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.
Themes
Pan-Americanism
Although Guevara begins by thinking of his home country, Argentina, as very different from its neighbor, Chile, by the end of The Motorcycle Diaries he has come to hold the quite different view that all the countries in Latin America share a common history and culture, and that any division of them into distinct nation-states is artificial. He appears to have been influenced by the remarks of Dr. Valenza, who sees all the nations of the Americas as being in their infancy; one may also speculate that the similarities he observes among the exploitation of workers, degradation of Indigenous peoples, and treatment of the sick in different countries also influenced this view. In any case, Guevara mentions Pan-Americanism three times: once when recounting Dr. Valenza's statement, once when recalling his own toast in his diary, and once when reporting that same toast in a letter to his mother.
The Exploitation of the Working Classes
Guevara's most striking statements about the working classes occur during his visit to the mines in Chuquicamata, where he enquires about the number of people who have died in the mines and the nature of the settlements their families received and gets no answer. He clearly finds the working conditions in the mines appalling. In a neighboring episode, he meets a repressed communist miner and his wife enroute to the sulphur mines and says quite plainly that the man is off to ruin his health in exchange for inadequate pay because someone with his political leanings simply cannot secure a better living.
Guevara's horror at the exploitation of the working classes is connected to his distrust of international and especially U.S.-based corporations. As he observes, the natural resources in Chile are particularly easy to exploit, and yet the workers are monumentally underpaid and subjected to dangerous conditions. Most of the mines are owned by U.S. companies.
Resistance to an Unjust Order and Oppression of Indigenous Peoples
The band who plays the Spanish Republican anthem instead of the current Spanish anthem at Our Lord of the Earthquakes (99) is one such example. For Guevara, glimpses into the pre-Colombian and pre-conquest worlds are images of freedom and self-determination; this sentiment underlies his awe at seeing Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo (96) and the town of Estaque (71). At some points in the text, people of Indigenous descent are inspiring figures of resistance to injustice and represent the possibility of redemption; for instance, the enthusiastic and reform-minded mestizo museum curator in Cuzco is "proof of a race still fighting for its identity" (103).
Most of the time, however, Guevara describes modern-day Indigenous tribes as sadly defeated. For instance, Guevara explicitly compares the Indigenous people dressed in European style to the Quechuas who abandoned Manco II and pledged loyalty to Pizarro (103): the degraded, defeated remnants of a formerly-independent race.
