88 pages • 2 hours read
Che GuevaraThe Motorcycle Diaries
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: "Objects of curiosity"
On the Modesta Victoria, Guevara and Granado work operating the ship's pump to earn their passage. By this time, they have learned that Chilean doctors are impressed by their knowledge of leprosy, a disease that is rare in Chile, and their curiosity has been piqued by tales of the leper colony on Easter Island.
While working in the pump room, Guevara and Granado meet a doctor from Valparaíso, Chile, who offers them any sort of help they might need. They ask him to introduce them to the president of the Friends of Easter Island, who also lives in Valparaíso, and he agrees.
When the Modesta Victoria makes port in Petrohué, Guevara and Granado plan to head for Osorno. Guevara meets a man who needs a station wagon driven to Osorno, and accepts the job despite his limited experience changing gears at high speed. After a stressful ride, Guevara arrives in Osorno and reunites with Granado, who has ridden La Poderosa there.
The men leave Osorno and travel north through the countryside before arriving in the port city of Valdivia, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary. In Valdivia, the local newspaper writes an article about Guevara and Granado, who dedicate their journey to the city. The newspaper staff also convince Guevara and Granado to write to Valparaíso's mayor, Molinas Luco, to tell him about their plan to visit Easter Island.
Guevara expresses delight with Chilean hospitality and notes that the local customs are very different from Argentinian customs. He speculates that the reason might be the tendency of Anglo-Saxon immigrants in Chile not to mix with the Indigenous population, so that Indigenous American customs have remained intact.
Chapter 12 Summary: "The experts"
Guevara wakes up in a comfortable bed, well-fed from the previous night's dinner, and reflects on the value of Chilean hospitality. The night before, La Poderosa had suffered a tire puncture and a local veterinary student, Raúl, had given Guevara and Granado shelter in Temuco for the night.
The previous day, the two friends had also given an interview to the local newspaper, El Austral. Upon awakening, Guevara sees the resulting article in the morning edition. The article stretches the truth, describing Guevara and Granado as important experts on leprosy who have treated 3,000 patients and know all the key treatment centers in South America. The article also mentions their plan to travel to Easter Island. Together with Raúl's family, Guevara and Granado read the article and enjoy their feeling of importance before leaving.
"The experts" make some repairs to La Poderosa, attended by a maid bearing snacks. They ride north around five in the evening.
Chapter 13 Summary: "The difficulties intensify"
On the way out of Temuco, La Poderosa's tire gets punctured again. Guevara and Granado put on the spare, only to find that it, too, has a puncture. Exploiting their reputation as "The Experts," the friends quickly find someone who is willing to host them for the night.
In the morning, they have the tire and inner tubes repaired. After their host treats them to a delicious meal, they leave town around nightfall. Having ridden a mere 80 km (~50 miles), they stop to sleep at the home of a park ranger.
The next morning, the ranger refuses them breakfast because they have not given him any money, so Guevara and Granado ride a few kilometers and then start looking for a place to build a fire and make some mate. Suddenly the bike crashes, throwing Guevara and Granado to the ground. One of the steering columns and the gearbox are broken, and the men must wait for a ride to the next town.
While they are waiting, a man invites them into his nearby home. They drink with him, then catch a ride with a van driver, who takes them to Lautaro. Over the next few days, they work on the bike, sleep in a barracks, and eat at the homes of various locals who come, out of curiosity, to see them.
Once the bike is nearly fixed, the men celebrate by drinking a large amount of Chilean wine with some new friends. One of the mechanics from the garage, too drunk to dance, asks Guevara to dance with his wife. Guevara agrees, and then tries to seduce the woman, which leads to a scuffle on the dance floor. Guevara and Granado flee the party.
Chapter 14 Summary: "La Poderosa II's final tour"
Guevara and Granado rise early to finish fixing the bike, then have lunch with the family who lives next door to the garage. Guevara drives the bike, but the gearbox fails again and the men have to stop to fix it. Not long after, while they are rounding a tight curve and riding toward a cattle herd, a screw comes off the back brake and the hand brake, which has been improperly soldered, also breaks. The bike crashes, but the two men are uninjured.
Thanks to the El Austral article, Guevara and Granado are well-known throughout the area and some Germans offer them lodging for the night. While staying with them, Guevara experiences diarrhea and is too embarrassed to use the chamber pot in his room; instead, he "[climbs] out on to the window ledge [gives] up all [his] pain to the night and blackness beyond" (52).
The next day, as Guevara and Granado ride toward Malleco, the bike dies once and for all. The men sleep in the town of Cullipulli, then ride to Los Ángeles, where they stay with a local army lieutenant. Guevara writes: "It was our last day as 'motorized bums'; the next stage seemed set to be more difficult, as 'bums without wheels'" (52).
Chapter 15 Summary: "Firefighters, workers and other matters"
Guevara opens this chapter with an homage to Chilean fire brigades: composed entirely of volunteers, they work effectively, and captaining one is a significant honor. In southern Chile, fires are very frequent; Guevara and Granado witness three fires over their three-day stay at a fire station.
The friends move from the army lieutenant's house to the fire station in order to spend time with the station caretaker's daughters. Having fallen asleep right away, the men miss the sirens on the first night and sleep late while the firefighters are out working. Guevara and Granado ask the firefighters to take them to the next fire.
On their last day in Los Ángeles, Guevara and Granado are awakened by the siren. They ride along to a house fire, where Granado saves a trapped housecat and returns him safely to his owners.
The next day, Guevara and Granado leave, along with the "corpse" (54) of La Poderosa. They have negotiated a ride to Santiago with a truck driver in exchange for helping move furniture, but cleverly avoid doing too much work: "the truck driver's colleague had an overactive ego, especially with regard to his body–the poor guy won all the bets we made with him by carrying more furniture than both us and the owner combined (the latter played the fool with barbaric ease)" (54).
The men find a place to sleep at the local consulate, where the consul also offers them 200 pesos. (They refuse, and Guevara remarks that if he'd been offered it three months later, they would have eagerly accepted it.)
Guevara describes Santiago as similar to Córdoba, though faster-paced. His stay there is brief and busy. After overcoming a bureaucratic obstacle and receiving Peruvian visas, he and Granado visit the Suquía water polo team, who are visiting from Córdoba. Since the men know several of the team members, they enjoy a good meal with the team, who also awkwardly introduce them to some society ladies.
On their last day in Santiago, Guevara and Granado leave La Poderosa behind and set off for Valparaíso in a truck, along a beautiful mountain road.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
These chapters are transitional, as Guevara and Granado not only take their first steps out of Argentina and into a foreign country, but also leave behind the independence of riding La Poderosa and begin their journey as hitchhikers. Although hitchhiking will prove far colder, hungrier and more difficult later in the book, as Guevara's own foreshadowing indicates, at this stage it is still a lighthearted adventure, made somewhat easier by the friends' newfound notoriety as "The Experts."
At this stage in the journey, Guevara is preoccupied with the differences between Argentina and Chile, and is particularly enamored of Chilean hospitality. However, in comparison with the other countries the friends visit, this stage of their Chilean trip feels much closer to the experiences described in the Argentinian leg of the journey. Although Guevara is at first interested in the differences between Argentina and Chile, by the end of the book he will have decided that the division of Latin America into separate nations is arbitrary and that they are more or less united by their culture and shared history.
Additionally, in these chapters the image Guevara seems to have of Indigenous peoples is a positive one; he speaks of their culture remaining intact, rather than becoming mixed with that of European immigrants. Later in the book, as the friends encounter more poverty and the situation of Indigenous people appears more desperate, he expresses a quite different interpretation of the way Indigenous and European cultures have interacted and the effects of that interaction on Indigenous Latin Americans.
