Like most people who enjoy a good movie, I loved the movie Motorcycle Diaries. It was brilliantly filmed and really showed the poverty, inequality and exploitation that went on in South America, and continues to happen throughout the world. It was inspiring and challenging to watch.
My problem came when a friend of mine loaned me Che's book Guerrilla Warfare. It was a side of him that was definitely not shown in the movie. This man, who in the movie is so Jesus-like it makes on of my friends sick, is the same man who in his writings explains how to make moltov cocktails, encourages indoctrination, and blatantly exploits the very people he wishes to help by telling his soldiers to take from the peasantry and pay them with "hope bonds," which can be used once (or if) the revolutionaries win.
My problem with Motorcycle Diaries is that it is taken out of context from the man's life. We are shown a wonderful, Jesus-like man, who we are in the end told that he was murdered by the CIA. Now I have absolutely no respect for the CIA and do not wish to stand up for their typical ignorant actions, but I would have to say that Che looks a little too much like a martyr in this light. I do think he stood for something good, but he took on an ends justify the means sort of mentality that was no good for anybody. I would have liked to have seen a fuller picture of the man, or else leave off the ending of the movie, which is way out of context.
Peace,
Matt
Currently Reading: Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam
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