This book, originally published in Spanish as Otra Vez [Once Again], is a text of an intimate or testimonial character, indispensable to penetrate the iron-willed personality that Ernesto Guevara de la Serna forged for himself with the written word as his constant accomplice. Laced with his irony and his wit is a deep perceptiveness of his surroundings in his quest to discover the Americas, offering us a multi-dimensional panorama of his own future imbued with thought and action.
This diary was preceded by the other reconstructed chronicles of his first trip around the continent of Latin America with Alberto Granado, so full of youthful spirit, in which he describes “the joyful impulse that overcame us to be lost on the horizon of the Americas.”
This second travel diary offers to readers the prelude to the development of the fully formed revolutionary Ernesto became. It might have been reworked as a more polished manuscript as was the case with The Motorcycle Diaries but that did not happen for various reasons. Nevertheless, the publication of this book provides an invaluable historical legacy testifying to crucial events during Che’s travels through “Our Great America.”
To assist the reader, we have added a number of letters and appendices so that the full profundity and tone of the young author’s reflections and viewpoint become evident as he charts the course of his future, a future that becomes forever linked to one of the most important events of the 20th century, the Cuban revolution.
In his eagerness to immerse himself in his surroundings, Che’s passion for writing was always vitally complemented by his photography. This book, therefore, also includes previously unpublished photographs of his travels, as living testimony of the diversity of his experiences and his desire to record them as images that express his fine sensibility and passion to capture everything that excited him.
Che Guevara Studies Center
Havana