Che Guevara In The Film 'The Motorcycle Diaries'

The Motorcycle Diaries has evident features of ‘construction of nation’. The main character Che Guevara is one of the most significant figure in Latin American history and he actually regained the Cuban nation from the dictatorship. Hence, featuring him would already give a sense of revolution and independence from domination. Although, the young Che Guevara is not the revolutionist ‘Che’ yet in the film; he is just a medical student Ernesto. Through the journey, he finds the reality of the Latin American society and what he should do for it. Furthermore, as Ernest finds his identity through the journey, the audience also finds the identity of Latin America because the representation of the reality of Latin America suggests what the authentic
Nevertheless, most significantly, the character faces the issues and ties to solve them. In the film, at a sanatorium in Peru, the Hansen's disease patients are discriminated by the doctors and nurses; the patients are isolated to an island and Ernesto and his friend are told to wear gloves even though they know Hansen’s disease does not infect by touching. Ernesto and his friend communicate with the patients as they are normal people and the climax of the film would be the scene which at the last night for Ernest in the sanatorium, after the party with the doctors, Ernesto swims across the river to say good bye to the patients. The interesting point is, it is relatively short but the swimming across the river would be a journey as well as the main long journey in the film. It is the same other characters worry since he has a heavy asthma. In addition, the same as the feature of journey in the film, it does not merely mean about the patients and discrimination. This scene represents how the character faces to the problem and the ‘journey’ to find the solution. This feature evidently shows that the film have the concept of Cinema Novo or Third Cinema,
Nevertheless, some films clearly represents the American ideology and emphasise the hierarchy as describing United States as the country Latin American people are, or should be aspiring for. In those film, the theme is about Latin American nation or political issues but they might not be Latin American National Cinema. El Norte (1989) and Sin nomble (2009), have a very similar theme, about the journey of Latin American illegal immigrants to United States. In the film, United States is idealised, it is represented as the Promised Land for the immigrants while where the immigrants are from, the Latin American countries, are emphasised as extremely poor, violent and hopeless places. The journey suggests the only hope for Latin American people is aspiring United States. Hence, the theme of journey would have precisely opposite meaning depending on the perspective of the filmmaker. The significant point is that the film might have the perspective of United States about the Latin American issues since both films are directed by American. This perspective might be concerned with American Imperialism. This is because the above mentioned contrastive representations of United States and Latin America might be understood as a part of America’s cultural hegemony. America creates the image of United States and Latin America, most significantly, from the American point of view, and emphasises the political,