Latin History

LATIN AMERICA AS DESCRIBED IN CHASING CHE

In Chasing Che , Patrick Symmes retraces Ernesto Che ' Guevara 's 1952 motorcycle trip through South America , which opened the Argentine medical student 's eyes to poverty and inequality and helped radicalize him . The book , though , is not a worshipful tribute to the revolutionary instead , it is an effort to see Latin America as Guevara did , as well as an assessment of Latin America itself

From the outset , Symmes makes clear that Latin America is a poor , often dysfunctional place , where class and ethnicity form clear

social divisions . Services are woefully lacking , roads are sometimes as bad as Guevara and friend Alberto Granado found in 1952 , and throughout the book the author feels his foreignness not only as an Anglo-American , but also because he hails from a free , affluent society : I came from the Other World , a place where rich , fair-skinned people lived , people with odd habits and the luxury of strangeness . Among the poor of Latin America , class trumps nationality every time (Symmes , 2000 ,

. 5

His s of Latin America focus on the overall inefficiency dilapidation , and underdevelopment - often , Symmes asserts , the product of dictators ' mismanagement and feudal social and economic relations He sees a society that , by American standards , lacks compassion for the poor : Philanthropy is a weak tradition in Chile , and landholdings have always been the measure of wealth in Latin America . You were a landowner or you were nothing (Symmes ,

. 86 . There is deep suspicion of philanthropy , he...