Throughout his life he suffered from asthma and as a small boy was taught at home by a mother he clearly adored.
Though he doesn’t seem to have been rebellious, the ruthless determination that characterised his later years may have developed during his struggle to combat an ailment that often threatened his life.
In December 1951 Guevara deferred his final year as a medical student and set off from Buenos Aires with his friend Alberto Granado on a journey of discovery which was to transform him into the revolutionary hero, who would attain mythic status after his assassination in Bolivia 16 years later.
Guevara later expanded notes he had taken on the journey, which, with the letters he wrote to his mother are published as The Motorcycle Diaries and form the basis of the film made by Brazilian director Walter Salles. What began as a light-hearted exploit undertaken by two young men on the brink of entering the medical profession became for Ernesto a rite of passage that profoundly influenced his life and way of thinking.
Riding an old 500c motorcycle La Ponderosa (the Mighty One) the friends took eight months to cover thousands of miles through Argentina to Chile, Peru, Colombia and finally to Caracas in Venezuela where they parted. In Chile they stopped for a few days to visit a girlfriend of Che’s, the comforts of her wealthy background a striking contrast to the poverty they were to encounter later. At some stage during the ensuing entertaining adventures La Ponderosa gave up the ghost and the pair had to continue the journey by foot. It is at this point, when they were forced to walk or hitch lifts, that they began to witness the hardships endured by many of the people they met. Ernesto wrote, ‘We had come to a new phase in our adventure ... now we were just two hitchhikers with backpacks...shadows of our former aristocratic selves.’ In Valparaiso Ernesto visited a dying woman: ‘It is at times like this, when a doctor realises his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a chance to prevent the injustice of a system in which individuals in poor families who can’t pay their way become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community.’ Later the pair met a communist couple who had been dispossessed under the Chilean ‘Law for the Defence of Democracy’ and were living without shelter. The young men gave the couple one of their blankets and they spent a bitterly cold night together. The next day the communists set off in search of work in the mines where conditions were so bad that no questions would be asked. Of the copper mine in Chuquicamata Guevara wrote, ‘Chile produces 20 percent of the world’s copper, and in these uncertain times of potential conflict copper has become vitally important because it is an essential component of various types of weapons of destruction.’ And later: ‘The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back.’ A key section of the film shows the time the two men spent working in a leper colony in the Amazon rainforest.
Playing football with the patients, refusing to wear the unnecessary protective gloves issued to them or to attend the obligatory celebration of Mass, Ernesto and Alberto endeared themselves to those whose living quarters were separated from the healthy workers’ by the great river. At a party to celebrate his 24th birthday Che made a speech in which he looked forward to a time when all America should be united. In the film he then plunges into the dangerous night waters of the Amazon in a symbolic gesture to join the people of the leper colony.
On the whole the film has stayed faithful to Che’s diaries. It is epic in scale, the performances are excellent and the landscape stunning. At certain key moments the director uses sepia shots of people posed as if in still photographs, to underline the poverty and hopelessness of living conditions of the exploited indigenous people.
At a special showing of The Motorcycle Diaries given during the week of the European Social Forum 2004, Che’s daughter Dr Aleida Guevara March – a paediatrician in Cuba – told the audience that her father did indeed make the heroic two hour swim across the Amazon, but that he did it during the afternoon! (Che had written to his mother that he never quite overcame his fear of water at night.) Dr Guevara March also said she regarded the film as a song of love for her beautiful country, a view I fully endorse.
The Motorcycle Diaries starring Gael García Bernal as Che Guevara and Rodrigo de la Sema as Alberto Granado.
DirectorWalter Salles.On general release 2004.