Millennials generally have a major desire to travel and experience the world. Some students may take a gap year from college or spend their spring break taking in a new culture or exploring a new landmark. After my experience in the Disney College Program, I met so many people and got a worldview that was different than my own. Traveling can give someone a perspective on the world that they may not have otherwise had. In the critically acclaimed movie Motorcycle Diaries, directed by Walter Sallas, we see the perspective of Ernesto (Che) Guevara and Alberto Grenado as they travel around South America. Che Guevara would later become one of the prominent figures of the Cuban revolution and die for the cause. However, starting as a poor medical student in Buenos Aries, many may not have expected where he would end up.
Guevara and Grenado took an old motorcycle full of things and headed out on the semester trip of a lifetime. Throughout this journey, Che Guevara had a change of the mind and heart that would shape him forever. The make a stop to see the girl that Guevara has fallen for and she gives him $15 to buy her a bathing suit. In many prominent times of struggle in the movie, Grenado asks for the money so they could eat, but Che holds firm that he has to get his girlfriend the gift she desires. Much later in the film after seeing many different cultures, Grenado asks him for the money once more only to discover he had given it away to the poor mining family they had passed by a few weeks earlier. As Judith Martin discusses in Intercultural communications in contexts, “Self-awareness, then, comes through intercultural learning may involve an increased awareness of being caught up in political, economic, and historical systems- not of our own making” (Martin 4). These experiences help people to no longer become self-absorbed or self-focused. They begin to see beyond their own home towns and into the world outside. In Guevara’s many different interactions and experiences his relationship towards the money changes as it is no longer for a pleasure filled gift but to help someone who is in need. In the earlier cities that they travel too, the men are most interested in getting food, meeting girls and having a good time. By the time they reach their last stop at an infirmary in Peru, there focus shifts to the needs of the people who need help and the fun comes later. His trip even shapes him into the man he becomes and ultimately causes his death. He fights against injustice in the Cuban revolution and dies for the cause. The film also makes minor nodes to the importance of Intercultural communication. In Disney, when meeting my roommate for the first time, I was excited to ask her all about Australia, only to discover she is from New Zealand and the culture and accent is extremely different. For someone from New Zealand, what I said was offensive but from my culture I could not even see the difference. In the film, they meet two girls in their journey who instantly recognize that there accent is Argentinian which throws the gentleman off. To many a Spanish accent is only one type of accent but the film highlights that each country or region has their own dialect that they speak making them unique from one another. This film brings out many large and small ways that traveling can shape a worldview, focusing on Che Guevara’s story to do it.
In each place that the pair visit they are also visited by despair, illness and poverty. In Peru, they have to cross a small river just to get to the infirmary on the other side. As Carlos Vilas notes in a National Geographic article “His political and social awakening has very much to do with this face-to-face contact with poverty, exploitation, illness, and suffering,” (Geographic 2). Guevara begins to realize that things are not right in the world. In the 1950’s, he only got his news from certain things in papers and a radio if he was lucky. To actually go and see it for himself, he develops a sense of empathy because he has now lived it. Traveling allows a person to see outside of themselves and look at the bigger picture. It is no longer about getting a bathing suit and returning to his girlfriend right away. At the end of the film, he goes back to Buenos Aires to finish medical school and begin putting his skills into practice to help the world at large. Guevara highlights that “Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me anymore. At least I’m not the same me I was,” (Sallas Motorcycle Diaries). Guevara has an experience that not many others get to have and shapes his worldview in a new light. He is able to embrace situations with a new knowledge and understanding that can bring answers. His whole life is no longer about himself but about the needs of other people.
Guevara’s story is one that ends up in the history book. What started as a fun semester off turned into a life changing experience for two young men. An experience that helps them to grow and shaped their worldview for the rest of their lives. The movie not only sheds light onto their story but inspires movie goers to have an experience of their own. Intercultural communications is invaluable knowledge that one can use to further themselves and their lives once they gain it. How is a person supposed to shape their world view if they do not see more of the world??
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