this was my last book of 2025 and it genuinely let me down. i feel like i'm missing a fundamental excitement about this book that all other reviews have had, but maybe because this is one of my first real impressions of guevara.
the whole thing is che and his buddy meandering through south america with zero direction. my entire view of che took a serious hit, contrary to what the back cover's glowing quotes suggest, i didn't find this book enlightening about who che actually became.
che and alberto spend months essentially bumming off people objectively poorer than themselves to bankroll their little adventure. both are medical students, and they weaponize this fact constantly - flashing credentials to score free housing, meals, and rides. apparently this trip was "foundational to his ideology," but if he's supposedly getting radicalized while writing this diary, i don't see it! the journey itself is genuinely impressive as an accomplishment, but he doesn't seem to learn a thing from it!
there are moments of pan-americanism, but it's watered down as hell! i wanted MORE. the actually interesting parts are when how they got around, the people they met, all these leprosy hospitals scattered through the south american countryside. THAT'S the content i signed up for. instead 30% of this book is his motorcycle breaking down, 50% food/housing/transportation panhandling, che being completely oblivious to his own behavior
take this gem:
One of the particularly friendly mechanics from the garage asked me to dance with his wife because he'd been mixing his drinks and was not feeling very well. His wife was hot and clearly in the mood and, full of Chilean wine, I took her by the hand and tried to steer her outside. She followed me meekly but then noticed her husband watching us and told me she would stay behind. I was in no state to listen to reason and we began to argue in the middle of the dance floor. I started pulling her toward one of the doors, while everybody was watching, and then she tried to kick me, and as I was pulling her she lost her balance and fell crashing to the floor. Running back toward the village, pursued by a furious swarm of dancers, Alberto loudly mourned the loss of the wine her husband might have bought us.
bro, this man's smoking hot wife was sooo into me!! she even kicked me!!
We are drawn more to the simple sailors than to that small middle class which, whether rich or not, is too attached to the memory of what it once was to allow themselves the luxury of associating with two penniless travelers. They have the same crass ignorance as any other man, but the small victories they have achieved in life have gone to their heads, and their dull opinions are delivered with even more arrogance simply because they themselves have tendered them.
the larp hurts me so bad my eyes are gonna roll back into my freaking skull. che is a doctor, a very well-respected profession to the point they end up on a town's newspaper simply by existing there for a few days. the way he romanticizes his self-inflicted poverty is so transparent it hurts. he and alberto are constantly extracting actual charity from people with nothing while lying and manipulating their way through south america.
that said, there's a speech at the end he gave to medical students in cuba, eight years after the trip and post-revolution and dude comes across as articulate and thoughtful. shame he didn't have that energy earlier!
overall: a slog. but i did walk away thinking i should probably be a bit more spontaneous. unfortunate bonus points that he's attractive and there's photos inside