The Motorcycle Diaries

This movie is about the story of a trip in the life of youthful Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a historical revolutionary icon in Latin America. It is well done, and sends an excellent message. Most of all, it is true and it makes you think a lot about injustice, revolution, and what is noble to do in life and what is not.

The premise is this; Che Guevara and his good friend Alberto Granado decide, when they are young, to go on a trip all around Latin America, to see the land, to meet people, and maybe discover something about themselves. They are from Argentina, and they have never even been out of the country before. Here in the US we are used to traveling all over the place because it is fairly simple to do so these days, and our country is very large, so we do it a lot, and it is common, for example, to have families spread out across the company. However, it Latin America, first of all people are poorer, but moreover, the lifestyle is different, and families stay closer, and people don't travel outside of the cities where they are born very often. So for Che and his friend, this was a great undertaking, to travel around the continent. Ernesto ("Che") is school to be a medical doctor, and his friend is a biochemist. One of the amazing parts of the movie is when Ernesto is at dinner with his family not long before they take off, and his father says something like, "are you sure you want to do this? You are one semester away from becoming a medical doctor." To which, Ernesto responds "this is traveling around the continent of south america. Being a medical doctor can wait". To which, thankfully, his father smiles back at his beaming son. It is amazing that Ernesto has the foresight to realize that he should take this opportunity while he is young, and see the world, and try to understand something about the life we live, and about his home continent and the people of Latin America.

Anyway, the movie is called the Motorcycle Diaries for a reason. They are taking a motorcycle to make this trip! A terrible, aging motorcycle that is going to take them all around the suffering country roads of Latin America. They plan to go far south along the coast and return through the Andes, working their way to Maccu Piccu (a famous, ancient Incan city), and then staying for a while in a leper colony (soon to be their medical specialty) in the Amazon. The plan is to be finished by Granados's 30th birthday (Che is only 23!).

They of course, run into lots trouble in small towns in other countries (although at least language is not a barrier, since they all speak spanish, except some of the indigenous people), and of course, they find girls and do plenty of partying. Ernesto has a girlfriend in another town from where he lives. They stop to see her in the beginning and they are very clearly in love, but although it tears at him, he knows he has to leave her to go out and discover. He gets a letter from her after a few months whose details we never know, except that she is out of his life. I think he made the right choice. Even if they belonged together, he needed to see the world to know that. Anyway, somewhere in Colombia they lose the motorcycle. After lots of trouble, they try to fix it for the last time and end on foot. As Ernesto puts it eloquently, he says, "on foot, we will meet more people, and feel closer to the land". Even though it is going to take a much longer time. He is right, though. This is when they really start to learn. Walking, they meet lots of locals, and they start to learn about the injustice going on in Latin America. The governments taking land away from honest sharecroppers, kicking natives out of the places they have always lived, forcing people to take extremely dangerous jobs in mines, for example, because they are communists. It is terrible. The injustice starts to eat at Ernesto, and he is constantly thinking and writing (letters to his family, and in his journal) about the people who are defeated by these terrible governments, and about how he is not the same after viewing and somehow partaking in the acidity of this injustice.

Eventually, they reach the leper colony, where they are treated extremely well. They now have a place to sleep, new clothes, food every day, and they have some respect because they are working with the doctors. But even here, Ernesto is bothered by the division between the doctors and patients. At the leper colony, even though leprosy is not contagious under treatment, the Amazon river divides the living quarters of the lepers from the quarters of the caregivers, and the nuns who run the camp insist that all the caregivers wear gloves when working with the sick. As Ernesto points out, this is clearly just symbolic, and he chooses not to do so. Symbolic of what? Of the division of people, despite the fact that the damger is artificial. It reflects his compassion toward the sick people of the South American countries, lost and ignored by a government that treats them like lepers. This is very profound. he makes good friends through being compassionate to the sick, even engaging them in a soccer game. When the nuns refuse to serve him lunch with the lepers, his patients steal food for him to eat. When they are going to leave the next day after a few weeks at the camp, it is Ernesto's birthday, and in the midst of a joyful party on the "staff side" of the river, he takes off swimming across the Amazon (an extremely dangerous endeavor) for the "sick side" to celebrate with and say goodbye to his sick friends.

After the leper colony, Ernesto's friend, who shares his ideals but has a plan for settling down (he is older after all), go back to work in a famous hospital, and Ernesto admits that he has been changed by the trip and may not be ready to go back to medical school yet. We know from history that this means he is feeling the seeds of the revolution in which he will become a major figure. The injustice you see in this movie is amazing, startling, and moving. It is hard for us to understand it in North America, but the political conditions in Latin America at that time were intense and dangerous. The social climate was extremely delicate, and after that time, many fascist governments were overcome by revolution. When you see what Che Guevara sees, you are inspired and you feel what he feels. It is very impressive and it makes you want to do something. This movie is both heartwarming and alarming, and I recommend it to anyone who wants some food for thought about life, justice, and standing for something.