Dreams are dangerous things

Che Guevera is perhaps the most enigmatic man to grace the Earth in the twentieth century, which could be why his image is so popular. Unfortunately, his image is popular in two different ways: one as a Communist hero of South America, and one as a Western-culture-like martyr that is easily exploitable in Capitalist means. Witness the great publicity, for example, that followed Che's exhumation in the 1990's, or the film The Motorcycle Diaries that was based on Che's first voyage across the continent. How does one reconcile these views?

Patrick Symmes attempts this very thing with his memoir/travel diary/history of Latin America: Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevera Legend. In what is the most seamless piece of nonfiction I've read recently, Symmes blends Latin American history, primary sources about Che (including Che's own diaries, and his travel companion's), and Symmes's own journey across the continent. That's right: to complete his search for Che (or rather, to ignite it), Symmes follows Che's first journey nearly to the letter -- by motorcycle, through Chile and Argentina and Bolivia and Peru, until he ends up in Cuba at Che's funeral.

And so Symmes feels the call, like so many others, to Be Like Che. This in itself, we find, is not a proposition to be taken lightly. Che himself took a dangerous, self-contradictory route to become Like Che, the revolutionary he would evolve into. As we progress through Chasing Che, Symmes begins to subtly deconstruct the idea of becoming a radical. We find that Che had all he could have wanted in his hometown. As a child of the middle class, he could have pursued his passion to work in medicine. Instead, following his travels, he chose to try to liberate the entirety of the lower classes of South America from their poverty... which led to disastrous results.

The final images of this book are haunting. Fidel Castro uses Che, and the capitalist propaganda surrounding him, as a means to get the Cuban peoples to follow his will. People who do not attend Che's funeral are checked off on a list, and in a communist regime, they may face consequences later. Che, the symbol of hope for the poor, is being used to enforce a regime.

And how much of a symbol is he, really? Che does not belong in South America. This contradiction has been apparent to me, subconsciously, since seeing The Motorcycle Diaries. Like the Spanish conquistadors, Che was out of his element. Many of the people Patrick Symmes meets on his travels have never heard of Che. In return, Che's final months on this earth are furthering his own image in history. He becomes a coward, retreating to a cabin.

Symmes doesn't belong in South America, either; nor is he Che. This quickly becomes apparent to both him and the readers. The only way Symmes can verify himself is to take his own journey, and meet his own people. While Che is the thread that links everyone, and starts many of his conversations, Symmes's efforts to be Che are not his own. Symmes's writing really shines when his voyage becomes his own, and the excerpts from Che's journals mirror his journey, instead of the other way around.

Ultimately, though, Symmes's alienation from the people of South America gives us the view of Che that Symmes set out to find: as a soul who has lost track of his passion. And yet, despite the terrible consequences that resulted from Che's revolutions, and the guerillas that have plagued South America for decades, Che was a symbol of hope for a lot of people. Misguided though that idolatry may be, it explains why even the United States could not avoid it; the US is, after all, the land of dreams-- even dangerous ones.