2016 read #68: The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Translated by Alexandra Keeble
Prefaces by Aleida Guevara March, introduction by Cintio Vitier
175 pages
Published 1995; English translation published 2003
Read from August 29 to September 4
Rating: ★★★ out of 5

My first exposure to Che was in a Hot Topic. It was 2002, and I was 19; having gone directly from an abusive childhood into the army, self-expression was still a new concept for me. One weekend, on break from training, I went with my then-friend to the mall, and after our customary Saturday Cinnabon I ventured into the Hot Topic, where I saw a shirt in a blinding shade of red, emblazoned with the cliched image of Che's face. I was struck by, but at that age unable to articulate, the fine irony of a symbol of rebellion and revolution commoditized and sold to teenagers from a franchise shopfront. That was my rationale for purchasing it over the protests and disbelief of my army friend (who would, of course, go on to be a racist conservative asshole later in life). Over the ensuing months, after my own political awakening, I wore it with proud new layers of irony on the army bases where I was stationed -- a further irony, one I didn't appreciate until later, being my own utter ignorance of Che.

Che himself, as a man and as a symbol, was someone I hadn't thought much about beyond that initial set of ironies. His existence, actions, and ideology seem to be crushed beneath the weight of Che the symbol. To the regressives of the world, he's a hypocrite and a war criminal, guilty of vast (and usually vague) atrocities; to certain segments of the ever-divided left, he's a martyred saint, his every word dissected for hidden wisdom, as in the hagiographic introduction to this volume. Not to get all "the truth is in the middle" here, but in this instance, I'm pretty sure the reality is not close to either of those extremes.

The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating introduction to the young man who existed before the myth, a polished and edited "journal" of a bumbling expedition, by motorbike and by hitch, across several Latin American nations in 1952. The formative effect this had upon young Che's outlook, priorities, and ideology are obvious, though kept mostly between the lines; Che's tight-lipped indignation at the appalling poverty and class structures he encounters are the most interesting, and affecting, sections of the book. The rest, sadly, has something of a superficial feel to it. Despite the editorial efforts of an older Che (or possibly others), it feels obvious that this was a young student's travel diary, its tone alternately flippant and philosophical -- it would be easy to imagine, say, a college radio DJ writing something similar today, after a summer spent in search of "authenticity." Like a college dude, Che drops casual bits of homophobia and racial prejudice -- though, equally apropos, we could say "Like any dude in the 1950s." The travel portions tend toward the repetitive, fascinating interludes abbreviated in favor of enumerations of hunger, bad drivers, sleeping in police stations, and caging meals from reluctant, or naively enthusiastic, strangers.

It's a shame that Soviet-style Communism, in its day, was as corrupt and oligarchic, as reliant upon hegemonic colonialism, as capitalism has always tended to be. Through his writings, at least, it seems Che was a genuine revolutionary, a believer in the ideals he fought and eventually died for. This edition's appendix, taken from a speech Che gave to Havana medical students in 1960, is flush with revolutionary fervor, with utopian visions of "the new kinds of human beings born in Cuba." Like Che himself, the balance between social organization and individualism is ambiguous, multifaceted, perhaps impossible to resolve -- and certainly too ambitious for me to tackle in a simple book review.