Chile

(image source: http://www.studyabroadinternational.com)

In Vaparaiso, Chile (shown above), Che sees a dying asthma patient that clearly has an impact on his outlook on life. He describes her as having been in a pitiful state and weezing, yet doing everything in her power to maintain her dignity. Instead of believing that this was simply an unfortunate disease that anyone could have been afflicted with, Che presumes that this woman's condition is partially a result of her family's poor financial state. After observing her condition, Che comments, "...individuals in poor families who can't pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony... and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life" (Guevara, 70). Che believes that not only does her family's lack of money prevent her from getting proper care, but it deems her as a very costly liability and too much of a burden on those who are still living healthy lives. Che goes on to say that "It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over" (70). This passage suggests that this same scenario exists not only in Chile or South America, but in the lower classes all over the world. Che's last comments about his visit with this patient revoke the "absurd idea of caste" and indicate that it is time for the government to spend much more money funding socially useful works.

This is the first event in the book that Che uses great detail to describe his sympathy for the oppressed lower classes and his anger that poor families appear to be in the same oppressed situations regardless of the country or region of the world. After his visit with this woman, Che took his anger one step further to criticize the government, claiming that it spends too much time publicizing its own virtues instead of using its money to prevent situations like these. These situations that provoked Che's criticism of governments would eventually lead to the determined revolutionary reader he would become.