Che Guevara starts his diaries by saying, “travelling changes us in one way or another. Sometimes we are aware of that change, other times we are not. Let the world change you and you can change the world.” In the early 1950s, Che Guevara, a 23 year-old boy took with his friend Alberto Granado on a journey to explore South America. The adventure started on January 1953 on a “La Poderosa,” a 500cc Norton motorcycle that they called the powerful one.  The two didn’t expect that a decade later the world will come to know of them, and their story will be recorded in the world’s history books. Guevara wrote various diaries throughout his journey, recording discoveries they made with his friend and the disasters they had to overcome. These diaries are one of the best-selling book. Recently they made the subject of a film which is selling out well in DVDs.  Che Guevara’s adventure in South America changes him a lot and the things he learns in his journey influences his political future as a youth politician.

In his diaries, Guevara wrote of the experiences he had with his friends. Most of their experiences tell a lot about social and political nature of Latin America. First, the social life of people in Latin America seems lively. After getting to Chile, the two stop at the town of Lautaro to get a motorbike repair after a bad accident. They were invited to a dance during the repair episode. However, their evening ends badly after Guevara is chased out by an angry mob when he tried to seduce a married woman. The people of Latin America are also friendly. On entering Chile, Guevara and his friend introduce themselves leprosy experts. The introduction helps them in getting attention from the media that takes a clip of them. The people of Chile offered necessary help like food on seeing the clip. Later, Guevara moves into the mining country. Here, he gets to learn about the politics of Latin America. The rich and powerful dominate Latin America. Guevara learn that Chuquicamata copper mine, the world’s biggest open pit mine is run by United States monopolies. The mine is the primary source of wealth in Chile. This show the unstable political state of Latin America which is dominated by foreign powers. People here are living at the helm of poverty from the political state of Latin America. The level of poverty is significant from the homeless couple that Guevara met at the mine looking for a job.

Guevara is impressed a lot by the old Inca Civilization in the north. First, the moments of riding trucks with Indians and their animals made him feel that he was part of the indigenous people fraternity. The people get to open up to him, making him develop more interest in them. When he moves to Lima, he met a Marxist and leprosy researcher, Pesce. Guevara and his friend engaged Pesce in political discussions about Latin America. The doctor had great influence in that he sent him a copy of Guerilla Warfare, one of his first books.

Various events in motorcycle diaries show the others side of Guevara’s political life. However, when he visits Latin America, Guevara is not a politician, but the things he engages in hints on his political future. The first hint that Guevara gives about his political future is the engagement he had with Doctor Pesce. Guevara shows a lot of interest in knowing more about the politics of Latin America in his discussion with the doctor. Secondly, Guevara gave his first political speech after a year of his trip, on his 24^th birthday. In his speech, Guevara advocated for unity in Latin America. He stated, “We believe, and after this trip even more firmly than before, that Latin America’s division into an Illusory and uncertain nationalities is completely fictitious.”

Guevara is portrayed as a man of the people in his diaries according to various engagements he had with his friend in Latin America. Guevara has a heart for the discriminated leprosy community. Together with his friend, he travelled deep into the Amazon forest on leaving Lima. They stayed in the deep jungle leper colony in San Pablo with the lepers. During the three weeks, Guevara and his friend offered consultation sessions and treated leprosy patients. From the way the treated lepers across Amazon, it is evident that Guevara was going to be a people’s politician. His character defines him as more of a leader and not a politician since he has the people at heart.

Travelling as youth with less experience in various aspects of life comes with a lot of unexpected challenges. It is significant from Guevara’s trip with his friend that journeys in the ‘real world come with various challenges. However, when embarking on different journeys that life brings along, we should not focus on the challenges, but rather the destiny and what the journey has to offer in changing ourselves for better. When Guevara starts his journey, he offers some advice that need to be imitated by every explorer. “The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don’t think about the means….because a journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are many means of as there are different ways of ‘finishing.’ That is to say, the means are endless,” he says. This statement was significant throughout his journey and also to his travel mate, and all the people he came along during the adventure. Guevara encountered accidents that led to motorcycle punctures during his journey. His friend had an experience of how Guevara handled those challenges in the journey, and proceeded. Probably, this changed how his friend Alberto viewed life.

Che Guevara is remembered in modern history as a revolutionary feature. Some people see him as heroic character of the 1950s and some see him as an overrated character. Guevara is a significant post-coldwar character in Latin America. Latin Americans have pointed out some similarities between Guevara and some coldwar characters like James Dean and Fidel Castro. The young romantic adventurer’s motorcycle diaries memoir is growing as a cult favorite among young intellects in Latin America. Guevara’s life is changes by various experiences and situations encountered during his time. Practically, Latin Americans have developed much interest in Guevara and Alberto’s human aspect more than the political aspect. According to Latin Americans, the two were normal people with big dreams and idealists, who went out on an adventure, with optimism of achieving an objective. Guevara shares a lot of similarities with Fidel Castro. The two were optimistic. After flying back to Argentina, Guevara was a changed man from his words. He wanted the best for the [people just like Castro who advocated on change to bring down tyrants. “I will be on the side of the people…I will take to the barricades and the trenches, screaming as one possessed, will stain my weapons with blood, and, mad with rage, will cut the throat of any vanquished foe I encounter,” Guevara wrote in his diary. From his words it is evident that Guevara and Castro shared the idea of acting in materializing their beliefs. Guevara states in his journal that after spending a night of conversing with Fidel Castro that it was time to ‘stop whining and fight.’

Ernesto Che Guevara’s diaries leave a lot for us to learn from them. According to my understanding, based on Guevara’s story, I believe that revolutionaries are bad. As much as the United States was built on revolutionaries, they took significant people at their ripe age like Guevara. The fact that Guevara was a revolutionary, leaves only his political experiences published. The diaries make me understand that most of the time significant things people did or went through in molding their history are often ignored. For instance, we are not often told that Guevara was a well-to-do Argentinian physician who used his knowledge to help lepers. His motorcycle trip is not talked about. The various challenges he had to overcome during his trip like malnutrition and poverty are ignored. Through the diaries I also get to know that most of the time people look up to iconic people in history without taking a glance of what made them what they have become. However, various events can be predicated Guevara’s discoveries. As many modern generation enthusiasts get to read the diaries and learn about revolutionaries, many may want to do away with them. The state of Latin America politics is likely to change based on the discoveries Guevara made Most of those revelations are not appealing, something that is likely to change the Latin Americans’ view of government.

In conclusion, Guevara’s adventure made grate contributions in shaping his future as a revolutionary politician. His trip came along with events about the social and political state of Latin America. The post coldwar politician is compared to coldwar generations, like Fidel Castro from Cuba. Their similarities are based on the fact that both were shaped by events during their times. It is also significant that revolutionaries have shaped our society in a manner that we don’t get to look into backgrounds of iconic characters apart from celebrating what they have done for the country.