Travels

January 1 1950, Ernesto Guevara breaks off from his education to attempt his first voyage. He travels the northern provinces of Argentina on a bicycle on which he adjusted a small motor. He arrives at San Francisco del Chahar, near Córdoba, where his friend Alberto Granado runs the dispensary of the leper-centre. With the patients he has long conversations about their disease.

He continues his university studies and is above all interested in the scientific research for allergies, asthma, leprosy and nutritive theory.

In October he decides to make his second trip, his first outside of Argentina, through Latin-America. Together with Alberto Granado he leaves in January 1952 on an old Norton 500-cc motorbike. Che keeps a diary throughout his travels and it is later published as ‘Motorcycle Diaries’.

These travels also played a major part in Ernesto becoming that revolutionary that we all know. He encountered first hand many indigenous tribes and experienced the impoverished conditions of their lives. He was seeing how the people of, what he began to call Latin America, were suffering due to large companies, such as United Fruit, who exploited not only the land but also the people.

Below are some extracts from Motorcycle Diaries:

In Valparaiso Chili he writes in his diary: ‘We are looking for the bottom part of the town. We talk to many beggars. Our noses inhale attentively the misery.’

About Chili he writes: ‘The most important effort that needs to be done is to get rid of the uncomfortable ‘Yankee-friend’. It is especially at this moment an immense task, because of the great amount of dollars they have invested here and the convenience of using economical pressure whenever they believe their interests are being threatened.’

On March 24 they arrive at the Peruvian Tacna. After a discussion about the poverty in the region, he refers in his notes to the words of José Marti: ‘I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world.’

On May 1 they arrive in Lima. Che meets doctor Hugo Pesce, a Peruvian scientist, and director of the national leprosy program and an important Marxist. They discuss several nights until the morning comes. Year’s later Che puts that these conversations were very important for the change in his attitude towards life and the society.

On May 17 he leaves for the leper-centre of San Pablo in the Peruvian Amazon forest. He arrives on June 7. During his visit to this place, he complaints about the miserable way that the people of that region and the sick have to live. There were no clothes, almost no food and no medication. After working there for a few weeks, he leaves for Leticia, Colombia via the Amazon River.

July 17 he arrives in Caracas. There he decides to go back to Buenos Aires to finish his studies in medical science. He travels with a cargo-plane via Miami, where the technical problems with the aeroplane give him a delay of one month. To survive, he works as a waiter and he washes dishes in a bar. On regular base he is apprehended and questioned by the police. They ask him if he, his mother or father are communist. He is back in Buenos Aires on August 31.

Che Guevara finished his studies early 1953 and is qualified as a Doctor, specialising in dermatology. He was summoned military duty but was rejected because of his asthma.