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Ernesto Guevara
- The Motorcycle Diaries is based on the true story of Ernesto Guevara, who later became famous as Marxist guerrilla and revolutionary leader Che Guevara, and his friend’s epic road trip across South America.
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The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a 2004 biographical film about the journey and written memoir of 23-year-old Che Guevara, who would some years later become internationally known as a Marxist guerrilla leader and revolutionary.
The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a posthumously published memoir of the Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. It traces his early travels, as a 23-year-old medical student, with his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist.
- Che Guevara
- 1995
- Overview
- The Making of a Revolutionary
- HISTORY Vault
- Guevara Joins Fidel Castro in Cuban Revolution
A coming-of-age adventure through five South American countries set Che Guevara on the path to becoming a Marxist revolutionary.
Before Che Guevara became a Marxist guerilla commander, before he became a revolutionary icon emblazoned on T-shirts, before he was even known as “Che,” there was a buddy, a bike and an epic road trip that would change the course of his life and world history.
In December 1951, 23-year-old Argentine medical student Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna hopped on the back of his friend Alberto Granado’s antiquated Norton 500cc motorcycle and sped out of Cordoba, Argentina. “All we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers in our flight northward,” Guevara wrote.
In spite of a six-year age difference, Guevara and Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist, had been friends for nearly a decade. The duo shared an intellectual curiosity and a hunger for adventure as they embarked on an odyssey up the spine of South America.
Guevara’s social awareness had already begun to emerge during his prior travels in Argentina and abroad, says Paulo Drinot, a professor of Latin American history at University College London and editor of Che’s Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America. “Che grew up in an upper middle-class family that had hit on hard times, but it was an intellectual environment that was clearly attentive to political processes,” he says. “His interest in medicine as a career and profession was in part an expression of his social consciousness, which developed at an early age.”
After leaving Cordoba, the two friends visited the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires and the seaside city of Miramar before crossing the barren pampas and ascending into the Andes. Plagued by his chronic asthma, Guevara had a rough start to the trip as he contracted the flu and nursed a broken heart after receiving a break-up letter from his girlfriend.
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Granado’s motorcycle, nicknamed La Poderosa II (“the mighty one”), suffered from its own ailments and failed to live up to its moniker before finally breaking down for good in Chile. The road trippers were now “bums without wheels,” as Guevara wrote. They forged northward, however, through deserts and rainforests by hitching rides, walking, riding horses and even stowing away on a ship. The pair slept in garages, barns and police stations as well as under the stars.
Alberto Granado on the set of "The Motorcycle Diaries," a 2004 film based on his ride with friend, Che Guevara.
The friends visited iconic locations such as Lake Titicaca and the ruins of Machu Picchu, which Guevara called “the pure expression of the most powerful indigenous race in the Americas.” They also visited decidedly less touristy locations like the great copper mine in the Chilean town of Chuquicamata that was operated by an American multinational company. There, Guevara witnessed the exploitation of the mine workers.
“The only thing that matters is the enthusiasm with which the workers set to ruining their health in search of a few meager crumbs that barely provide their subsistence,” he wrote. “The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean.”
The 8,000-mile trip from the Andes to the Amazon made an impact on the young medical student by exposing him to social injustice, economic inequality, capitalist exploitation and political repression. “I am not the person I once was,” he wrote upon his return. “All this wandering around ‘Our America with a Capital A’ has changed me more than I thought.”
“Che’s politicization was in large part a product of his travels, first in 1951-52 and then, more so, a second trip that took him to Guatemala and later Mexico,” Drinot says. “In part, this owed to his experience of poverty and inequality in Latin America, and the ways he understood the causes of both poverty and inequality.
At the same time, he met a number of left-wing political figures and also non-left-wing political figures, and he generally was more impressed by the former than the latter. Finally, he came to view the United States as major factor in the problems that Latin America faced, and this led him to align with left-wing Marxist views.”
After graduating from medical school, Guevara met Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1954 and joined the Cuban Revolution. He never forgot his friendship with Granado, however. At the guerilla leader’s invitation, Granado moved to Cuba in 1961 and co-founded a medical school. Guevara’s extended journal of the duo’s cross-continent trip was published in the early 1990s and became the basis of the 2004 film “The Motorcycle Diaries.”
It is a biopic film based on the true story of Che Guevara and his friend, Alberto Granado. The movie follows their journey across South America on a motorcycle, and the experiences they gained and people they met along the way.
The Motorcycle Diaries is based on the true story of Ernesto Guevara, who later became famous as Marxist guerrilla and revolutionary leader Che Guevara, and his friend’s epic road trip across South America.
Based on a true life story, The Motorcycle Diaries is an inspiring and thrilling adventure that traces the youthful origins of a revolutionary spirit.
In January 1952, Ernesto Guevara is a medical student in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His friend and fellow medical student, Alberto Granado, suggests that the two of them take a motorcycle trip through South America together, with the ultimate aim of seeing the San Pablo Leper Colony in Peru, in which Alberto is professionally interested.
