La Poderosa to La Higuera: A Life of Revolution, Service, and Sacrifice. Che Guevara’s transformative motorcycle journey throughout South America left a lasting impression on the young Argentine that would broaden his understanding of the exploited, impoverished masses of the continent, and set him on the road to revolution. These first hand encounters with the struggles of the poor would naturally flow into his later, radical political philosophies that would eventually come to immortalize him. Che returned from his early travels determined to fight for the basic rights of the poor and downtrodden, disgusted by their lack of an access to education, medical care, and land, as well as by their systematic exploitation…show more content… One of Che’s first encounters with the sad reality of South American healthcare during his early travels around Latin America, would take place in Chile, where he was experiencing the troubles of the sick and of the ailing. Recounting the abysmal state of Chilean healthcare, Che wrote that “Hospitals have no money and they lack medicine and adequate facilities. We have seen filthy operating rooms with pitiful lighting, not just in small towns but even in Valparaíso. There aren’t enough surgical instruments. The bathrooms are dirty. Awareness of hygiene is poor.” (Motorcycle Diaries, 87. Throughout his travels, he encountered whole towns and villages that had virtually no access to basic healthcare, or, like with the copper mines, healthcare that existed only for those who were turning a profit for their foreign overlords. These beliefs and convictions concerning the necessity for healthcare for the masses, established during Che’s travels throughout South America, are also entirely present in his later, radical political ideas and actions. The first example of Che’s continued commitment to the improvement of Latin American healthcare would be evident in his actions throughout the guerilla campaign against Batista, in which he and his…show more content… Some would say that the hardened soldier at the helm of Castro’s new Cuban government was an entirely different man than the young, ambitious Argentine of the early 1950’s, mostly because of the violent, brutal persona he had embraced. All of this is meant to imply that through this violent, brutal shift into armed revolution, Che had lost track of the lofty ideals he had developed in his youthful travels and had forgotten the political reforms he was originally fighting for. They would likely cite the symbolic moment of Che forsaking his medical supplies and embracing the rifle, arguing that the transformation from benevolent Doctor to cold, hardened soldier is such a fundamental shift in consciousness that it would be impossible for the man to have emerged from it the same, either ethically or politically. However, while it is clear that Che’s approach in the revolution had shifted from the role of saving healer to brutal killer, his intentions had clearly remained constant throughout all of his shifts in practices, as the wrongs he first noticed in his early travels were the same wrongs that he would die in Bolivia trying to right. Che’s shift into
