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.
In these famous first lines, Guevara lays out his contention that he is not a hero and these are not heroic feats. Indeed, the text is filled with pitfalls, problems, tensions, hunger, and fatigue. The travelers are imperfect and do not do anything particularly grand. However, as critic Cintio Vitier writes, merely reading these words and knowing they are Che's "makes us believe he had a presentiment regarding the way they should be read." We know this will be a journey that changes him and we cannot help but think of the revolutionary he will become. There is thus a tension here for the reader in terms of separating the man who wrote the text in the moment, the man who came back to it later, and the man who we know he would become.
The trip was decided just like that, and it never erred from the basic principle laid down in that moment: improvisation.
Guevara and Alberto's journey has achieved near-mythic status, but it is interesting to read here that it was decided upon in a rather spontaneous fashion. Guevara was feeling restless with his studies and had quit his job, and Alberto was also facing having to quit his job and was stressing over low pay. These two men exhibited daring, courage, and a sense of spontaneity when they decided to leave their families, girlfriends, jobs, and studies to travel around the continent on a rickety old motorbike. It is a testament to their youth and vitality as well as their desire to tap into something deeper in life than just money or ease of living.
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 acknowledges that a journey's end may not be as cut-and-dry as one thinks it is. Sometimes lessons may be learned before the end of the road is reached, or there may be multiple ends. For Guevara, an end comes for him when Alberto stays behind and he goes on. Another comes with his arrival in Miami, and yet another comes in the form of an epiphany that he will "be with the people" when "the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves;" he will be "immolated in the genuine revolution, the great equalizer of individual will" (165). This realization, this commitment is more of an "arrival" than entering Venezuela, or Miami, or even coming back home to Argentina.
It’s a pity the photograph wasn’t a good one; it was an acknowledgment of our changed circumstances and of the horizons we were seeking, free at last from “civilization."
Guevara grew up in a comfortable household and did not want for much. He was studying medicine and had a career more or less lined up for himself when he decided to spontaneously embark on this trip. By doing so, he subjected his mind and his body to privations he had never experienced before. Here he mentions a photograph taken after recovering from an illness (he was also often ailing from asthma) and paints a vivid picture of his emaciated form. For him, it is an image of how he has left his old life behind and embarked upon a new one of self-discovery rooted in the abnegation of ease and comfort.
It was our last day as “motorized bums”; the next stage seemed set to be more difficult, as “bums without wheels.”
Though this work is called The Motorcycle Diaries, Guevara and Alberto end up losing La Poderosa about a third of the way through the trip. Now they have to walk across deserts, make slower progress, and seem like lesser men than they are. This is actually good for them, however, because they get a firsthand look at the less privileged after losing one of the aspects of their own privilege. They have to travel in trucks like native peoples, work to pay their way in those trucks, and suffer through desert crossings and squalid boat trips like the poor in the countries they're visiting. Guevara might ruefully call himself a bum, but he is getting a crash course in the poverty of his countrymen and thus strengthening his revolutionary convictions.
...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.
In the early 1950s, the West perceived Communism to be a major threat. And indeed, as exemplified in the totalitarian and aggressive regimes of Stalin and Mao, it did seem to be a danger that must be contained. Amid the histrionic warnings, military strategizing, and posturing, many Western leaders—and citizens—did not bother to consider what was so appealing about Communism to the actual people who embraced it. Here, in this one sentence, Guevara manages to expostulate the reasons why the poor, the benighted, and the desperate might want to turn to the only doctrine/party that offered them any hope. Guevara notes that these sort of people may miss the nuances of Karl Marx or the powerful men who espoused him, but they understand the main message: that they mean something, and that things can be better.
Whatever the outcome of the battle, one would do well not to forget the lesson taught by the graveyards of the mines, containing only a small share of the immense number of people devoured by cave-ins, silica, and the hellish climate of the mountain.
Guevara is struck by the fierce and terrible beauty of the mine of Chuquicamata, but he does not simply marvel at it; instead, he discusses it in the context of global politics. He explains how the mines of Chile "produce 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" (81). Copper is part of the battle between nationalists and leftists, all of whom want the copper for themselves. Unsurprisingly, the people caught in the middle of the political forces are the regular people: the workers, the miners, the impoverished, and the impotent. They are sacrificed to the mountain and sacrificed in the name of power. Guevara feels deeply for them, and the reader can sense how his political ideology is strengthening.
When the Spaniards arrived to conquer the region they immediately tried to destroy such beliefs and abolish such rituals, but without success. So the Spanish monks decided to accept the inevitable, placing a single cross atop each pile of stones.
This quote is similar to the one that follows it, articulating how the Spanish brought their religion to their conquered lands as a way to subjugate the people and more deeply cement their stranglehold. However, though there are more Christian churches and they are more conspicuous and putatively powerful, the vestiges of the Indians' faith remain. The Spanish know they cannot eradicate all traces though they may want to; here, they simply do what they can by placing a cross atop the pile of stones. This does not stop the Indians from carrying out the ritual as they see fit, which is a simple but meaningful act of defiance.
The anguished Indian, waiting for the terrible vengeance of his gods, saw instead a cloud of churches rise, erasing even the possibility of a proud past.
This beautifully written, mournful quote captures the essence of colonialism. Along with military conquest almost always comes religious conquest, as religion is a tool of the powerful. Here in Peru, a wave of Christianity sweeps through the Indians' land, literally and metaphorically toppling their churches and their faith. The Indians pray for redemption but it does not come for them; instead, more and more Christian churches arise. This creates the sad state of affairs for the Indian that Guevara writes of: he is vanquished, poor, and suffocated by modernity. His "proud past" is almost too far gone to be redeemed, and all that anyone can do now is to help ameliorate the situation, not fix it or reverse it.
Rather, it’s the whole of the city together which creates the impression of the peaceful, if sometimes disquieting, center of a civilization that has long since passed.
Throughout his time in Cuzco, Guevara is very reflective, contemplating that city's identity both past and present. Here, he writes movingly of how it seems to be a city that was once the epicenter of civilization but is now quiet and peacefully moving into senescence. There are places and works of art in Cuzco that seem more vibrant and alive, but overall, Guevara notes, it is not a place in the present moment. He doesn't romanticize this, though, suggesting that centuries of conquest have left it slow and stagnant, mired in its memories.
