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 43-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 43 Summary: "On the Road to Caracas"
Guevara and Granado arrive at the border, and after enduring the usual questions and suspicions, cross the bridge into Venezuela. They are detained in San Antonio de Táchira, and again at a customs post halfway to San Cristóbal. The knife that attracted police attention in Bogotá becomes an object of interest in San Cristóbal, too, but the friends manage the encounter "with an ease mastered through dealings with people of such high culture" (129). For the first time, Guevara mentions "the revolver" (129), which the customs officers do not discover because it is hidden in a stinking bundle in Guevara's pocket.
The men leave San Cristóbal in a crowded van. Along the way, the van has a flat tire and Guevara's asthma begins to act up. Guevara notes that the poor state of the roads and the resulting tire punctures, along with the many police stops, slowed their travel. However, one woman held a letter of recommendation that kept the police from searching the luggage in the van and discovering Guevara and Granado's weapons.
The friends skip meals to save money, but the driver eventually pities them and treats them to a meal. Guevara arrives in Caracas "absolutely wrecked" (130) by an asthma attack. After Granado gives him an adrenalin injection, he sleeps "like a tiger" (130).
Chapter 44 Summary: "His Strange Twentieth Century"
Guevara reports that his asthma attack is nearly over, though he still needs to use the inhaler he has acquired. He and Granado have parted ways. Despite the fact that he is now well fed, well cared for, and looking forward to returning home to finish his medical studies, Guevara misses Granado intensely: "I feel Alberto's absence so sharply. It seems my flanks are unguarded by some hypothetical attack. At every other moment I'm turning around to share an observation with him only to realize he's not there" (130).
Walking through the suburbs of Caracas, Guevara reflects on the similarities between Black and Portuguese residents of the city; both groups face discrimination and poverty, but their different ways of dealing with the situation keep them separate. Guevara observes a family living in a poor adobe hut and tries to take their photograph, but the encounter ends with them throwing stones at him. He walks past an area where shipping containers are used as dwellings, reflecting on the stubbornly old-fashioned character of the city.
Chapter 45 Summary: "A Note in the Margin"
Guevara recalls an encounter with a European he met on the road, someone who "escaped the knife of dogmatism as a young man…knew the taste of fear (one of the few experiences which makes you value life), and afterwards…had wandered from country to country, gathering thousands of adventures" (132).
Guevara recounts the man's words: "The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country" (132). The man says that, unfortunately, the people can only be educated after seizing power, and by then it will be too late–they will have taken many innocent lives through revolution.
Then the man addresses Guevara's fate directly: "you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol …but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and motivates your actions" (133).
Guevara disagrees with the man and expresses solidarity with the revolution rather than the existing order: "But despite his words, I now knew…that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I would be with the people" (133). The book ends on a note of self-sacrificing revolutionary fervor.
Chapters 43-45 Analysis
The final chapters of The Motorcycle Diaries are significant in three ways. First, the first mention of weapons occurs here, toward the end of the book. The revelation that Guevara and Granado had been carrying not only a knife, but also a gun, all along is on the one hand not surprising–they were, after all, traveling alone through unfamiliar lands, and sometimes sleeping rough–and on the other hand seems to put the preceding events in a different light. In particular, given Guevara's declarations at the very end of the book, it seems to prefigure the events that were to come.
Second, although the Diaries generally present Guevara and Granado as a united front, operating as a team to get out of difficulties together, Chapter 44 marks the first time Guevara has said explicitly what Granado's companionship means to him. This is perhaps natural, since the lone Guevara has, at this point in the narrative, the time, distance, and mental space to reflect on the events of the past several months. Still, it is in some ways the most revealing portrait of the friendship that forms the foundation of the events of The Motorcycle Diaries.
Third, the final chapter contains by far the most politically-charged content in the entire book. From the way this chapter is titled ("A Note in the Margins") and framed, in the context of an encounter with a stranger who seems to foretell the future, it is not clear whether the episode occurred after Granado's departure and is being recounted chronologically or whether it occurred at some earlier date but has been placed at the very end of the book in order to present the conclusions Guevara reached at the end of his travels and indicate what he meant by claiming, in the Introduction, that his journey had left him a changed man.
In any case, the last paragraphs of The Motorcycle Diaries show Guevara pledging his loyalty to "the people"—the proletariat and, more broadly, the downtrodden of the earth–and declaring his willingness to make himself a martyr to the world revolution. His thoughts are not only dramatically and eloquently expressed, they are also hauntingly prescient, given that Guevara played a key role in the Cuban revolution, participated in the new Cuban government, and was in fact executed in Bolivia after being apprehended by the CIA.
