Summary
“the city of the viceroys”
Lima is pretty and seems to have suppressed its colonial past much more than Cuzco. The streets are wide and easy to traverse. The best part is the lovely cathedral, especially as compared to the solid and monolithic one in Cuzco where conquistadors glorified themselves. The art in Lima is more stylized, the paintings are bright, the woodwork is expertly done; all of this shows how Lima’s wealth helped resist the armies of foreigners until the last moment, and it still seems a feudal colony waiting for the “blood of a truly emancipating revolution” (134).
Guevara and Alberto visit Dr. Hugo Pesce, an expert leprologist, and the man secures them lodging and food. He is also wonderful to talk to.
They visit the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology but there is not enough time to see everything. In the afternoon they visit the laboratory; it has a lot to be desired. The best thing, though, is the bibliographic records.
On Sunday, they see a few bullfights, but Guevara is not impressed.
On Monday, they return to the museum and then have dinner with Dr. Pesce and other doctors. An awkward joke reminds Guevara how the Americas are still relatively young and have little tradition or culture; they must laugh at themselves. This is the same both for North and South America, though the former pretends it is ahead with its wealth, cars, and luck.
Several days pass before it is time to go. Alberto is annoyed when someone, not knowing his profession, criticizes biochemists and pharmacists.
Overall, what strikes the two men most is how kind and generous the leper patients are.
Guevara also writes of Lima’s large number of police officers who are everywhere.
Guevara and Alberto leave with the Becerra brothers. Guevara suffers a bit from asthma, but he and Alberto celebrate the six-month anniversary of their departure.
The goal is to get to Iquitos, and a boat will be the best way. They are not pleased that they will have to mingle amongst the first-class passengers, but that is all that can be done.
“down the ucayali”
Guevara and Alberto board La Cenepa and mingle with the first-class passengers. Many gather around the gambling tables and Alberto wins some money.
On the first day, they keep to themselves. The food is not great and the boat cannot sail at night because the river is low. They befriend a prostitute and try to avoid the monstrous mosquitos on the river.
The days are monotonous. The only entertaining thing is gambling, but they have no money. Guevara writes of how they are more interested in the simple sailors than the middle class. He engages with the girl but cannot help but think of Chichina. He feels bereft and wonders if this is all worth it.
Two more days pass and the Ucayali River and Maranon come together, but Guevara is too ill to be impressed. A severe storm brings about even more mosquitos.
Finally, it is Sunday and they arrive in Iquitos. Guevara and Alberto are put up in a ward for yellow fever, and Guevara tries to recuperate from his asthma.
There are several false alarms for the boat actually heading to their destination of the leper colony in San Pablo, but they eventually get onboard. They arrive in the middle of the night and learn Dr. Bresciani, the medical director of the colony, has lodging for them.
“dear papi”
Guevara writes of how their journey is received as an event by the leper colony hospital staffs in the various places they visit: they are showered with respect. The patients are also very happy to have them in all of these places because they appreciate being made to actually feel human instead of like animals.
“the san pablo leper colony”
Guevara and Alberto meet the colony administrator, Sister Alberto, and visit the patients’ compound. There are about 600 of them and they live independently. Dr. Bresciani is highly respected among them, and Guevara and Alberto trail him as he does his rounds.
They also visit the area for the healthy, but it lacks basic necessities. In free time, they play chess or chat with the doctors or fish.
“saint guevara’s day”
Guevara turns 24 years old on June 24th, 1952. Dr. Bresciani throws a party for him and Alberto, and they drink pisco in high spirits. Guevara gives a drunken speech that is well received; he speaks of his gratitude and how the division of Latin American countries is entirely arbitrary—in his view, they are a single mestizo race.
On Sunday, the travelers visit a tribe of Yaguas, Indians “of the red straw” (149) who barely speak Spanish and live a “fascinating” life.
As the days pass, they continue to accompany the doctors on rounds, fish, swim, have small parties, and read. One day, they travel down the Amazon to buy food and supplies, and a strong wind stirs up the water into dramatic waves. That evening, a blind man sings local songs while an orchestra of people with various afflictions or deformities plays music for them.
It is time to depart, and the men say their farewells to the patients and doctors. They are given a raft, christened the Mambo-Tango, and set off down the river.
“debut for the little kontiki”
It is difficult to direct the raft; eventually, sleep wins out over trying to get the raft to comply with their wishes. Accidents lose them fishing hooks and other provisions. They have also entered into Brazil without any papers and cannot speak the language, so they are somewhat worried. Fatigue overwhelms them.
“dear mama”
Guevara writes to his mother about the San Pablo colony, including how pleasant life was, his rousing speech, Alberto’s amusing speech deriving from the fact that he apparently believes himself to be Peron’s natural heir, the strange orchestra and their songs, and the lovely, dreamlike atmosphere. He waxes poetic about the river, but not about the difficulties of their travel. He admits that he has always been afraid of water at night.
One of the problems is that the two find themselves in Brazil and their destination of Leticia is seven hours upstream; they blame each other for falling asleep. They have to row for seven hours upstream but, finally, exhausted, they make it.
In Leticia, they find lodging and food at the police station but have difficulty with the fees for the plane tickets they plan to buy. They amuse themselves by playing soccer.
They take a small, shaky plane to Bogota. Guevara tells his mother that he feels like he’s been around the world twice. In Bogotá, they find space to stay at the hospital because they would not ever want to pay for bourgeois lodging at a hostel.
Both are offered jobs in leprology work; Alberto considers it, whereas Guevara does not. They leave, though, after some police harassment. Guevara notes that there is a great deal of political repression here and that the atmosphere is tense. It feels like there is a revolution brewing, and the countryside is in open revolt and the army is powerless.
“on the road to caracas”
With their passports stamped, Guevara and Alberto head across the bridge connecting the two countries. Authorities, desperate to display their authority, check their baggage arbitrarily. A van takes them to San Cristobal. More searches take a knife from them (which they later get back), though Guevara holds onto a well-hidden revolver.
They secure passage in a vehicle, which is packed with people and luggage. The police check the vehicles frequently, and travel is tough due to flat tires.
Finally, the vehicle arrives, but Guevara feels exhausted and wrecked. They rent beds and fall fast asleep.
“this strange twentieth century”
Guevara writes that he feels Alberto’s absence acutely; it seems like “my flanks are unguarded from some hypothetical attack” (160). They’ve been through so much together, and splitting up indefinitely in Venezuela is not palatable to him.
His mind turns to Caracas. Here there are numerous Africans and Portuguese. In Guevara's view, the Africans are indolent dreamers, whereas the Europeans have a tradition of hard work and saving.
He explores the African area and peers into some of the huts he encounters. Some people don’t understand his camera and others insult him as “Portuguese.”
Along the road are large shipping containers that act as homes for the Africans. People blare music loudly, new cars are parked outside, and aircraft pass overhead. Despite the changes, Guevara notes, “the spirit of Caracas, impervious to the lifestyle of the North and stubbornly rooted in the retrograde semi-pastoral conditions of its colonial past” (162).
“a note in the margin”
The man’s face is indistinct in the shadows. Guevara isn’t sure if it is the man’s personality that prepared him for the revelation, but he’d heard the same words from others and they’d never made the same impact.
This man is interesting. He was from Europe, escaped dogmatism, knew fear, wandered from country to country, had many adventures, and now waits here for the reckoning to come.
The two meet and exchange pleasantries, but before they part, the man laughs and begins to speak. He says many things: the future belongs to the people; they must be educated after the revolution; they must learn from their mistakes and lives will be lost; those unable to adapt will die cursing what they helped bring about; he will die knowing his sacrifice comes from “an inflexibility symbolizing our rotten civilization, which is crumbling” (164); Guevara will also die as the epitome of hatred and struggle because he is not a symbol but rather a genuine member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through Guevara and motivates his actions; Guevara is not as aware of how useful he is to the society that will sacrifice him.
Guevara reflects on the words and knows that when humanity is split into two, he will be with the people. He will slaughter the enemy. He will be immolated in the revolution, that great equalizer of individual will. He will battle. He will prepare himself to be “a sacred space which the bestial howl of the triumphant proletariat can resound with new energy and new hope” (165).
Analysis
Guevara and Alberto’s journey comes to an end, but it is a rather abrupt one. This is real life, not a novel, and Guevara’s diaries jump from their time together to when Alberto is no longer there. Alberto ended up staying in Caracas, Venezuela to work at a leprosarium. He and Guevara did not meet again for eight years, until Guevara invited Alberto to visit Cuba. A year later, Alberto and his family moved there after he accepted a professorship in the School of Medicine and the University of Havana. As for Guevara, he traveled onward to Miami and eventually returned home to Argentina before going on to his better-known revolutionary activities.
The remaining collection of chapters finds the travelers in Lima and Colombia. A stay at the leper colony in San Pablo yields numerous charming and warm moments of Guevara and Alberto working with the lepers and helping them to feel like human beings, as well as another significant moment regarding Guevara’s burgeoning revolutionary ethos when he gives an inebriated but powerful speech, saying, “we believe, and after the 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” (149).
With regard to Colombia, Guevara writes tellingly of its unrest. The police harassment is intense, “there is more repression of individual freedom here than any country we’ve been to…the atmosphere is tense and it seems a revolution may be brewing,” (157), the countryside is openly revolting, and the army can do nothing” (157). Indeed, there was a military coup in 1953 that toppled the right-wing government of Laureano Gomez and brought General Gustavo Rojas to power.
All of Guevara’s ruminations on class, colonialism, imperialism, and the sufferings of the proletariat all prepare the reader for the final chapter: “a note in the margin,” in which he powerfully sets forth his commitment to resisting American hegemonic power and the revolution of the people. In the preface to the 2003 edition, Cintio Vitier calls the chapter “exceptional” and full of “terrible, unadorned majesty.” He writes, “it is an inexorable chapter that, like a tragic flash of lightning, illuminates for us the ‘sacred space’ in the depths of the soul of one who called himself ‘this small soldier of the 20th century.’” It’s almost impossible for the modern reader to not feel the power and tragedy in the final chapter, since Guevara’s fate is well known.
Overall, Guevara’s diaries are youthful, charming, and insightful. They may be uneven in places and they do not cover the years most Che fans are familiar with, but they show the development of the revolutionary’s thought, provide compelling and compassionate insights into the history of South America in terms of the impact of colonialism and its aftermath on the people. As Kenneth Maxwell writes, it is “[a] marvelously evocative, at times picaresque, and always fresh account of his journey through South America as he turned 24 years of age, a young man like many of his epoch moved by a grandly romanticized and burning desire to change the world, but unlike many others one who actually did something about it.”
