Diarios de Motocicleta

As I listen to "El Condor Pasa":

Tonight, after making several attempts to gather friends, I finally walked up to the Hi-Pointe (2-3 art cinemas within walking distance, in a city where you really need a car--priceless!) to see The Motorcycle Diaries. I've been eager to see this film for quite some time, in a desire
a) to relive some Bolivian experiences through the film reel
b) to enjoy a good road trip buddy film epic
c) enjoy the vast landscape that is Latin America
d) stir up some social justice feelings within me again
e) to get a (biased) history lesson.

The film was quite excellent, at times incredibly moving; at others, laugh out loud funny watching the buddy antics of Ernesto "Che" Gueverra and his good friend Alberto Granado. A few thoughts to share, besides a strong recommendation to go view the film:

1. Cinematography was quite satisfying. Authentic music that sounded exactly like the tracks I'm laying down on my DVD to enshrine my own Bolivian experiences accompanied a vivid, fluid portrait of the Andeand and Patagonian landscape. Even more impressive, in an effort to place a stronger emphasis on social justice issues, there were many individual portraits of struggling, impoverished citizens shot in a wavering black and white that seemed like an old still photograph (yet were not actually still portraits). The grayscale, in my opinion, better captured the pained, hard expressions of the people than full color. When these ran right into real portraits captured from Che's diaries at the end of the film set against the credits, the full effect really hit home.

2. The film is a little biased towards a pro-communist stance. The cult of Che rises again! Che is characterized as a young Quixote, awakening to the immense injustice in Latin America that still runs rampant to this day. An idealistic dreamer, he starts to grow angry and wants to fight, to rebel, to change. Some efforts are pragmatic and positive, others effective and symbolic (the river scene). Later in life, however, he became a bit of a demagogic ideologue.

I'm enrolled in a class right now, perhaps the first real political science class I've taken at this school (I love all the profs, but Prof. Rosas just absolutely commands respect), and we recently covered the Cuban Revolution. In the end, Che was a restless, wandering soul (look at this movie!)--something I can feel a kinship with. However, this meant he was not really cut out for government, and so he only stayed in his post in post-revolutionary Cuban for about a year, before taking off to apply focos theory guerilla warfare across the globe in his efforts to spread communism. Funny thing is that he and ol' Fidel didn't even start out Communist--they started out wanting to right injustices, and they saw the US as a fundamental cause of these injustices and the enemy. Well, in a Cold War world, that pretty much threw them into the arms of the USSR.

Coming back from that tangent--ultimately, Che never really had the ability to distinguish between the handful of real democratic governments in Latin America vs. the dictatorships (whether in name or all but in name)--everything was NOT Communist and ergo, a revolution must be started. Yet a revolution alone will never bring justice and peace--you must build afterwards. Same deal with Iraq and Afghanistan today--Want democracy? It's hard work--you have to stay until things are stable. Constantly starting revolutions (or wars) won't do anything but create havens for instability, terrorism, and further misrule and deeper injustices. Institutions--especially those for healthcare, law enforcement, and education--must be reeestablished according to democratic principles. If you're going to go around blowing up windmill-giants, you should build better mills in their place when you're done--and make sure the people know how to operate them!

Che was killed in Bolivia. Shot by the military and tracked down with the help of the CIA. A decade earlier, Guatemala and Bolivia both held revolutions. The Guatemalan one was squashed with the help of US aid (we had many business interests there), but importantly, Guatemala was where Che met Fidel. That scene plays out shortly after the conclusion of the film, perhaps a year or two later. In Bolivia, the MNR was triumphant and enacted a series of land reforms for the people's benefit. There were coups later in the century and even years of military rule, but at the time, I believe Che was basically trying to undermine the MNR, or at least their still existant important reforms. Bad choice. Today Bolivia remains sadly one of the most impoverished countries on the continent, but Communism is not the answer. A variety of sweeping reforms ARE needed, but Che chose poorly.

3. Sadly, I felt like the world this film was trying to express could have been shot in the Latin America of today. Granted, it WAS shot in the modern world--but not much has changed. The scenes from Peru, with the abundance of impoverished Quechua peasants, recalled many scenes of rural Bolivia. And the minese--the bane of Andean existence! On a lighter note, the abundance of maté drinking, empanada eating, and charango playing were fond recollections and welcome additions to see in the film--I'm glad to have been welcomed into this small corner of Latin culture.

Closing thoughts for now: vivid portrait, a bit flawed but beautiful nonetheless. Adventurous, bold, sprawling, political, thought-provoking epic of quixotic youthful angst (of which I hope I still have a fair dose of!). Strong recollections of Easy Rider (road trip see the country journey), Butch Cassidy (buddy flick, etc), and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenannce (the motorcycle + the deeper rhetoric, Zen v. Marxism). I heart the Andes (just getting ready for I heart Huckabees next week!).