Back On The Road by Ernesto Che Guevara (original) (raw)

Bolivia, July 1953
As we walked through the hills of La Quiaca, I mentally went over the most recent events: my departure, with so many people and a few tears thrown in; the strange looks of the people in second class at the sight of so many fine clothes, leather coats etc, saying goodbye to a couple of odd-looking snobs loaded down with baggage. We [Guevara and friend Carlos "Calica" Ferrer] were two separate wills moving out through the American continent, not knowing the exact aim of their quest nor in which direction lies their objective.

La Paz is the Shanghai of the Americas. The widest range of adventurers of all nationalities vegetate and prosper in the midst of a colourful mestiza city that is leading the country to its destiny. The "well-to-do", people complain bitterly about the new importance conferred on Indians and mestizos .

But no one denies that it is necessary to end the state of affairs symbolised by the power of the three tin-mine bosses, and young people think this has been a step forward in the struggle to make people and wealth more equal.

On the evening of July 15 there was a torchlight procession. It was long and boring as a demonstration, but interesting because the way people expressed their support was by firing off a Mauser or a "Piri-pipi", the wonderful repeater rifle.

The next day, guilds, high schools and trade unions marched past in a parade that never seemed to end, making the Mausers sing out rather often. It was a picturesque but not virile demonstration. The weary gait and the general lack of enthusiasm robbed it of vital energy; what was missing, said those in the know, were the energetic faces of the miners.

We visited Bolsa Negra, taking the road south up some 5,000 metres, then descended to the valley at the bottom of which are the mine management and (on one of its slopes) the actual seam.

To the back stands Illimani, serene and majestic; to the front, snow-white Mururata; and in front of us, the mine buildings looking like glasses of something that has been thrown from the hillside and remained here at the whim of the irregular terrain. But the mine could not be heard throbbing. It lacked the energy of the workers who daily tear their load of materials from the earth, but who were in La Paz defending the Revolution on this August 2, the Day of the Indian and of the Agrarian Reform.

The miners arrived in the evening, stony-faced and wearing coloured plastic helmets that made them look like warriors from other lands.

Another day, I went to the ministry of peasant affairs, where they treated me with the utmost courtesy. It is a strange place: masses of Indians from various groups in the Altiplano wait their turn to be given an audience. Each group, dressed in typical costume, has a leader or indoctrinator who speaks to them in their own native language. When they go in, the employees sprinkle them with DDT.

On reaching Puno, I had two of my books confiscated at the last customs post: El hombre en la Union Sovietica , and a ministry of peasant affairs publication which they loudly accused of being "red, red, red". After some banter with the main policeman I agreed to look for a copy of the publication in Lima. We slept in a little hotel near the railway station.

When we were about to climb with all our luggage into our second-class compartment, a secret policeman suggested with an air of intrigue that we go into first class and travel free to Cuzco with the badges belonging to two of them. Of course we agreed to this and had ourselves a comfortable ride, giving the two guys what the second-class tickets would have cost.

Letter to his mother Cuzco, 22 [August 1953]
You supply the epigraph, mum, Calica keeps cursing the filth and, whenever he treads on one of the innumerable turds lining the streets, he looks at his dirty shoes instead of at the sky or a cathedral outlined in space. He does not smell the intangible and evocative matter of which Cuzco is made, but only the odour of stew and excrement. It's a question of temperament.

All this apparent incoherence - I'm going, I went, I didn't go, etc - corresponded to the necessity that they should think us to be outside Bolivia, for a revolt was expected at any moment and we had the earnest intention to stay and see it at close range. To our disappointment it did not happen, and all we saw were displays of strength by a government which, despite everything I am told, seems to be solid enough. I had half a mind to go and work in a mine, but I was not willing to stay more than one month and as I was offered a minimum of three I didn't stick to the idea.

I don't tell you of my future life because I don't know anything about it.

Letter to [his former girl friend] Tita Infante Lima, September 3
I'll tell you that in La Paz I forgot about my diet and all that nonsense, and that nevertheless I was fine during the month and a half I spent there. Bolivia is a country that has given a really major example to the American continent. We saw the exact setting of the struggles, the marks left by bullets, and even the remains of a man killed in the revolution and recently discovered in a cornice where the lower part of his body had been blown away by one of those bands of dynamite they wore around the waist. They certainly fought without holding back.

As to my future life, I know little about where I'll be heading and even less when. We have been thinking of going to Quito and then to Bogota and Caracas, but we don't know about the way in between. I've recently arrived here in Lima from Cuzco.

I never tire of urging you to visit it if you can, and even more so Machu-Picchu. You won't regret it, I assure you.

If one day you change your tune and want to see the world, remember this friend who for you would risk his life to help as best he can when the moment comes. A hug. Until it occurs to you - and until I arrive where it occurs to you,
Ernesto

Letter to his mother Guayaquil [October 21 1953]
I am writing you this letter about my new position as a total adventurer. Your masterly suit, pearl of your dreams, died a heroic death in a second-hand shop, and the same happened to all the unnecessary items in my luggage, which has now shrunk considerably for the benefit (I fondly hope) of economic stability... After much toing and froing and quite a lot of calls, plus a discreet bribe, we have the visa to Panama. Ernesto

Journal: Panama
Tomorrow I am to give a lecture on allergy, mixed together with something about the organisation of the Faculty of Medicine in Buenos Aires. I met Don Santiago Pi Suñez, the physiologist, and in another context we met Dr Carlos Guevara Moreno, who struck me as an intelligent demagogue, very knowledgeable about mass psychology but not about the dialectics of history. He is very nice and friendly and treated us with deference. He gives the impression that he knows what he is doing and where he is going, but he won't take a revolution beyond what is strictly necessary to keep the masses content.

I paid a lightning visit to Palo Seco. There were a couple of American Jews who have been living there for 20 years; they don't seem very knowledgeable, but they devote themselves wholeheartedly to the sick.

The Pachuca (so called because it transports pachucos - down-and-outs) left Golfito at one in the afternoon, with us on board. We took a lot of food with us for the two-day voyage. In the afternoon the sea became a little rough: the ship began to fly around. Nearly all the passengers started vomiting. I stayed outside with a negress who had picked me up - Socorro, as horny as a toad, with 16 years spent on her back.

We have a great day, chatting with a Dominican short-story writer and revolutionary, Juan Bosch, a literary man with clear ideas and left-wing tendencies. We didn't speak about literature - just about politics. He described Batista as a thug surrounded by thugs...

Guatemala
I met a strange gringo [Professor Harold White] who writes stuff about Marxism and has it translated into Spanish. The go-between is Hilda Gadea. So far we've made $25. I am giving English-Spanish lessons to the gringo.

The only good thing today was a serious chat with Señora Helena de Holst,1 who is close on many points to the communists and struck me as a very fine person. In the evening a talk with Mujica1 and Hilda, and a little adventure with a plumpish schoolteacher. From now on, I'll try to get a little closer to the political reality of Guatemala.

A quiet Sunday, until I was asked in the evening to attend one of the Cubans who was complaining of bad abdominal pains.1 I called an ambulance and we waited in the hospital until 2.00, when the doctor decided it was necessary to wait before operating and we left him under observation . . .

I felt very small when I heard the Cubans making grand assertions with total calmness. I can make a speech 10 times more objective and without banalities; I can do it better and I can convince the public that I am saying something true. But I don't convince myself, whereas the Cubans do.

On Sunday we went to the Children's City at San José Pinula.

Letter to his mother April 1954

Mother
What I don't want to miss is a visit to the ruins of El Peten. There is a wonderful city there, Tical, and a much less important one, Piedras Negras, where the art of the Mayas nevertheless reached an extraordinary level. I am sure of two things. First, if I reach the genuinely creative period of life around the age of 35, my exclusive occupation, or anyway my main one, will be nuclear physics, genetics or another area that combines some of the most interesting parts of subjects with which I am familiar. Second, the American continent will be the theatre of my adventures much more than I would previously have thought. Naturally I shall visit the rest of the world.

In the morning I go to the health department and work a few hours at the laboratory; in the afternoon I go and study at a library or museum; in the evening I read medicine or something else and attend to domestic tasks. I drink maté when there is any, and I engage in endless discussions with the comrade Hilda Gadea. She has a heart of platinum, at least. Her help is felt in everything to do with my daily life.

Letter to his mother 10 May 1954

Mother
I think of the future with pleasant feelings; my residence permit is going ahead. I reckon that in a month from now I'll be able to go to the cinema without being trailed by some good-natured fellow.

I could become very rich in Guatemala, but by the low method of ratifying my title, opening a clinic and specialising in allergies. To do that would be the most horrible betrayal of the two "Is" struggling inside me: the socialist and the traveller.

Letter to his mother 20 June 1954

Dear Mother
Five or six days ago the first pirate aircraft from Honduras flew over Guatemala, without doing anything. On the next and the following days they bombed a number of military installations in Guatemala, and two days ago a warplane machine-gunned the lower parts of the city and killed a girl of two. The incident served to unite all Guatemalans behind their government and all those who, like myself, came here attracted by the country.

The Yankees have finally dropped the good-guy mask that Roosevelt gave them and are now committing outrages in these parts. There is a real climate of struggle. I myself have been assigned to the emergency medical service and have also enrolled in the youth brigades to receive military instruction for any eventuality. I'll send news as soon as I can. Chau

Journal: Guatemala
I'll soon be safe and sound in the [Argentine] embassy, because I have already asked for and been granted asylum. The main event was the sound of continuous gunfire from dawn on Monday.

Letter to Aunt Beatriz July 22 1954

Dear Beatriz
It's all been great fun here, with shooting, bombing, speeches and other touches that have broken the monotony in which I was living. I leave in a few days (I don't know how many) for Mexico, where I am thinking of making a fortune by selling little whales to hang around the neck.

Anyway I'll make sure I go the next time something breaks out, and I'm sure it will (if there is a next time) because the Yankees can't keep going without defending democracy somewhere or other. Big hugs from your nephew-adventurer.

Journal
Today, Sunday, I have spent my time saying farewell to Guatemala, with a little outing to San Juan Sacatepèquez, a lot of passionate embraces and a little quickie. Tomorrow I'll take my leave of the people I want to say goodbye to, and on Tuesday morning I'll start the great Mexican adventure.

Mexico
I have a photographer's job in the parks, so I'll see what comes of it. I'm establishing myself at the hospitals. I've moved to a decent room in the city centre, for which I pay 100 pesos a month.

Right now my intellectual life is non-existent, except for a little that I read at night and a few drops of daily study. I see Hilda tomorrow.

Letter to his mother

My dear Mother
I think the best thing that could happen would be for me to get a little unofficial job as a country doctor near the capital; that would enable me to devote my time more easily to medicine for a few months. I am doing it because I was perfectly aware of how much I learned about allergy.

The Communists do not have the same sense of friendship that you have, but it is as strong as or even stronger than yours. I have seen this quite clearly, and in the hecatomb that Guatemala became after the fall - where everyone expected only to fend for himself - the Communists kept their faith and comradeship alive and are the only group still working there.

I think they deserve respect, and sooner or later I will join the party myself. What most prevents me from doing it right now is that I have a huge desire to travel in Europe, and I would not be able to do that if I was subject to rigid discipline. So, Mother, until Paris.

Letter to his mother

My dear Mother
I am doing two research projects and may start on a third - all in connection with allergy - and I am collecting material for a little book that will appear (if ever) in a couple of years under the pretentious title "The Function of the Doctor in Latin America". Although I don't know much medicine, I do have Latin America sized up. As to the changes in my thinking which, as you see it, are becoming sharper, I assure you that they won't last long. There are two ways of arriving at what you so much fear: a positive way of direct persuasion, and a negative way of complete disenchantment. I arrived by the second way, but immediately convinced myself that it was necessary to continue by the first. The manner in which the gringos treat the American continent (remember that the gringos are Yankees) aroused my growing indignation, but at the same time I studied the theoretical explanation for what they do and found that it was scientific. Then came Guatemala and all those things that are hard to relate. I can't say at what moment I stopped reasoning and acquired something like faith, because the road was quite long and there was a lot of turning back.

Letter to his mother September 24 1955
Dear Mother
In time the Communist Party will be put out of circulation. Who knows what will meanwhile have become of your wandering son. Perhaps he will have decided to set up shop in his native country , or to begin a life of real struggle.

Perhaps one of the bullets so common in the Caribbean will put an end to my days (this is neither idle talk nor a concrete possibility: it's just that a lot of bullets fly around in these parts). Perhaps I'll simply keep wandering long enough to complete a solid education and take the pleasures I have awarded myself for this life, before seriously devoting myself to the pursuit of my ideal. Things develop with tremendous speed, and no one can predict where they will be next year and why.

I don't know if you got the formal announcement of my marriage and the [imminent] arrival of an heir. [He and Hilda Gadea married at Tepoztlan on August 1955.]

Chau. Kisses to all the family, and greetings from Hilda.

Journal: Mexico
The last days of the year are approaching and it looks as if some economic change is shaping up. I keep on with my scientific research, working on digested food and preparing to work on blood electrophoresis. At the children's hospital, they want me to do some paid experimental work. My studies are at a standstill. I haven't made any really worthwhile friendship, either intellectual or sexual.

As always, Hilda got angry because I didn't want to go with her to a party; I spent New Year's Eve on watch. I am now established at the general hospital and working quite hard, although in a somewhat disorderly fashion. The food is rather bad for me: if I eat it I get asthma; if I don't I go hungry. I'm getting to know the area surrounding Mexico City, together with Hilda. We've been to see some magnificent Rivera frescoes. Some good and some bad things have been happening.

As a sporting event, I should mention the ascent of the lower side of Popocatepetl by an ad hoc group of valiant mountaineers (which included myself). It is wonderful and I would like to do it again fairly often. It was an easy climb. But I couldn't take any proper photos because everything was covered in mist.

A political event was that I met Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary. He is a young, intelligent guy, very sure of himself and extraordinarily audacious; I think we hit it off well.2 2

A scientific event was the appearance of my first solo publication in medicine, in the journal Alergia: Investigaciones cutaneas con antigenos alimentarios semidigeridos ; passable.

Since February 15 1956 I am a father: Hilda Beatriz Guevara is my first-born. I belong to the Roca del CE group of Mexico [he was imprisoned with Fidel Castro in Mexico shortly afterwards]. I started work as a cameraman for a small company. My plans for the future are pretty vague, but I hope to finish a couple of research projects. This may be an important year for my future. I've given up hospitals.

Letter to his mother [apparently from prison] Mexico City, July 15 19562
I am not Christ or a philanthropist, Mother; 2I fight for the things in which I believe, with the weapons in my reach, and I try to leave the other lying flat instead of letting myself be nailed to a cross. They will release Fidel Castro tomorrow, the head of the Movement. If this happens as they said, there would be just two of us left behind bars.

If I ever detect in myself that the sacred flame has given way to a timid votive flicker, the least I can then do is vomit over my own shit. As to your appeal for moderate egoism, that is, for common lily-livered individualism, I must tell you that I have done a lot to wipe him out - I mean, not exactly that unfamiliar spineless type, but the other bohemian type, unconcerned about his neighbour and imbued with a sense of self- sufficiency deriving from an awareness (mistaken or not) of my own strength. During these prison days and the period of training that preceded them, I have identified totally with my comrades in the cause.

I remember a phrase that once seemed to me idiotic or at least bizarre, referring to such a total identification among the embers of a fighting body that the very concept of the "I" disappeared and gave way to the concept of the "we". It was a communist morality and may, of course, appear to be a doctrinaire exaggeration, but in reality it was (and is) a beautiful thing to be able to feel that stirring of "we".

It is true that, after I have set wrongs [right] in Cuba, I'll go somewhere else; and it is also true that I'd be really done for if I were shut up in some bureaucratic office or allergy clinic. When all is said and done, though, it seems to me that this pain - the pain of a mother entering old age who wants her son alive - is a feeling that should be respected, a feeling that I have a duty to heed. I would like to see you, not only to comfort you but to comfort myself for my sporadic and unconfessable yearnings. Mother, I kiss you and promise to be with you if there is nothing new.
Your son, el Che

Letter to his mother Mexico City, [probably November 15 1956]

Dear Mother
My long-term aim is to see something of Europe, if possible to live there, but that is getting more and more difficult. With the kind of illness I have, it seems to keep getting worse.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

Now that is all over. The only clear thing is that the 10 years of wandering look like being more (unless unforeseen circumstances put an end to all wandering), but it will be very different from the kind I imagined. Now, when I get to a new country, it won't be to look around and visit museums or ruins, but also (because that still interests me) to join the people's struggle.
Chau

Letter to his mother (approximately October 1956)

Dear Mama
I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.

Previously I devoted myself for better or worse to medicine, and spent my spare time informally studying Saint Karl [Marx]. The new stage in my life requires me to change the order: now Saint Karl comes first; he is the axis and will remain so for however many years the spheroid has room for me on its outer mantle; medicine is a more or less trivial diversion. Next comes the tough part, The signs are good. They augur victory. But if they are wrong I think that I'll be able to say like a poet you don't know: "I shall carry beneath the earth only the sorrow of an unfinished song."

To avoid pre-mortem pathos, this letter will appear when things are really getting hot, and then you will know that your son, in a sun-drenched land of the Americas, is cursing himself for not having studied enough surgery to help a wounded man, and cursing the Mexican government that did not let him perfect his already respectable marksmanship so that he could knock over puppets with greater agility. The struggle will be with our backs to the wall, as in the hymns, until victory or death.

Again kisses, with all the affection of a farewell that refuses to be total.
Your son

Letter to Tita Infante [approximately November 1956]

Dear Tita,
It's so long since I wrote to you last that I have lost the confidence which comes from regular communication. First, my little Indian girl is already nine months old, quite cute, very lively, and so on. The second and main thing is that, a while ago now, some Cuban revolutionaries asked me to help the movement with my medical "knowledge" and I accepted. I went to a ranch in the mountains to organise the physical training, to vaccinate the soldiers etc, but I got unlucky and the police rounded everyone up.

As I was not OK with my papers, I ate up a couple of months in prison. If things go well, I'll head for Cuba. Of course, all the scientific projects have gone to the devil and now I'm an avid reader only of Charlie and Freddie [Marx and Engels]. Maybe it would interest you to know that my married life has almost completely broken down, and will break down for good next month when my wife goes to visit her family in Peru. The break-up has left a certain bitterness, because she was a loyal comrade and her revolutionary conduct was irreproachable during my forced vacations, but our minds were too far apart and I live with this anarchic spirit that dreams of new horizons as soon as I have "the cross of your arms and the land of your soul", as old Pablo [Neruda] said.2

As always, a fond hug from your friend Ernesto

The following month Guevara joined the expeditionary force that set out on board the ship Granma to liberate Cuba. He subsequently helped Fidel Castro overthrow the dictator Batista. Guevara was a minister in the Cuban government from 1961 to 1965 and became a key figure of the revolutionary movements of the 1960s. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967.