Saturday, January 20, 2007

The Motorcycle Diaries (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Motorcycle Diaries (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I was never one to wear a Che t-shirt or anything like that, but I enjoyed this movie about a road trip he took in his younger years. I had to rely on the subtitles, though, because even though I'm fluent in Spanish, between my bad ears, the accent and the wide dynamic range typical of movie and TV audio, I couldn't make out much of the dialog.

I was a kid in Guatemala when Che was killed. The father of one of my friends down there was a CIA guy who occasionally had guys with guns in his house (which happened to be the location of the school I attended during third or fourth grade some years prior). My friend had huge stacks of worthless Bolivian money from having been stationed there prior to Guatemala. His father was supposed to have been involved in the operations leading to Che's capture and execution.

Another little tidbit about Che was that he was supposed to have been in my Grandfather's employ for a short time in Guatemala. I guess that would have been while my Grandfather was the president of the power company down there. Anyway, there was some story about how my Grandfather's life was spared by chance while Che was in his office one day. Something fell off my Grandfather's desk, and at the moment he bent over to pick it up a bullet came flying through the window.

Something like that. It's been a long time...

2 comments:

jj mollo said...

Was it intended for Che?

Steve said...

I don't know. Could have been random. This was during the time of Jacobo Arbenz, the one the CIA kicked out, but it was pretty early in Che's career so I don't know if he'd have been on anyone's radar.

Just one of the many things I'll never know. Kind of like the Spanish embassy siege down there. Were the bad guys inside or outside? Two of my family members who knew people on both sides of that compound's perimeter think the bad guys were inside. The rest of the world thinks the bad guys were outside. Dunno.