Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend Book

Everyone has heard the popular phrase, "Never judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes." Well, many people throughout history have judged those gone before us, especially those who went on to change the course of history. Ernesto 'Che' Guevara Jr. was one of those people. After growing up in Argentina, he took a soon-to-be-famous motorcycle journey with his friend and compatriot, Alberto Granado, into the deep plains and undeveloped areas of Latin America. During that journey he witnesses abject poverty and suffering of the indigenous people. By the time he returned, seeds of political and revolutionary discourse were germinating in his soul and they would very soon sprout and give rise to the man everyone came to know only as 'Che'. Even years after his execution by a one-man firing squad, scholars and modern-day revolutionaries alike have attempted to explain and understand who the man was, but very few of them remembered that famous parable above, and those who did remember, didn't take it to heart like Patrick Symmes.

Chasing Che is a documentary tale of travel, both physical and intellectual, that follows Symmes as he saddles up on his own motorcycle (one a little more modern than Granado's jalopy) and attempts to follow the exact route those two fellow travelers ventured upon so many years before. Symmes even attempts to limit any and all creature comforts to match whatever Ernesto and Alberto had during their original journey. There are new obstacles, to be sure, and detours must be made, but when they do arise, Symmes rolls with the punches and finds himself transformed into the same road-weathered traveler he is following years behind.

There are many great qualities about this travel journal, but foremost among those is Symmes' dedication to the quest. At numerous points he could have taken a lighter path, called for more help or equipment or turned back towards more friendly locales, but he continually pushed through in search of the same physical places and people that Guevara and Granado touched on their way through. On more than one occasion, Symmes found himself in conversations of broken Spanish with heavily armed men- some government soldiers, while others were guerrilla warriors still trying to live out some of the mantras Che left behind. One wrong move could've landed him in a South American jail or worse, "disappeared" like many opponents of the various controlling regimes. Yet, I believe his saving grace through this was he not going after an ideology, he was going after a man. He made no proposition to learn, live and spread the teachings of Che. Instead what he was after was the true history of the man, good or evil, who would later become Che and change the face of global politics. That objectivity and balance allowed him access through gates many others would have failed to pass.

Two things struck me during the book. First, Symmes continually mentioned the inherent charity of the indigenous people with whom he crossed paths. Time after time he would ride up on his motorcycle, kill the engine a good distance away from a small shanty home and clap his hands twice (to signal that he was friendly and approaching the house). He would almost always find the family willing to give him a small piece of floor to sleep on, or at the very least against the side of the house, and possibly food if they had enough to spread around. The following mornings, many of his new-found landlords would refuse to accept payment, just seeming like it was their duty to help fellow travelers (which many of them are as well considering the great distances between villages and homes). Secondly, Symmes went in the end of his journey to the source, at least, one of the sources; Alberto Granado. Still living reasonably off his notoriety as Che's wandering partner, Granado granted an illuminating interview and insight into those dusty days on the trail. Symmes had both of Granado's and Guevara's original diaries from the trip and he pointed out many of the disparate descriptions of places and actions between them, one moment standing out in particular where Granado and Guevara both credit the other for the heroic rescue of a small kitten. What came from that discovery was that the journey represented different transformations for each traveler. As for the kitten, Granado admitted to laying the heroic banner on Che because he was the one destined for it.

Another factor I found interesting is Symmes was on his travels during the exact same time the government and others were in a desperate search to exhume Che's body from the hidden dumping ground the Bolivian soldiers left him in. Another writer, Jon Lee Anderson wrote a book entitled, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (which I have also read and highly recommend), and in his research for that book he interviewed and received confessions from the very people responsible for hiding Che's body. It had been many years since the action, so the location information was not entirely specific, but both books ended up tying together in the same place and moment, which made for even more interesting reading.

For those interested in learning more about the man behind the mythology and who that is staring back from the hipsters t-shirts and messenger bags, you could do far worse than starting here. As I said earlier, Anderson's book is another great find, but a much thicker and in-depth read.