IN HIS OWN WORDS

I wanted to expand on a little on my Film Vault Tuesday on The Motorcycle Diaries... About Che... It's hard to put into words why he means so much to so many people who weren't even alive to witness his life.

I could ramble on for paragraphs about what he accomplished in his life and about his legacy but I'd rather let his own words paint a picture of the kind of person he was.

These are a few favorite excerpts from his travel diary... it's not quite as poetic in English, but I don't trust my Spanish enough to provide a completely accurate translation.

I knew his diary would stay with me forever from the first few sentences:

This isn't a tale of derring-do, nor is it merely some kind of 'cynical account'; it isn't meant to be, at least. It's a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.

Embarking on his journey with Granado through South America meant leaving behind his girlfriend Chichina... she said she would wait for him, but he was crushed when he received a letter halfway through his trip informing him that she had met someone new. Here he is contemplating the rewards of his trip versus the sacrifice he had made in losing Chichina:

That night the mosquitoes kept me awake, I thought of Chichina, now a distant dream, a very enjoyable dream which ended, unusually for this kind of notion, with more honey in my memory than gall. I sent her a gentle, serene kiss, that of an old friend who knows and understands her; then my mind wandered on to Malagueno, in whose hall late at night she was probably whispering those strange intricate phrases of hers to some new suitor at that very moment. The immense dome of the starry sky above me twinkled merrily, as if saying 'yes' to the question which rose from deep inside me: 'Is this worth it?'

This is the 'good-bye' toast he gave to the staff at the San Pablo Leper Colony at his birthday party:

Well, it is my duty to reply to the toast proposed by Dr. Bresciani with something more than the conventional gesture. In our present precarious state, all we have to offer are words and I would now like to use them to express my heartfelt thanks, and those of my friend, to the entire staff of the colony who, though they hardly know us, have demonstrated their affection so magnificently by celebrating my birthday as if it were one if your own.

And I want to add something else. In a few days we'll be leaving Peru, so these words are also a farewell, and I'd like to stress my gratitude to all the people of this country, who over and over again since we arrived in Peru at Tacana have shown us the warmth of their hospitality. And I'd like to add another thought, nothing to do with this toast... Although were too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only served to confirm this belief, that the division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction, e are one single mestizo race with remarkable ethnographical similarities, from Mexico down to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to break free from al narrow-minded provincialism I propose a toast to Peru and to a United America.

At the conclusion of his journey Ernesto had seen too much poverty and injustice to go back to being the care-free spirit that had left Argentina... He would go back to finish Medical School, but a part of him clearly new that his final calling would not be Medicine, it would be REVOLUTION... Here is his very prophetic look at the future he saw for himself:

... I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people. And I know it because I see it imprinted on the night that I, the eclectic dissector of doctrines and psychoanalyst of dogmas, howling like a man possessed, will assail the barricades and trenches, will stain my weapon with blood and, consumed with rage, will slaughter any enemy I lay hands on. And then, as if an immense weariness were consuming my recent exhilaration, I see myself being sacrificed to the authentic revolution, the great leveler of individual will, pronouncing the exemplary mea culpa. I feel my nostrils dilate, savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood, of the enemy' death; I brace my body, ready for combat, and prepare myself to be a sacred precinct within which the bestial howl of the victorious proletariat can resound with new vigor and new hope.