Ernesto Che Guevara: Latin America Diaries
Revised and updated by Aleida March
2011, Ocean Press
177 pages
THIS great little sequel to the celebrated Motorcycle Diaries takes us with Latin America’s – and arguably the world’s – most famous revolutionary on his second journey across the continent following graduation from medical school. It was on this trip that Che eventually came to Guatemala and witnessed the CIA-led insurgency against Jacobo Arbenz. We know that Che worked briefly for the Arbenz revolution, and it was in Guatemala that he met his first wife, Hilda Gadea. Latin America Diaries, however, gives us a fascinating insight into the turmoil of the period before he flees to Mexico where he would meet Fidel Castro. In Mexico he worked as a doctor and the entries in this book reminds us that medicine was his first vocation. But it was as a Cuban revolutionary general that Guevara will always be known, and Latin America Diaries takes us into the period of politicisation prior to the Cuban expedition that would change the world. The book also contains letters by Guevara from the period and some of his early journalism, as well as photographs and scans of some of his diary pages. It’s a valuable addition to the Che library and well worth having. – GO’T
