Ernesto Che Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries
Ernesto Che Guevara was a famous Marxist revolutionary. He was born on June 14th 1928 in Argentina. In 1959, he aided Fidel Castro in their revolution in Cuba over the dictator Fulgencio Batista. He wanted to spread revolution all around the world, especially in developing countries. He went to Bolivia and tried to train the revolutionaries there in guerilla combat. He was eventually captured by the Bolivian army, with aid from the U.S., and executed on October 9th, 1967. He was buried in a secret place but in 1997 they found his place of burial and reburied him in Cuba. (bbc.com).
The book, or diary, of Ernesto Che Guevara does not mostly talk about his revolution and how he became a revolutionary. Instead, it talks about how he and his friend, Alberto Granado, planned to travel from Argentina to North America on “La Poderosa,” a Norton 500 Motorcycle, the name meaning “the powerful one.” This bike was Alberto’s and they thought of this plan on vacation, drinking maté (the Argentine national drink, a herb tea). In December of 1951, when Che Guevara was 23, they set off on this trip. They knew it would be difficult but they did not know how difficult. This book is a diary written by Ernesto Che Guevara on his journeys through South America on La Poderosa. Che Guevara and his friend Alberto were studying to be doctors. That is why their family was so surprised when they said they would leave for North America.
This book is not the greatest read for fiction lovers. However, it is a good book for non-fiction lovers. It is not the most well written book because some things sound funny in English. This is because it is 1) a diary and Che Guevara was not an author, and 2) translated. Because of the translation some things are weirdly worded but the meaning is easily understood. Reading about this great journey and all the struggles, but also the successes and the people that helped them along the way, made me see what it was really like to be completely and totally free. It was intriguing to read about two friends that one day decide to travel across the continent and how they improvised along the way. Of course, this type of trip requires relying on others to give you rides and food and a place to sleep, but it really shows you how hospitable some places in South America, and Che Guevara stressed Chile, can be.
In my view, this book turned out to be a pretty good read for a non-fiction book. I do not usually enjoy non-fiction books but this one was an exception. I think that if you like non-fiction books you should definitely read this and even if you do not like non-fiction books, give it a try. It is also not a long book making it a relatively quick read.
BBC. "Che Guevara (1928 - 1967)." BBC, edited by BBC, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/
history/historic_figures/guevara_che.shtml. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.
I like how in the first paragraph, you diverged from the main book and instead talked about how Chu's life went. I think it was an interesting and take for this post since it hooked me in, and I was convinced that I could read the rest of the post. The only criticism I have is that there are not many direct quotes from the book itself. You say that the author uses words that wouldn't appear in a normal book, but you never actually mention any. Besides that, this blog post is pretty amazing.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post! This seems like a great book, and I thought the fact that Guevara chose not to talk about his revolution, but his friend, makes the concept of this book even more interesting. You did a good job summarizing the book's content, and as someone who is interested in non-fiction, I will highly consider checking this out.
ReplyDeleteI found it surprising how Che Guevara does not talk about what most people, including myself know him for, but instead focused on him and his friend. I think through this alone, the book itself sounds interesting as I would love to see how someone as notorious as Che Guevara would talk about such a subject. Good job.
ReplyDelete