Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend [Paperback]

Patrick Symmes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2000

Intrepid journalist Patrick Symmes sets off on his BMW R80 G/S in search of the people and places in Ernesto "Che" Guevara's classic Motorcycle Diaries, seeking out his own adventure as well as the legacy of the icon Che would become, Symmes retraces the future revolutionary's path.  And on the way he runs out of gas in an Argentine desert, talks a Peruvian guerrilla out of taking him hostage, wipes out in the Andes, and, in Cuba, drinks himself blind with Che's travel partner, Alberto Granado.

Here is the unforgettable story of a wanderer's quest for food, shelter, and wisdom. Here, too, is the portrait of a continent whose dreams of utopia give birth not only to freedom fighters, but also to tyrants whose methods include torture and mass killing. Masterfully detailed, insightful, unforgettable, Chasing Che transfixes us with the glory of the open road, where man and machine traverse the unknown in search of the spirit's keenest desires.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A motorcycle trip in 1952 marked a turning point for Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna, a medical student returning from a journey into poverty and oppression with a vision of guerilla-style change and a new name, Che Guevara. Going on to help overthrow the Cuban government, align himself with Castro, and become elevated to martyred hero status when he was executed in Bolivia in 1967, Guevara's likeness is now commercialized and captured on T-shirts, castanets, and watches.

New York writer Patrick Symmes embarks on motorcycle tracing Guevara's route through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Cuba, seeking insight into what Guevara experienced and what his political movement wrought. Meeting with those who knew the young Che--among them a lover, a leper, and his motorcycle traveling cohort--proves interesting enough, though rarely insightful since some were children at the time, some are confused, and others refuse to talk openly. More revealing are Symmes's travels on his bike, nicknamed La Cucaracha. He winds through both Buenos Aires' high society and Peruvian poverty, finding a fragmented country where revolutions have brought mountain peasants fleeing to shanty towns, and where blind idealism coexists with blatant denouncement of the violent tactics used by Cuban Communists, even by Che's most respected soldiers. Beautifully written, the stories that unfold here reflect the complex contradiction that endures in Latin America three long decades after Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death. --Melissa Rossi

From Publishers Weekly

In 1952, a 17-year-old, prerevolutionary Che Guevara lit out with a friend on a motorcycle trip through Latin America. It was, as he wrote in his Motorcycle Diaries, a journey that would shape his attitudes toward politics, people and revolutions. Symmes, a freelance travel writer, traversed the same route in 1996, with entertaining and illuminating results. Fluidly moving between the past and the present, he tosses out observations about Che's expedition while chronicling his own adventures. In Argentina, Symmes encounters a defensive German who insists he is not a Nazi; in Chile he visits a utopian settlement founded by a wealthy and radical environmentalist; in Peru he visits a leper colony, the same one Che visited in 1952. Refreshingly, Symmes avoids digressions of self-discovery, instead letting his book serve as a primer for recent Latin American history and his own take on the region. Symmes's prose, like the Latin America he writes about, is spotted with gems. He says pointedly, "The funny thing about a dictatorship: it was great for culture. If there was one sure way Pinochet could support poetry, it was by staging a military coup." Unsentimental and funny, this book combines the spiritedness of a gonzo journalist with a serious reporter's sense of purpose. First serial rights to Talk magazine. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (February 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375702652
• ISBN-13: 978-0375702655
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I felt the adventure as the author travelled Che's route, September 28, 2004

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (Paperback)

I must admit that, until now, the only thing that I knew about Che Guevara was that he was a Latin American revolutionary and that there were posters of him everywhere in the 1970s. I do love travel books, however - especially if the writer takes a personal journey to retrace a part of history. And so, this book, subtitled "A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend" has been intriguing me from bookstore shelves for some time. I finally purchased it and it took me all summer to read, not because it's a long book. Indeed, it's a small paperback that is only 302 pages long. I've not been in a reading mood lately but I kept this book my tote bag and read it a few pages at a time whenever I had an idle moment. I finally finished it as summer waned into Labor Day weekend. And I must say I've enjoyed its companionship.

In 1952, Che Guevara, then a young Argentinean doctor, took a motorcycle trip with a companion named Alberto Granado throughout South American. When the journey was over eight months later, Che had transformed into a revolutionary. He later became a hero in the Cuban revolution and was murdered in Bolivia in 1967. Che's own book, "The Motorcycle Diaries" has become a classic and I understand it will soon become a film.

I think Che's story is fascinating. However, I, personally, identified more with the writer, who carried the diaries of both Guevara and Granado with him on his own trip and took notes constantly. I absorbed his sense of adventure as he traveled the same roads as the legendary Che. Good thing Patrick Symmes, who is an American, speaks Spanish. He needed it throughout his trip, especially during the many times his own motorcycle, a BMW R80/GS, broke down. Mostly, he was all by himself, going into small towns and asking townspeople about Che or traveling for hours and hours and hours and hours without seeing a human being. I felt I was right there with him all the time as he journeyed from Argentina through Chile, Peru and Bolivia. I leaned about these places through the eyes of this lone man on a motorcycle. I felt the heat and the cold and the thin mountain air. I felt his hunger and thirst and need for a place to rest. I felt his fright as dogs chased him and his discomfort during a bout of food poisoning. I learned about history. And I watched him have to use his ingenuity over and over again to either fix his motorcycle or get a gem of background information and insight about Che from some of the people he encountered.

I'm a senior citizen who has lived in New York City all my life. I've never even been on a motorcycle and my world is paved with sidewalks. This book is probably the closest I'll ever be to motorcycle riding in undeveloped areas of South America. But I could be there vicariously whenever I opened this little book. I loved every minute of this reading experience. And I highly recommend it to armchair travelers everywhere.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engaging, informative, esoteric, August 1, 2000

By 

Michael K. McKeon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (Paperback)

I was drawn to this book more because of a well established attraction to South America than a particular interest in Che Guevara. This book was particularly satisfying because it spoke to my interests, expanded my understanding of Guevera, and described a rivetting adventure.

Mr. Symmes is impressive from a variety of perspectives. You are struck by his spirit, endurance and "guts" striving to replicate the Guevara's gritty adventure of the '50's. Curiosity to see whether Symmes and his BMW bike "Kookie" will complete the marathon alone keeps you reading. However, besides admiring his daring and iconoclasm, you find that Symmes is a solid scholar and a fine wordsmith.

The book provides an accurate and informative description of the depradations of the recent military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, and points out the irony of how, long after he was dead, Guevara contributed to their emergence. Symmes also provides a moving description of the centuries old fate of the Latin American poor in Peru and Bolivia as well. While "up close" experience has made his perspective justifiably left of center he effectively makes his case by sticking to the unvarnished facts. He refrains from offering any half baked neo-Marxist aphorisms, and provides balance by noting the arrogance, chauvanism, pointless brutality, and ultimate hubris of Guevara, as well as the Machiavellian meglomania of Castro. The book's thesis is that Guevara the symbol and myth have ultimately have had far more global impact than any of the achievements of Guevara the man.

This book is educational, moving, and thought provoking whether you are left or right on the political spectrum. If you know little about Latin America or Che, you will learn quite a bit about this often ignored part of the world.

4.0 out of 5 stars With Symmes chasing Che and finding?, December 8, 2003

By 

John Harrison (Potomac, Md. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (Paperback)

I do not know what I expected when I bought this book, but reading g it proved well worth my time and money. It is a travel book more in the spirit of Stienbeck's Travels With Charlie than it is with In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. It is a ramble, through southern South America, along the journey made by Che before he was "Che" and through the mind of Patrick Symmes. All three are interesting places to go.

I guess my one surprise was the amount of trouble that he had with his BMW motorcycle. A friend of mine had one several years ago, the same model if not the same year, and it was almost indestructible. It had to be with my friend as the owner. So that was a disappointment.

The insights into the historical person Che became later are there, sort of sprinkled through the book as is a good look at the youth. He is not an adulator and he neither hides nor dwells on the dark side of being a committed revolutionary. Of course, Che was not yet committed at least when he started this journey. A warrior doctor along with the idea of a warrior priest has always seemed to be an oxymoron to me. The creation of exactly that which you have trained, at great cost, to fight must require conviction of a special kind. That Che was committed there can be no doubt - but why to this life course remains elusive for me. He was sensitive man, and a killer. A doctor and a soldier. A revolutionary and a mystic. Like Thomas Jefferson's utterly inexplicable slave holdings, these realities are also the reasons he still fascinates me.

I like the book. I think I would like the author and I recommend it as an interesting look at a difficult man and a romantic journey that I and perhaps you would have liked to have joined, and may still enjoy in spirit.