Motorcycle Diaries

There are many scenes in the film Motorcycle Diaries, that you can see how the experiences shaped the personality of Che Guevara’s future as a leader.  A couple of scenes that stand out to me are when they visit the mine.  Che sees people suffering when waiting to be selected to work in the mine.  He yells at the mine’s foreman for not recognizing the workers were suffering.  We later find out that Che gives the $15 to the couple, after holding onto it for so long, and sacrificing his own well-being to help others.  When they visit Machu Picchu, Che encounters many native people who are poor and are suffering.  You can draw parallels to how he bought into the communist ideals, creating an all for one, one for all mentality.  When they are visiting the leper colony, the amount of human suffering they encounter, really draws out the compassion in Che.  He listens to their stories of government mistreatment and dreams of a united (South) America.

Taking such a long journey, experiencing the different parts of the world and class wealth, went miles to shape Che’s attitude and his direction in political leadership.  The experiences that he had while on the trip, truly made him the leader that he came to be.  The communist sympathy and allowance of a US enemy into a close proximity to our country ultimately sealed the fate of Che. 

Celebrations in the Spanish speaking world have some definite differences when compared to celebrations in the United States.  The first, and most glaring, is how our capitalistic society, along with the media, have made holidays in the United States very materialistic.  I can think of no better example that Christmas.  The “Christmas Season” starts before Thanksgiving now, trying to squeeze every holiday dollar out of the consumers.  In many Spanish speaking countries, the over-abundance of money and food, found in the US, are just not present in Spanish speaking countries.  Some of our holidays, are day, or a couple of days long, where not everything shuts down.  In other countries, the cities basically shut down for time of the holiday.  Here, you can still buy and do many of the things that you can on normal everyday life.  For both, holidays are meant to be spent with family and close friends, but Spanish speaking countries tend to allow for more community involved celebrations.