The Motorcycle Diaries

"The person who wrote these notes passed away the moment his feet touched Argentine soil again. The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I am not the person I once was. All this wandering around 'Our America with a capital A' has changed me more than I thought."

Despite the gaiety of tone and youthful spirit that pervade The Motorcycle Diaries, the book is also an important historical and personal document–the story of Guevara's transformation from the carefree young medical student with a longing for faraway places to whom we are introduced at the beginning of the book to Che Guevara, the revolutionary we know from world history. In this passage, Guevara acknowledges the transformational power of his journey; by the end of the book, he is ready to give his life for the revolution.

"The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is 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."

Guevara's journey is both a physical one, with geographical start and end points, and a spiritual one, defined just as much by his inner progress, from who he was at the start to who he is at the end. Throughout the diaries, he displays an openness to spontaneity and a belief in the value of adapting oneself to unexpected circumstances over achieving a rigidly-defined goal.

"I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel, or perhaps it's better to say that traveling is our destiny, because Alberto feels the same. Still, there are moments when I think with profound longing of those wonderful areas in our south. Perhaps one day, tired of circling the world, I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes, if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another."

This passage displays two of Guevara's tendencies: first, the tension he feels repeatedly throughout The Motorcycle Diaries between the desire to far-off places and the desire to stay in one place; second, his self-awareness about, and openness toward, changes in his own worldview. The Motorcycle Diaries are in fact a record of Guevara's shift from one understanding of the world to another, and Guevara seems to anticipate that he will anticipate other such shifts in the future.

"We had come to a new phase in our adventure. We were used to calling idle attention to ourselves with our strange dress and the prosaic figure of La Poderosa II, whose asthmatic wheezing aroused pity in our hosts. To a certain extent we had been knights of the road; we belonged to that long-standing 'wandering aristocracy' and had calling cards with our impeccable and impressive titles. No longer. Now we were just two hitchhikers with backpacks, and with all the grime of the road stuck to our overalls, shadows of our former aristocratic selves."

Having crossed the border from Chile to Peru without the motorcycle, Guevara feels that he and Granado have lost a good deal of their social capital, and indeed it is in this phase of the journey that the men begin to encounter real hardship, as well as to make contact with poor and exploited workers and to observe their social condition. From this point in the narrative forward, Guevara's observations are more politically charged.

"It is at times like this, when a doctor is conscious of his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a change to prevent the injustice of a system in which only a month ago this poor woman was still earning her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. In circumstances like this, individuals in poor families who can't pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, consequently, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them. It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over. In those dying eyes there is a submissive appeal for forgiveness and also, often, a desperate plea for consolation which is lost to the void, just as their body will soon be lost in the magnitude of the mystery surrounding us. How long this present order, based on an absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it's time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."

In this passage, Guevara reflects on his meeting with an asthma patient who also has a heart condition and lives in dire poverty. It is not until later in the book that Guevara reveals that he, too, is an asthma sufferer. However, while the extremely poor patient's asthma costs her her job, makes her a mere burden to her family, and will eventually lead to her death, Guevara– who, despite being short on cash, can ultimately buy medicine or use his social capital to charm hospital staff into giving it to him for free—manages his own illness with adrenaline shots. His commentary on the cruelty of the woman's fate is one of the first passages in The Motorcycle Diaries that identifies an individual's suffering as emblematic of the suffering of the proletariat.

"At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out 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."

As usual, Guevara writes in the first-person plural, indicating that he views Granado as a true partner in travel and thinks of himself and his friend as sharing a vocation. Additionally, the passage proves prophetic: Guevara did, indeed, "move […] along the roads and seas of the world" throughout his life. After meeting Fidel and Raúl Castro in Mexico, he took part in the Cuban Revolution and served in the new government; in 1965, he left Cuba to foment revolution in the Congo and in Bolivia, and was ultimately executed in the latter.

"The couple, numb with cold, huddling against each other in the desert night, were a living representation of the proletariat in any part of the world. They had not one single miserable blanket to cover themselves with, so we gave them one of ours and Alberto and I wrapped the other one around us as best we could. It was one of the coldest times in my life, but also one which made me feel a little more brotherly toward this strange, for me at least, human species."

This couple, a pair of Chilean communist miners, are among the most memorable representatives of the proletariat Guevara meets. Their utter helplessness and harmlessness in this moment speak to Guevara, who is himself quite intolerant of cold. Throughout the text, Guevara expresses solidarity with those who are suffering–not only with the miners and the asthmatic waitress, but also with the leprosy patients he meets. Curiously, however, he does not seem to view the Indigenous people whose hygiene habits he describes with horror in the same "brotherly" light.

"It's 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 which he understood and, more importantly, filled him with hope."

Here Guevara describes the appeal of Communism to an ordinary worker. At this point in the journey, Guevara himself has not yet experienced the intense hunger and illness that will beset him later in the Diaries. However, he already understands the way bodily experiences can move one to embrace a political ideology.

"Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming that he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile, If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of that invincible Araucanian Caupolicán, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt his death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation."

Here, Guevara takes a respectful tone when discussing the conquistador. Given Guevara's sympathies with the exploited workers of Latin America and his desire for social justice, this might be surprising. However, throughout the Motorcycle Diaries Guevara maintains a robust sense of people not only as members of social and economic classes, but also as individuals with their own motives and desires. He seems even to admire Valdivia's drive to exercise power and his success in achieving it.

"It seemed that we had never been welcomed with such friendliness, that we had never eaten bread and cheese like they sold us, or had such revitalizing mate. We were like demigods to these simple people: Alberto brandished his doctor's certificate for them, and moreover we had come from that wonderful country Argentina, where Perón lived with his wife Evita, where the poor have as much as the rich and the Indian isn't exploited or treated as severely as he is in this country. We answered thousands of questions about our country and its way of life. With the night chill still deeply embedded in our bones, our rose-colored imagery transformed Argentina into an alluring vision of the past."

In this passage, Guevara is well aware that he and Granado are mythologizing their own country. This kind of exaggeration occurs more than once in the text; Guevara and Granado are not above playing to their audience's preconceptions about Argentina and Argentinians, and they even use Argentine turns of phrase as part of the "anniversary routine" in order to sway strangers into buying them food and drink. This is one of the many ways in which the Guevara of The Motorcycle Diaries, for all his nascent revolutionary earnestness, is also simply a playful and mischievous young man.

"As usual [the truck] was transporting a cargo of human livestock, the most profitable business of all in that area."

Here, Guevara displays a disapproving, perhaps even jaded attitude toward those who exploit workers. All the same, he and Granado eagerly climb on board when the Civil Guard offers them a spot in the same truck–after all, they are broke and need a ride. This sentence, and the longer passage that follows, display Guevara's characteristic mixture of idealism and pragmatism. He accepts present-day reality to the extent that he must in order to achieve his objectives but shrewdly notes the injustices he sees.

"We entered the town of Estaque and the view was incredible…[w]e were in a legendary valley, whose evolution had been suspended several hundred years ago, and we happy 20th-century mortals had been given the good fortune to see it. The irrigation channels–built by the Incas for the well-being of their subjects–flowed from the mountain into the valley, forming a thousand little waterfalls and running back and forth across the road as it spiraled down. Ahead of us, low clouds hid the tops of the mountains, but in some of the clear spaces you could just make out snow falling on the highest peaks, gradually turning them white. The different crops cultivated by the Indians, carefully grown in terraced beds, allowed us to penetrate a new realm of botanical science: oca, quinua, canihua, rocoto, maize. We saw people wearing the same dress as the Indians in the truck, in their natural surroundings. They wore short, sadly colored woolen ponchos, tight calf-length pants, and sandals made from rope or old car tires…[t]he colonial church must be an archaeological gem because, even more than its age, it marks the union of imported European art with the spirit of the local Indians."

This passage, which describes one of the most wondrous scenes in all of The Motorcycle Diaries, shows Guevara at his most poetic. For him, seeing Estaque from this height is like traveling back in time to a mythical age, and yet his description of the people with their "sadly-colored" ponchos and sandals made from poor, cast-off materials displays a clear-eyed awareness of the poverty and sadness of the inhabitants and makes the description of the remnants of Estaque's past glory seem tragic.

"In short, in every typical scene, the town's very breath evokes the time before Spanish colonization. But the people before us are not the same proud race that repeatedly rose up against Inca rule, forcing them to maintain a permanent army on their borders; these people who watch us walk through the streets of the town are a defeated race. Their stares are tame, almost fearful, and completely indifferent to the outside world. Some give the impression they go on living only because it's a habit they cannot shake."

Guevara vividly describes the dejected appearance of the Indigenous residents of Estaque in one of many scenes depicting the shame and defeat of colonized peoples. Guevara frequently contrasts scenes like this one with historical anecdotes about the Indigenous peoples who resisted Spanish rule; for Guevara, groups of present-day Indigenous people most often represent a ruined civilization and the dangers of submission, while the proud, resistant "Indians" represent the potential of every people or group to defend themselves and resist injustice.

"The inspired voice of the teacher rose to a resounding pitch whenever he spoke about his Indians, the once rebellious Aymara race who had held the Inca armies in check, and it fell to a vacant depth when he spoke of the Indians' present condition, brutalized by modern civilization and by their compañeros, his bitter enemies the mestizos, who revenge themselves on the Aymaras for their own position halfway between two worlds. He spoke of the need to build schools that would orient individuals within their own world, enabling them to play a useful role within it; of the need to change fundamentally the present system of education, which, on the rare occasion it does offer Indians education (according only to white man's criteria), simply fills them with shame and resentment, rendering them unable to help their fellow Indians and at the severe disadvantage of having to fight within a hostile white society which refuses to accept them. The destiny of those unhappy individuals is to stagnate in some minor bureaucratic position and die hoping that one of their children, thanks to the miraculous powers of a drop of colonizing blood in their veins, might somehow achieve the goal they aspire to until their last days. In the convulsive clenching of his fist one could perceive the confession of a man tormented by his own misfortune, and also the very desire he attributed to his hypothetical example. Wasn't he in fact a typical product of an 'education' which damages the person receiving its favor, a concession to the magic power of that single 'drop,' even if it came from some poor mestizo woman sold to a local cacique or was the result of an Indian maid's rape by her drunken Spanish master?"

In this passage, as in other passages featuring educated Indigenous individuals, Guevara appears quite sympathetic to his partner's plight. Rather than simply pitying the teacher, Guevara appears to view him as simultaneously tragic–he is, after all, one of the very "unhappy individuals" he describes–and inspiring in his passion and his zeal for reform.

"The violent red of the flowers, the intense bronze of the Lord of the Earthquakes and the silver altar they carry him on lend the procession the impression that it's a pagan festival. This feeling is intensified by the many-colored clothes of the Indians, who wear for the occasion their best traditional costumes in expression of a culture or way of life which still holds on to living values. In contrast, a cluster of Indians in European clothes march at the head of the procession, carrying banners. Their tired, affected faces resemble an image of those Quechuas who refused to heed Manco II's call, pledging themselves to Pizarro and in the degradation of their defeat smothering the pride of an independent race."

Here, Guevara identifies the willingness to dress in European clothing and embrace Christianity with submission to conquistadors and colonial rulers. For him, the symbols of the pre-Colombian Americas–traditional clothing and the pagan-like trappings of the procession–seem to stand for self-determination and the spirit of resistance. In this context, the "intense bronze" and silver altar appear in a positive light, while the gold inside the cathedral is later compared with excessive makeup on an old woman. It is interesting that, despite highlighting the defeated spirit of some Indigenous people he meets, Guevara regards the "Indians" in the procession as having a way of life that "holds on to living values." 

"The fact that it was the U.S. archaeologist Bingham who discovered the ruins [of Machu Picchu], and expounded his findings in easily accessible articles for the general public, means that Machu Picchu is by now very famous in that country to the north and the majority of North Americans visiting Peru come here. (In general they fly direct to Lima, tour Cuzco, visit the ruins and return straight home, not believing that anything else is worth seeing.)"

Guevara is continuously skeptical of the U.S., particularly when he is discussing the political situation in Colombia and the mines in Chile, most of which are owned by American corporations. Here, his description of the typical North American tourist's itinerary suggests that this typical tourist is mistaken. There is, of course, far more to see in Peru than just Lima, Cuzco, and the ruins; Guevara's own itinerary includes the mines and the desert as well. The omission of the American-owned mines from the typical U.S. tourist's travel plans suggests that the tourist either feels guilty about the exploitation of the land and workers or is simply ignorant of the situation.

"The mestizo curator was very knowledgeable, with a breathtaking enthusiasm for the race whose blood flowed in his veins. He spoke to us of the splendid past and the present misery, of the urgent need to educate the Indians, as a first step toward total rehabilitation. He insisted that immediately raising the economic level of Indian families was the only way to mitigate the soporific effects of coca and drink. He talked of fostering a fuller and more exact understanding of the Quechua people so that individuals of that race could look at their past and feel pride, rather than, looking at their present, feel only shame at belonging to the Indian or mestizo class. […] The semi-indigenous features of the curator, his eyes shining with enthusiasm and his faith in the future, constituted one more treasure of the museum, but a living museum, proof of a race still fighting for its identity."

Similar to the impassioned Indigenous teacher earlier in the text, the curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is a positive figure for Guevara, who clearly admires the man's erudition and passion; most likely he also finds it easy to sympathize with the curator, since both the curator and he are well-educated and come, in that sense, from the same world. The curator is the first person in the text to say explicitly that raising people's economic level is the necessary first step to raising their cultural level, and Guevara seems to quote his views with approbation. It is in people like the curator that he sees "a race still fighting for its identity" rather than a defeated race.

"At the end of the third day, our fifth in Andahuaylas, we found what we'd been waiting for in the form of a truck heading to Ayacucho. Just in time, it turned out, because Alberto had reacted violently on seeing Civil Guard soldiers insulting an Indian woman who had come to bring food to her imprisoned husband. His reaction must have seemed completely alien to people who considered the Indians were no more than objects, who deserve to live but only just. After that, we fell out of favor."

This is one of the passages that provides a glimpse of Granado's character; though usually friendly and agreeable, he has a short temper when it comes to insults and scenes of injustice. Additionally, even though Guevara's own comments about the Indigenous people–especially their hygiene habits–often sound judgmental, he clearly perceives his own and Granado's attitude toward them as radically different from the attitudes of the Civil Guard soldiers.

"I had no more adrenalin and my asthma was getting worse; I could eat only a handful of rice and drink mate. On the last day, close to arriving, we ran into a severe storm which meant we had to stop the boat. The mosquitoes swarmed around us in clouds, worse than ever, as if taking their revenge on us for the fact we would soon be out of their reach. It felt like a night without end, filled with frantic slaps and edgy yelps, endless card games like narcotics and with random phrases tossed out to maintain any conversation and pass the time more quickly. In the morning, the fever of disembarking leaves one hammock lying empty and I lie down. As if enchanted, I felt as though a coiled spring was unwinding inside me, taking me to new heights, or into an abyss, I don't know which…Alberto woke me with a rough shake. 'Pelao, we've arrived.'"

This is one of the first passages in which we see Guevara having a serious asthma attack. His illness, along with the mosquitoes and sleep deprivation he and Granado experience, produce an almost hallucinatory state which Guevara's language vividly evokes. As in many other passages in the text, Guevara reveals himself as a rather poetic writer with a knack for describing experiences that are simultaneously physical–the feeling of a "coiled spring unwinding" is brought on by his illness–and mental or spiritual.

"The patients in the Lima hospital farewelled us so wonderfully we were encouraged to carry on; they gave us a gas camping stove and managed to collect 100 soles, which for them in their economic situation counts as a fortune. Some of them had tears in their eyes when they said goodbye. Their appreciation sprang from the fact that we never wore overalls or gloves, that we shook their hands as we would shake anybody's, that we sat with them, talking about all sorts of things, that we played football with them. It may all seem like pointless bravado, but the psychological life it gives to these poor people–treating them as normal human beings instead of animals, as they are used to–it is incalculable and the risk to us extremely low."

This passage shows Guevara's solidarity with the ill, and in particular his understanding that people need to be treated as "normal human beings instead of animals." The distinction between humans and animals is one that comes up often in the text, such as when Guevara describes Indigenous people as being crowded into cattle wagons. He frequently expresses disapproval when he sees oppressed people being treated as objects or as animals.

"Although our insignificance means we can't be spokespeople for such a noble cause, we believe, and after this journey more firmly than ever, that the division of [Latin] America into unstable and illusory nations is completely fictional. We constitute a single mestizo race, which from Mexico to the Magellan Straits bears notable ethnographical similarities. And so, in an attempt to rid myself of the weight of small-minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a United Latin America."

This is the first passage in which Guevara himself endorses Pan-Americanism, and he clearly took his own words quite seriously and considered them significant because he repeats these same ideas in his letter to his mother. At this point in the journey, there seems to have been a shift in Guevara's views, or at least a strengthening and ripening of them. The sincerity of the view expressed here is borne out by the subsequent facts of Guevara's biography.

"I feel Alberto's absence so sharply. It seems my flanks are unguarded by some hypothetical attack. At every other moment I'm turning around to share an observation with him only to realize he's not there. […] The idea of splitting up definitely doesn't make me completely happy; the many months we've been side by side, through good and bad, accustomed to dreaming similar dreams in similar situations, have brought us so much closer together."

Throughout the text, Guevara rarely comments on his harmonious relationship with Granado; instead, he seems to take it for granted, matter-of-factly writing in the first-person plural statements such as "we realized" or "we thought." This is the first passage in which he acknowledges how crucial Granado's companionship was to him. It is interesting that he feels Granado's absence as leaving him vulnerable to some sort of attack, since there are very few episodes of violence in the book (and a fair number of them are actually instigated by Granado's sense of pride and justice). One might speculate that this feeling of vulnerability is due, in part, to the recent and severe asthma attacks that Guevara has suffered; on one occasion, it is Granado who gives him an adrenaline shot, and Guevara must have relied a great deal on Granado while navigating unfamiliar cities and roads in the midst of an asthma attack.

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: the black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

Here, Guevara is able to see two quite different groups of people in Caracas as united by their status as poor, exploited workers. However, he is not immune to racial stereotyping, as his characterization of the “lazy” Black man and the industrious Portuguese reveals. In this passage, too, one of Guevara's favorite tropes appears: that of bathing, hygiene, and cleanliness. Just as in his discussion of the Indigenous people who clean themselves with their own clothing after a bowel movement, he seems particularly attuned to the idea that this or that group of people is clean or unclean, and he seems to consistently identify more easily with those he perceives as clean. This is ironic, since Guevara himself is said to have bathed infrequently.