Che's Travels

Che Guevara’s iconic status has generated enormous interest in Guevara’s life trajectory and contributions to radical political and economic theory and practice. The 30th anniversary of his death produced an outpouring of biographies, the best-known ones in English written by Jon Lee Anderson, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Jorge Castañeda, Richard Harris, David Sandison, and Paul Dosal. Numerous authors, beginning in the 1970s with Michael Löwy and Régis Debray, have examined and critiqued Guevara’s contributions to the economics of socialism and to revolutionary praxis. More recently, researchers (Michael Casey and Patrick Symmes are two examples) have analyzed the impact of the symbolism and iconography associated with Guevara (“Brand Che”). Guevara’s two journeys around Latin America — his 5,000-mile motorcycle trip in 1951 and a later trip during the second half of 1953 — have been the subject of feature films as well as docu mentaries. Historians interested in designing a course around the figure of Guevara and his legacy are certainly not starved of teaching material.Paulo Drinot’s edited collection Che’s Travels is an important contribution to this voluminous literature, and it would be an excellent text for any course on Guevara or twentieth-century revolutionary traditions in Latin America. It also fills some important research gaps by bringing together a collection of short essays that focus on the 1950s, a formative period in Guevara’s life and a period in Latin American history that has been neglected by scholars. Drinot’s brief to the authors invited to a 2006 workshop held in Manchester, United Kingdom, was clear. They were to “explore how Guevara’s Latin American travels produced Che and how Che simultaneously produced Latin America through his travelogues” (p. 2). The eight British and US-based scholars whose essays are included in this collection examine the national settings and historical contexts with which Guevara engaged as well as the ways in which he represented these societies. The essays in this volume also reflect on Guevara’s legacy in each of the eight countries (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Mexico) he visited.The brief was ambitious, given the complexities of the national histories involved and the extreme unevenness of Guevara’s encounters with the eight countries. The time Guevara spent in each country varied enormously, as did the extent of his commentary on particular societies. It was difficult to fulfill the second part of Drinot’s assignment, to address Guevara’s analysis of local conditions and the impact of these on his thinking and writings, for places where Guevara stayed for just a few days (Colombia, discussed in a short essay by Malcolm Deas) or for barely more than a week (Venezuela, discussed by Judith Ewell). Indeed, Ewell begins her good chapter on Venezuela by boldly noting that “Che Guevara learned little from or about Venezuela in the years between December 1951 and 1956” (p. 148). Ann Zulawski’s fine chapter on Bolivia also notes how little Guevara’s time there in the early 1950s seems to have influenced his later return to that country in 1966.The first part of the authors’ brief, to examine social, economic, and political conditions in the countries Guevara visited, produces competent summaries of the national history of each country as it appeared in the early and mid-1950s. The authors who achieve the best outcomes here are scholars whose research has dealt with topics central to Guevara’s concerns, such as labor and agrarian struggle, Latin American relations with the United States, and the state of the Left in each country. Cindy Forster’s chapter on Guatemala is a good example of such success. Forster’s pathbreaking research on Guatemala’s postwar agrarian history and politics and her recent scholarship on the country’s armed-struggle movements of 1960 – 1980 provide a solid grounding for her discussion. Eduardo Elena, a scholar of Peronism, writes interestingly about tourism and rural-urban migration in Argentina during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In Mexico, where, as Eric Zolov notes, between 1954 and 1956 Guevara’s political consciousness crystallized and his revolutionary commitment took a concrete form in his encounter with Fidel Castro, Guevara spent more time than in any other country. Zolov’s research on cultural dimensions of US-Mexican relations and on bohemian life and popular culture in Mexico produce a very satisfying discussion of that country in midcentury as well as of the heritage of Guevara for the generation of 1968 there. Zolov’s chapter is also enriched with photos and cartoons, a nice feature in a book that is otherwise very heavy on text. While the essays tend to concentrate mostly on the political sphere, Guevara’s “interior life” is provocatively discussed in Patience Schell’s chapter on Chile (p. 63). The editor has produced an excellent introduction and really valuable bibliographical guidance, while his chapter on Peru offers insights on Guevara’s understanding of indigenous peoples. But please, if there is to be a new edition, can we have some maps showing the routes taken by Che in his two grand journeys

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