This second volume of travel diaries by revolutionary icon Guevara (after Motorcycle Diaries) shows the 25-year-old rebel wandering around South America in the latter half of 1953, bopping from country to country before settling in Guatemala, where a leftist government led by Jacobo Arbenz had just come into power. In his diaries and letters home to his mother, Guevara writes of his ambivalence about the Communists (he doesn't want to join, because it would keep him from traveling to Europe) and how his desire to help out in Guatemala is impeded by near-crippling bouts of asthma. After the CIA overthrows the government in 1954, Guevara makes his way to Mexico, where, over the next two years, his radicalization becomes complete. The diary lacks explicit transitions, however, so the days blur into one another, and this, combined with Guevara's emphasis on more quotidian concerns like his health and lack of funds, makes it easy to overlook the key dramatic moments in his story. One of these, for example, is Guevara's first meeting with then-exiled Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, in 1955, but all he has to say about that day is that Castro is "a young intelligent guy, very sure of himself and extraordinarily audacious; I think we hit it off well." Shortly afterward, Guevara launches into a long description of several Mayan ruins. With the wealth of comprehensive biographies available, it's hard to see the appeal of this slim volume beyond scholars and whatever hard-core fans of Che are still left in the 21st century. Photos not seen by
PW. (Oct.)
