Deep Politics Forum

Che Guevara's motorcycle companion, Alberto Granado, dies at 88

Man who made journey across Latin America, which was immortalised in The Motorcycle Diaries, has died

Cherry Wilson
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 5 March 2011 22.55 GMT

Alberto Granado, close friend of Che Guevara. Photograph: Javier Galeano/AP

Argentinian Alberto Granado, who travelled with Ernesto "Che" Guevara on a journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalised on-screen in The Motorcycle Diaries, has died in Cuba aged 88.

Their road trip awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political convictions that would turn him into one of the iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century.

The two travellers both kept diaries, which were used as background for the 2004 movie, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. Granado was born on 8 August 1922 in Córdoba, Argentina, and befriended Guevara as a child. As young medical students, they witnessed deep poverty across the continent, particularly Chile, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela, and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a lasting impression on the pair.

They parted ways in Venezuela, where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami, then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies.

Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro in toppling the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day in 1959.

Granado visited Cuba at Guevara's invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year, teaching biochemistry at Havana University. He had lived in Cuba ever since.

In his biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was "barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose, but he sported a barrel chest and a footballer's sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humor and a taste for wine, girls, literature and rugby".

According to Cuban television, Granado requested for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Guevara was captured and killed by soldiers in Bolivia [and American CIA Operatives] in 1967 as he tried to foment revolution in the Andean nation.

Finally got a round tuit and watched the movie "Motorcycle Diaries" tonight.

Very sad news but not unexpected at his age of course. Beautiful movie.

"Beautiful" is such an incomplete concept for that movie. It makes me want to go in search of critical reviews, the books themselves, etc.

The one thing a wide-screen portal can do is to begin to live toward the inherent promise of "transportation across distance and culture" that "tele-"vision is, if only for the vistas of the world, perhaps for the gulfs between people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcy...ries_(film)

... "the initial seed of cognitive dissonance and radicalization within Guevara, who ostensibly would later view armed revolution as a way to challenge the continent's endemic economic inequalities." [Yes, it's pertinent to today...]

"Every generation needs a journey story; every generation needs a story about what it is to be transformed by geography, what it is to be transformed by encounters with cultures and people that are alien from yourself...."

""We were re-enacting a journey that was done 50 years ago, and what's surprising is that the social problems of Latin America are the same. Which is heartbreaking in a way, but it also makes you feel how important it is to tell the story."
Gael García Bernal [11]"

"The Motorcycle Diaries may not provide any satisfactory answers as to how a 23-year-old medical student went on to become arguably the most famous revolutionary of the latter half of the 20th Century, but it has an undeniable charm in that it imbues the memories of youth with a sense of altruism and purity which are complemented by the scenery. It's an incomplete portrait to be sure, but it's a gorgeous depiction of two best friends riding unknowingly into the history books."
The Daily Telegraph [3]

The New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott, wrote that "in Mr. Salles's hands what might have been a schematic story of political awakening becomes a lyrical exploration of the sensations and perceptions from which a political understanding of the world emerges."[17]


The soundtrack:

http://www.rhapsody.com/album/Alb.6488973


The trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u0U3dbVMHk


The online movie:

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_u...YCbvupbm7w


The closing credits are overlaid on original photos from the real journey of Alberto and Ernesto.


A Study Guide with questions (provide your own salt & pepper):
http://e-courses.cerritos.edu/tstolze/St...iaries.pdf


The Book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcy...ries_(book)


""We are looking for the bottom part of the town. We talk to many beggars. Our noses inhale attentively the misery."
Guevara's entry on Valparaiso, Chile


In reference to his experience in Chile, Guevara also writes: "The most important effort that needs to be done is to get rid of the uncomfortable 'Yankee-friend'. It is especially at this moment an immense task, because of the great amount of dollars they have invested here and the convenience of using economical pressure whenever they believe their interests are being threatened."


Guevara's political consciousness began to stir as he and Granado moved into mining country.[6] They visited Chuquicamata copper mine, the world's largest open-pit mine and the primary source of Chile's wealth. While getting a tour of the mine he asked how many men died in its creation. At the time it was run by U.S. mining monopolies of Anaconda and Kennecott and thus was viewed by many as a symbol of "imperialist gringo domination".[6] A meeting with a homeless communist couple in search of mining work made a particularly strong impression on Guevara, who wrote: "By the light of the single candle ... the contracted features of the worker gave off a mysterious and tragic air ... the couple, frozen stiff in the desert night, hugging one another, were a live representation of the proletariat of any part of the world."

In reference to the oppression against the Communist party in Chile, which at the time was outlawed, Guevara said: "It's a great pity, that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the communist vermin,' is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, 'bread for the poor,' was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope. Needless to say, workers at Chuquicamata were in a living Hell."

"...we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only very faintly not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice."
Guevara, aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean

"How long this present order, based on the absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it's time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."

"It is at times like this, when a doctor is conscious of his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a change to prevent the injustice of a system in which only a month ago this poor woman was still earning her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. In circumstances like this, individuals in poor families who can't pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, consequently, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them."
Guevara while treating a peasant woman dying of tuberculosis

On October 9th, 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was put to death by Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives. His execution remains a historic and controversial event; and thirty years later, the circumstances of his guerrilla foray into Bolivia, his capture, killing, and burial are still the subject of intense public interest and discussion around the world.


As part of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project is posting a selection of key CIA, State Department, and Pentagon documentation relating to Guevara and his death. This electronic documents book is compiled from declassified records obtained by the National Security Archive, and by authors of two new books on Guevara: Jorge Castañeda's Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (Knopf), and Henry Butterfield Ryan's The Fall of Che Guevara (Oxford University Press). The selected documents, presented in order of the events they depict, provide only a partial picture of U.S. intelligence and military assessments, reports and extensive operations to track and "destroy" Che Guevara's guerrillas in Bolivia; thousands of CIA and military records on Guevara remain classified. But they do offer significant and valuable information on the high-level U.S. interest in tracking his revolutionary activities, and U.S. and Bolivian actions leading up to his death.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/

We're ICE… The Warrant Is Coming Out Of My Balls'

October 25th, 2011Via: ACLU:
On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Escobar and Jorge Sarmiento were in bed in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. The doors and windows were all shut and locked. Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting "Police!" and "Policia!" When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, Jesus hid in a closet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to their heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."
Posted in Police State

I have now watched the DVD twice (the second time with all the additives), and -- though there was a builkt-in delay -- I now own and listen to the soundtrack regularly. Which leads to this question that Google Translate could not do when I asked it: What is the meaning of the words "De Ushuaia A La Quica", the tile of the thematic track heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh2GgCFR2dw ?

De Usuahia a La Quica roughly translates as From Usuahia to the Quica with Usuahia being a town in Argentina near the border of Chile in the far south. It is notorious as a prison town where the 'worst' cases were sent and lepers etc. (Remember Papillion? some thing like that) Quica could be a reference to the Brasilian opossum or a musical instrument also Brasilian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiw_AHrhkME Hubby also think it is some sort of dish, meal.

Muchas gracias, Senora Hassan. Que enriquecen este foro, el mundo, y mi experiencia de ella. Por supuesto, el título de la canción sigue a la geografía (doh!), ytodos los nombres geográficos tienen su propia riqueza de la historia, y su significado. Yo sólo soy el último en caer en el amor con América del Sur y su gente.

****





I wrote on the door of my heart, Please do not enter.'
Love came smiling and said: Sorry I am an illiterate.'


Michael Paul (via quote-book)
ON NOVEMBER 10, 2011 AT 07:11PM