Film and Book: Che Guavara

The Motorcycle Diaries narrates Che Guavara's crucial coming of age experience: a trip around South America, including visits with unfortunates such as the inhabitants of an Amazon leper colony. The movie didn't quite work for us, but suggests some of the problems with Che's biography: he is both an ordinary adolescent male with a conscience and an idealized portrait of social conscience. Because his story is intended to introduce adolescents to social and political awareness, there is always the problem of how to balance biographical, social and political content. The film if anything errs on the side of leaving things out -- there is nothing on his actual career as a revolutionary, and only the briefest of glances at his experience of authoritarianism or the corruption of multinationals in South America. Mostly we get surreal shots of poor people, which I suppose is meant to hit on a deeper emotional level. Unfortunately, the beautiful Gael Garcia Bernal lacks the skill to affect us (me at least) on a deep level.

Completely by chance, I came across a manga biography of Che in eBook form from the Hennepin Public Library. The work is partly based on The Motorcycle Diaries, but many other books as well, and so takes us through Che's entire life. More than Motorcycle Diaries, Che comes across as a idealistic hero, the man who exemplifies the duty to:

...try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world

There is more of the political here -- most revelatory to me was the state of American corporations in South America in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Before Castro, the manga says, 2/3 of arable land in Cuba was owned by foreign companies, mostly from the United States. I hope to follow up on this -- I suppose it means that the number and level of injustices in the name of commerce perpetrated by and for US interests is far greater than I was ever taught. Surprise, surprise.