This moving memoir recounts an eight-month-long South American tour that Granado, then a 29-year-old doctor, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old med student, took in 1952. Guevara recounted the trip in his The Motorcycle Diaries
, but Granado's account—published in Cuba in 1978 and now being published in the U.S.—equally illuminates the roots of Guevara's revolutionary consciousness; it's also a detailed and sad portrait of poverty and corruption in 1950s South America. Granado's book, which he wrote contemporaneously, perceptively shows how young Guevara was "a doctor who, though brilliant, was trapped in the confines of the medical trade." Granado sees that Guevara's privileged background has "not dulled his sensitivity." As they travel through poverty-stricken towns in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, Granado constantly notes how "the injustice of it filled us with hatred." At times the discourse doesn't rise above generalizations like this. But in the book's most moving sections, Granado powerfully portrays leprosariums the two visited and industrial towns where families had been exploited by industrialists—both scenes that influence Guevara's belief in "the strength of the working people." Photos. Agent, Robin Straus.
(Oct.)
Forecast:
Timed to coincide with the release of Walter Salles's film
The Motorcycle Diaries, this should be well received by the growing number of readers who have been rediscovering Guevara's life and times.
