We find ourselves here before a pure expression of the most powerful indigenous civilization of America, untouched by any contact with the victorious armies and full of evocative treasures amidst its dead walls, or in the marvelous landscape surrounding it and giving it a frame that will drive any dreamer to ecstasy.15
The spell cast by archaeology and exploration allowed Che to understand phenomena that later enthusiasts would put to good use decades later, among them Steven Spielberg, who unknowingly owes a great deal to Guevara. Thirty years before the irruption of Indiana Jones onto movie screens and into children’s imaginations around the world, Guevara discovered the U.S. filmmaker’s secret in the fantasies of Hiram Bingham: “Machu Picchu was to Bingham the crowning of all his purest dreams as an adult child—which is what most enthusiasts of these sciences are.”16 Che grasped that the attraction of archaeology for Bingham, Harrison Ford, and himself derived from their own special status as “adult children.” Spielberg would later translate into film this perception that children love nothing better than to see grown-ups acting like them.
A last passage from this noteworthy chronicle also deserves mention. It is the first article that Guevara ever published under his name, and reflects both his objectivity and his passionate feelings toward the United States. His anti-Americanism was growing week by week. His comment about the “Yankee tourists’” incapacity to perceive the “subtleties that only a Latin American spirit can appreciate” is highly revealing. But common sense prevented him from taking his hostility to the extreme. He did not allow it to distort his vision of the inescapable facts inherent in any scientific investigation. Writing about the undeniable tragedy of Machu Picchu’s archaeological plunder, he remarked:
Bingham is not guilty, objectively speaking, nor are the Americans guilty, and a government unable to finance an expedition like that led by the discoverer of Machu Picchu is not guilty either. Is no one guilty then? Let us accept that. But where can one admire or study the treasures of the indigenous city? The answer is obvious: in the museums of the United States.17
From the Andean highlands the explorers roamed on to Lima and then the Peruvian Amazon. Their stay in the old capital of the viceroys made but a faint impression on the “antitourists,” except for Che’s brief romance with Zoraida Boluarte, a social worker at the leper colony run by the Communist physician Hugo Pesci.18 Boluarte obtained lodging for the travelers at the nun-administered colony, and invited them to her house for dinner almost daily. The correspondence between Zoraida and Ernesto would extend through 1955. Ernesto’s inscription to her on a photograph taken months later reveals his attachment to her, and his view of his own wanderings: “To Zoraida with the intention that she will always be ready to receive a couple of vagabonds floating in from anywhere and going anywhere else, always adrift with neither past nor future, and in the hope that she will never lose her compulsion to feed idlers.”19 The letters between them always use the formal “usted” already underlined in the correspondence with Tita Infante, and the tone does not suggest a very intimate relationship. But both during that trip and following Ernesto’s return to Lima at the end of 1953, there may have been some romantic involvement.*4
The two rovers then traveled up the Ucayali River to the leper colony of San Pablo, in the heart of the region where the Amazon begins its long, languid trip to the sea. Now deep in the humid and pestilent jungle, Ernesto suffered asthma attacks so withering he recounted them in unsparing detail. The tale is even more poignant when one realizes that they took place in rapid succession, a series of violent episodes in the river port of Iquitos, where the young man had to “spend the days in bed” and inject himself with adrenaline up to four times a day.20 If, in general, Che devoted little space to these bouts with asthma, Granado’s more mundane account reflects an almost daily series of attacks. Virtually every two pages he describes how his companion falls prey to respiratory crises, obliging the travelers to seek water and fire so as to sterilize the syringes and inject him with adrenaline or whatever was available.21 Che’s courage and tenacity during these episodes were equaled only by their frequency. Forced to bear the exhaustion and desperation they inflicted on him and the eternal difficulty of obtaining medicines, Che asked himself the question that would haunt him for the next fifteen years, and which he would always answer in the same way, except perhaps on the eve of his death, which would finally bring relief:
The immense vault my eyes could see in the star-filled sky twinkled joyously, as if replying affirmatively to the question rising from my lungs: is this worth it?22
The fortnight spent at the leper colony helped reestablish Guevara’s health, if only in contrast to the plight around him. Che was both repulsed and fascinated by the terrifying features of the centuries-old illness and stigma: “One of the most interesting spectacles we have seen thus far: an accordion player who had no fingers on his right hand, replacing them with some sticks tied to his wrist; the singer was blind and almost all of them had monstrous faces due to the nervous form of the disease. … A spectacle from a horror movie.”23
The two friends then rafted down the Amazon toward Colombia, entering at the sleepy, sultry village of Leticia. Their two weeks in Colombia passed without any major adventures except for a small run-in with the Bogota police, who mistreated them when Ernesto thoughtlessly pulled a knife out of his pocket to draw a map on the ground. He was not sorry to leave for Venezuela, regretting the repressive nature of the local dictatorship and the omnipresence of the police. Too bad about the “suffocating climate,” he pined, but “if the Colombians want to put up with it, that’s their privilege; we’re getting out as soon as possible.”24
Caracas seems to have been a stopover lacking in any great attraction. Still, Che’s continuing encounters with worlds, societies, races, and cultures totally alien to him until then kept producing strong reactions, as reflected in his comments on the population of African origin in Venezuela. This is not necessarily his first contact with “the blacks”: during his naval trips to Trinidad and Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, he had probably met descendants of the slaves kidnapped off the western coast of Africa centuries earlier. The impact of “otherness” is obvious, but his reaction—which might seem racist today, in a different cultural context—is surprising:
The blacks, the same magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their scant affection for bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new type of slave: the Portuguese. … Contempt and poverty unite them in their daily struggle, but their different ways of facing life set them completely apart: the indolent and dreamy black spends his few cents on any frivolity or amusement, while the European has a tradition of hard work and thrift.25
The voyagers were delayed in Caracas while obtaining a visa for the United States. Though Granado decided to stay on in Venezuela, an Argentine friend offered Ernesto the chance to fly back to his country in a plane carrying racehorses. But there was a small problem: he would have to go via Miami, and incur a month-long stopover. An Argentine journalist with United Press offered his good offices to obtain the visa from the United States Embassy, while bragging over dinner about his close ties to the U.S. mission. The journalist proceeded to sing the praises of the northern colossus, and lamented the way Latin Americans—and especially Argentine criollos—had wasted their opportunity: unable to accept their defeat of 1806, they had lost their chance to become part of the United States. The patriotic and increasingly anti-American young tourists, offended in their newfound Latin American identity, immediately rose to the occasion. Granado retorted indignantly that they might just as well have been undernourished, illiterate Indians and subjects of the British Crown. Guevara exclaimed, “Well, I’d rather be an illiterate Indian than an American millionaire.”26 The protest was both sincere and symptomatic: the greatness and the tragedy of his life may have lain in Che’s belief that all Latin Americans agreed with him, while in reality most probably share
d the simplistic views of the United Press journalist, and would have preferred to be American millionaires than illiterate Indians.
Che’s stay in Miami gave rise to scant comment in his diary. Except for a week in New York in 1964 attending the United Nations General Assembly, it would be his only exposure to life in the United States. Only the memories of Jimmy Roca, Chichina’s cousin, remain; she had given Che his address and fifteen dollars to buy her a bathing suit. According to Roca, with whom Che spent those weeks, “During that time we shared the limitations of the student life I was living. We passed the time drinking beer and eating French fries; we didn’t have enough for anything else.”27 As Che confessed to his friend Tita Infante when he returned to Buenos Aires, “Those were the hardest and most bitter days of my life.”28 There were many reasons—financial, ideological, personal—for this lament.
Che’s South American trip was a personal and political epiphany for him. But his own evaluation of the nature and magnitude of the change in his character and world view should not be taken at face value. Undoubtedly, Che believed that “the person who wrote these notes died when he set foot on Argentine soil once again; he who is organizing and polishing them, myself, is not me.”29 And it was doubtless during the trip that he decided to continue traveling, returning to Buenos Aires only to finish his studies and fulfill his promise to his mother. He planned to reunite with Granado in Venezuela as soon as he graduated, and work at the leper colony where his friend already had a job. While waiting in Miami for Chichina’s cousin’s plane to be repaired, Che reflected intensely upon his future. It did not lie in Argentina. Eight months and an eternity after having left, he returned to Buenos Aires on August 31, 1952, with his mind fully set on leaving again as soon as possible.
Several biographies and accounts of Che’s youth have constructed a legend ascribing his politicization and militancy to the South American trip. This does not quite coincide with Che’s own notes, however. His powerful attraction to things and people different or novel is undeniable, but it goes no further than that. The young wayfarer’s reactions to the indigenous population and culture of Latin America are still poor in political content and knowledge, as befits a twenty-five-year-old medical student without any political education or experience; he still misses many things. Just as he is formulating his thoughts and doubts about the Peruvian Indians’ apathy and misfortune, for example, revolution breaks out in Bolivia. The first rebellion of indigenous peasants in Latin America since the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, half a century before, is not mentioned in Che’s travel journal.30
His reflections on himself, his goals, his likes and dislikes throughout the trip are more perceptive and meaningful than his political and cultural analyses. He has decided to leave his country, family, career, and ex-girlfriend, but he has not yet found his destiny, nor does he even know where to look for it. The making of the hero and his myth has not yet begun. When Che pledges on his return to Buenos Aires that “I will be with the people; I will dip my weapons in blood and, crazed with fury, I will cut the throats of my defeated enemies. I can already feel my dilated nostrils savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood, of death to the enemy,”31 he is simply ranting and raving. He has not yet heard “the animal howl of the victorious proletariat”32 or met the people, events, and passions that will transform him. Two central ingredients which will lead to his metamorphosis and glory are still missing: Fidel Castro and the advent of rebellion and revolution.
Che’s homecoming was facilitated by his certainty that he would soon be leaving again. His parents and siblings received him with all the love and enthusiasm merited by this return of the prodigal son. But they soon realized that something had changed in the manner and bearing of the young man. The boyish face and thin frame were still there, but his expression showed his age. Ernesto moved into the house of his aunt Beatriz to study hard and pass the mountain of leftover courses still lacking for his degree. Aside from his impatience to set out once more, another incentive was driving him. Peronism, now in its declining years, had become more personalized and authoritarian. Beginning in 1954, university students would have to study justicialismo (the official name of Peronist doctrine) and receive “political education” in order to graduate. The a-Peronist Che had no intention of doing so. Furthermore, he experienced new problems with his military service (which might explain Perón’s incomprehensible comments quoted in the previous chapter). He knew that his deferment would run out upon graduation; he would have to appear once again before the conscription board. This time he took no chances. According to Granado, “he showered in freezing water before being examined by the medical commission, triggering an asthma attack, thanks to which he was declared unfit for military service.”33 As his mother would say years later:
If Comandante Che Guevara had had to spend a year doing the shopping for a first lieutenant’s wife or polishing the cartridge belt that his superior would never use … it would have been a shameful absurdity. But he was declared unfit. There is justice after all.34
Ernesto devoted himself to his studies, working fourteen hours a day, and presented his exams in four series: one subject in October, three in November, and ten in December. On July 12, 1953, he received his M.D. from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. Less than a month later, and barely a year after his return home, he boarded a train at the Retiro station with his childhood friend Carlos “Calica” Ferrer. The first stop would be Bolivia, on his way back to Venezuela.
Not much is known about the ten months of Ernesto Guevara’s last stay in Buenos Aires. In October he spoke with Chichina,35 and he saw her in November or December in Buenos Aires after learning that she was in town. The meeting seems to have brought no regrets or consequences; Chichina’s attitude was “cold and distant.”36 They last saw each other in Malagueño in early 1953. Some of the old passion was still there, as Chichina describes it: “More than once, we gazed at each other for a long time.”37
During those months, Che worked as an allergist at the laboratory of Dr. Salvador Pisani. His talent and dedication were such that the professor asked him to stay on as a researcher, even offering to pay him (a rare privilege, according to his colleagues).38 He brought as much intensity to his laboratory work as to his studies at home or the library. At the same time, according to his friends, “he was already speaking [with] great passion of Yankee imperialism and Latin American subjection, and the need for liberation.”39 He wrote few letters and hardly saw his childhood and university friends during this period; most of his spare time was spent composing his travel journal, transforming it into the text that would later be published. As José Aguilar recalls, describing a long walk with his friend on the eve of his departure, he was already very interested in politics, but his intention when he left for Venezuela was still “to work as a doctor.”40
Why did Che leave his country shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, never really to return? There is no single reason, but rather a series of factors: some attracting, others repulsing him; some were momentary and only skin-deep, others long-term and profoundly psychological. He himself says, “The only thing I did was to flee from all the things that were bothering me.”41
Another explanation is provided by Isaías Nougués, whose father received Ernesto and Calica Ferrer in La Paz:
He said his departure from Argentina was due to the Peronist dictatorship, which disgusted him, and that he preferred to leave than live with it. However, his companion Ferrer thought the true motive was his situation at home, where the strong—and unpleasant—character of his mother diluted and frustrated the personality of his father.”*5
For Jorge Ferrer, Calica’s brother, the main reason for Che’s new and definitive semi-exile was not any need to escape, but rather his desire to explore the world, understand the problems and realities of Latin America, and continue discovering the mysteries and enchantments of foreign cultures.42 Then there was his promise to Granado to work together in the lep
er colony. Further, Che’s fascination with the unknown continued to draw him afar, together with the constantly conflicting sentiments awakened by his life in the capital: his parents’ stop-and-go marriage and endless bickering; the political, existential, and family quandary that Peronism represented for him; his interest and distance vis-à-vis his profession; and his boredom with the lingering, placid monotony of Buenos Aires in mid-1953.
Leaving his family was painful for all, but especially for his mother. According to her daughter-in-law,
When he left, I remember that his mother Celia was sitting in an armchair; she took my hand and said to me, “Minucha, I am losing him forever, I will never see my son Ernesto again.” Then we went to the train station, Celia was there, I remember that when the train pulled out Celia ran, ran, ran along the platform, next to the train.”43
Che was leaving behind an Argentina up-ended by seven years of Peronist rule and an entire decade under the general’s influence. There had been great changes in the country: a growing sense of dignity among workers, the rise of an industrial bourgeoisie, a new international preeminence—no longer based upon polo players or the tangos of Gardel, but upon its (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to find an intermediate position in the bipolarity of the Cold War. But things were drifting in a new direction. After Evita’s death, Perón’s alignment with sectors that had previously opposed his views and policies—foreign capital, the ranching oligarchy, the United States—bought him more time, but certainly not the sympathy of his old enemies. And it undermined his grassroots backing.
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