Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries companion Granado dies

[dipsydoodle]

Alberto Granado, the motorcycle companion of Ernesto Che Guevara, has died in Cuba at the age of 88.

The pair's eight-month journey around Latin America was immortalised in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries.

The journey, started in 1951, exposed the two medical students to deep poverty and social injustice and awoke Guevara's revolutionary convictions.

After helping Fidel Castro overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Guevara invited Granado to Cuba.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12658025

[Billy Burnett]

1. He was a good man.

I have to admit a lump in my throat when the real Alberto Granado appeared at the end of The Motorcycle Diaries film, still looking toward the sky waiting for Che's return. :cry:



Rodrigo De la Serna, Alberto Granado, Gael García Bernal

[dipsydoodle]

3. Indeed

It was a nice touch to add that to the film.

From 2005 : 'My best friend Che'

"Our journey, the Cuban revolution and Che have made me what I am now," he said.

"When I have doubts, I ask myself what Ernesto would say."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4518213.stm

[Judi Lynn]

2. A country mourns Che Guevara's motorcycle companion

A country mourns Che Guevara's motorcycle companion
By David Usborne
Monday, 7 March 2011


Cuba is mourning Alberto Granado, who six decades ago accompanied a friend on an epic journey across South America that was to awaken their political consciences and alter the geopolitics of a hemisphere. Mr Granado – his pal was Ernesto 'Che' Guevara – died in Havana at the weekend aged 88.

A brief statement in the Cuban media said Mr Granado's last wish was that his ashes be spread in Cuba, Venezuela and Argentina, the country where he and Guevara were born and from which they began their odyssey on motorbikes – his was a rusting British Norton – in 1951. The trip was immortalised in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries that was based on the journals kept by both men.

Encountering the poor on a route that took the pair through Argentina, Peru, Chile and Venezuela – and in particular in a Peruvian leper colony – helped propel Guevara into the 20th Century history books, notably by fighting alongside Fidel Castro to forge the Cuban communist revolution. On Guevara's invitation, Mr Granado travelled to Cuba in 1961 and never left.

In a rare interview in 2004 Mr Granado told The Independent on Sunday: "To think that Ernesto, whom I had known since he was 14, would go on to have such an effect on the world was incredible. Before we left Argentina, we didn't know about Latin America, about the enormous gulf between rich and poor and the terrible exploitation of the people. It had a great effect on us."

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-country-mourns-che-guevaras-motorcycle-companion-2234258.html?service=Print