Back on the Road: A Journey Through Latin America
This second volume of travel diaries by revolutionary icon  Guevara (after Motorcycle Diaries) shows the 25-year-old rebel  wandering around South America in the latter half of 1953,  bopping from country to country before settling in Guatemala,  where a leftist government led by Jacobo Arbenz had just come  into power. In his diaries and letters home to his mother,  Guevara writes of his ambivalence about the Communists (he  doesn't want to join, because it would keep him from traveling  to Europe) and how his desire to help out in Guatemala is  impeded by near-crippling bouts of asthma. After the CIA  overthrows the government in 1954, Guevara makes his way to  Mexico, where, over the next two years, his radicalization  becomes complete. The diary lacks explicit transitions, however,  so the days blur into one another, and this, combined with  Guevara's emphasis on more quotidian concerns like his health  and lack of funds, makes it easy to overlook the key dramatic  moments in his story. One of these, for example, is Guevara's  first meeting with then-exiled Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro,  in 1955, but all he has to say about that day is that Castro is  "a young intelligent guy, very sure of himself and  extraordinarily audacious; I think we hit it off well." Shortly  afterward, Guevara launches into a long description of several  Mayan ruins. With the wealth of comprehensive biographies  available, it's hard to see the appeal of this slim volume  beyond scholars and whatever hard-core fans of Che are still  left in the 21st century. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.