Travelling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1952 Alberto Granado, a young doctor, and his friend Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student from a distinguished Buenos Aires family, decided to explore their continent. They set off from Cordoba in Agentina on a Norton 500cc motorbike traveled through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. The duo's adventures vary from the suspenseful (stowing away on a cargo ship, exploring Incan ruins) to the comedic (falling in love, drinking, fighting...) to the serious (volunteering as firemen and at a leper colony). They worked as day laborers along the way - as soccer coaches, medical assistants, and furniture movers. The poverty and exploitation of the native population started the process that was to turn Ernesto - the debonair, fun-loving student - into Che, the revolutionary who had a profound impact on the history of several nations.
SYNOPSIS
For seven months in 1952, two young men put what promised to be brilliant careers on hold, climbed aboard a 50cc Norton, and toured large portions of South America. They worked at odd jobs to feed themselves, and for the first time met and were deeply moved by the ordinary people of their own continent. One went on to found a medical school. The other became Che Guevara. This is the first US edition of Granado's trip diary, a companion to Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries; the newly-released film is based on both diaries. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This moving memoir recounts an eight-month-long South American tour that Granado, then a 29-year-old doctor, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old med student, took in 1952. Guevara recounted the trip in his The Motorcycle Diaries, but Granado's account-published in Cuba in 1978 and now being published in the U.S.-equally illuminates the roots of Guevara's revolutionary consciousness; it's also a detailed and sad portrait of poverty and corruption in 1950s South America. Granado's book, which he wrote contemporaneously, perceptively shows how young Guevara was "a doctor who, though brilliant, was trapped in the confines of the medical trade." Granado sees that Guevara's privileged background has "not dulled his sensitivity." As they travel through poverty-stricken towns in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, Granado constantly notes how "the injustice of it filled us with hatred." At times the discourse doesn't rise above generalizations like this. But in the book's most moving sections, Granado powerfully portrays leprosariums the two visited and industrial towns where families had been exploited by industrialists-both scenes that influence Guevara's belief in "the strength of the working people." Photos. Agent, Robin Straus. (Oct.) Forecast: Timed to coincide with the release of Walter Salles's film The Motorcycle Diaries, this should be well received by the growing number of readers who have been rediscovering Guevara's life and times. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In 1952, two young, educated Argentineans set out on a motorcycle to travel their America, from Co/roba through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and, finally, Venezuela. After two months, they abandoned the bike and traveled by whatever means they could scrounge the same way they found room and board. Remarkable as they were for their educational backgrounds, that one was a 23-year-old medical student named Ernesto "Che" Guevara makes their story even more special. Guevara's diary was not published in English until 1995. Granado, then 29 and a biochemist, published his own diary in Cuba in 1978. A British edition appeared in 2003; this is the first U.S. edition. Simply stated, this on-the-road account of life among South America's common people is a delight, filled with remarkable descriptions of the flora, waterways, and cities. A movie based on both diaries, directed by Walter Salles and produced by Robert Redford, will open this fall. Highly recommended. Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Libs., AL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Of motorcycles, mate, and Marx. Coinciding with the release of the Robert Redford-produced film The Motorcycle Diaries, Granado's work is a lightly edited journal of his travels, in 1952, across South America in the company of Ernesto Guevara, who would earn fame and martyrdom as Fidel Castro's lieutenant. Granado was older than Guevara by a few years and already a practicing medical doctor; to judge by these pages, it would also appear that he played the role of committed revolutionary Che, that of the suave Argentine hipster. The South American working class, Granado complains, knows "only the beauties of alcohol, football, and horse racing," lulled into submission by "classroom, pulpit, and press, which are all in the hands of the rich and powerful." Ernesto, for his part, doesn't speak much in Granado's pages, which would have benefited from a little levity in the place of class analysis, a little more of the pair's enjoyable banter. All the same, Granado does credible work in chronicling the progress the pair made up the Pacific Coast, through the Andes to Lake Titicaca, and down to the jungles of Colombia, traversing the most tortuous roads on the least reliable of mounts. (Their motorcycle, for one, which often forced them to travel by thumb.) Granado is capable of lyricism, and his descriptions of the passing landscape and ports of call are the best parts here: "By the time we crossed the last of the snowy hills the clouds formed by the snow's evaporation were already enormous. Their blue contrasted with the coppery red of the hills without snow on them, and these in turn were splashed by the green of the moss." "At the very first bite I felt my tongue burning. I can't even say Iknow what monkey meat tastes like-all I felt was the burning of the chile." Such moments, however, are few. Not to be dismissed as a firsthand document. But for a more entertaining take on the journey, see Patrick Symmes's Chasing Che (2000), an altogether better read.
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