable new power structures).

...And how can I not slip in a hurrah for revolution, by Michael Parenti? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npkee...

--The entries end with quite a flurry as Guevara quotes a well-travelled adventurer:

The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country.

The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives. Or perhaps not, maybe those lives will not have been innocent because they will have committed the huge sin against nature; meaning, a lack of ability to adapt. All of them, those unable to adapt — you and I, for example — will die cursing the power they helped, through great sacrifice, to create. Revolution is impersonal; it will take their lives, even utilizing their memory as an example or as an instrument for domesticating the youth who follow them. My sin is greater because I, more astute and with greater experience, call it what you like, will die knowing that my sacrifice stems only from an inflexibility symbolizing our rotten civilization, which is crumbling. I also know — and this won’t alter the course of history or your personal view of me — that you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol (some inanimate example) but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and motivates your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you are not aware of how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.

...For a much-wider portrayal of Che, see: I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967.

beautiful feeling knowing Che through psychogeographical turmoils of self driven wonder: absolutely beautiful.

There's a saying about Communism: If you don't believe in it until you are 30 you have no heart, if you believe in it after you are 30 you have no brain. Che Guevara's life heartily destroys that misconception.

Brought up in intellectualism and inspired by the ideals of Communism, Che Guevara's account of his Pan-American road trip is a lesson in humanity. Che's voice, wandering and carefree at the start of the journey, notably becomes grayer and heavier as the account progresses. As his life of relative comfort falls away, his thoughts reflect an almost Gandhi-esque struggle and eventual embracing of the realities of whom he considers his true compatriots.

Apart from the human connection, it is almost a lesson on how not to carry out a cross-continent road trip. It is an adventure almost unheard of, and an inspiration for the traveler as well as the humanist in me.

After reading The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition it was interesting to go back and reread this earlier more well-known work. In this one he is a much happier person soaking in the beauty of nature and the friendliness of the people. He dreams of returning after his road trip to work maybe in a leper hospital.
There's a lot about being hungry and who fed him what. In between eating, fixing the motorcycle and then hitching rides, there are glimpses of his social conscious, his hatred of American Imperialism and the poverty of the suppressed.

I have a very distant memory of reading this in college, though picking it up now, I confess I couldn’t remember a thing from that first read. Like most tiny wannabe revolutionary students, I had an ardent love for what Che Guevara represented, though I was pitifully ignorant of the details of his life. I’ve been dusting off some old college-era books lately, and I thought that this one deserved a more serious study.

What one gets from reading this little travelogue is a taste of Guevera’s natural talent for beautiful writing, and an incredible insight into the profoundly transformative power of traveling. The young man who first plans this motorcycle trip across South America with his friend Alberto Granado is a restless medical student who will suddenly be exposed to things his comfortable upbringing had shielded him from: poverty, exploitation, discrimination and human suffering on a scale he had never imagined before. This trip will plant the seed of revolution in his heart, and years later, when Guevara prepared this collection for publication, he felt the need to remind readers that his story was no one of heroism but a simple honest account of what he saw and his reactions to it. This makes it a very personal account of how one’s social consciousness develops, and where the will to change the world comes from.

I imagine people who read this now are already pre-disposed to agree with the young Che, but there is something nevertheless beautiful and moving in these pages, in following the footsteps (and numerous bike breakdowns) of this young man who would be transformed by this trip. He describes the continent he is exploring in such vivid details, and with such love. While I wish it was longer, the final few pages are so powerful that I did not close the book disapointed.

A wonderful glimpse into the mind of a man who would leave a mark of great significance on history and culture.