“Society should do their part in the fight against poverty." "And what does the government do?' "More poverty.”
This is showing that the government only cares about their top class and doesn't want to educate most of their population. The government only cares about themselves so they can be wealthy and live a good life. The poor people feel disrespected and not treated like humans.
When Che was on his journey he visited many people that didn't feel like humans. For example, when there was the people that got thrown off their land so the landlord could have all the land.
The top percent of people in South America are very wealthy and enjoy life. They get a nice couch and a TV with a lot of space. Most of the other population are crammed into the stands with no room and no one paying attention to them. When they call out for help it goes unrecognized by the government. The rich people aren't aware of what is going on in their country because they only listen to their life.
This shows that one person has more power than the others and it is a death scene if you are poor. The poor people are almost guaranteed a death sentence and will never escape poverty because of the fence. The fence is their will to escape because they don’t have the money or transportation to escape.
“And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.”
When Che set off on his trip he was an innocent young man that didn't know what to expect. After he set out, not shortly after he left he could see how much poverty and inequality there was throughout South America. Che felt like his mission was to help people and use his power to help others. His trip through South America changed his political views and became a communist.
“And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”
When Che was in the Leper camp in San Pablo, a woman died of leper disease. Che said that quote. Che didn’t like when people died and it touched him. He treated a sick woman earlier in the book and knew she was going to die but did as much as he could.
“The deeper we go into the Andes, the more indigenous people we encounter, who are homeless in their own land.”
When Che and Alberto were on there way to Machu Picchu, they passed through farming land. They talked to a man who farmed on the same land all his life and just recently got kicked off by the landlord. He brought the police and took all of his crops and land so the man couldn’t provided food or education for his five children.
“Mariategui speaks of the the revolutionary potential of the natives and the farm workers of Latin America. He says the problem of the Indian is the problem of the land, and that the revolution should not be an imitation. It should be original and indigenous.”
The people of South America needed a revolution but if it was done normally it would fail. They needed to do something indigenous to work. All of the poor people would need to join together for it to work and Che wanted to do that. Che didn’t have the power or time to do that.
“You know, Mial, all the time we spent on the road, something happened, something ill have to think about for a long time. So much injustice.”
This quote came in at the end of their journey when Che was on his way back to Buenos Aires and Alberto was staying in Venezuela. Che finally told Alberto what he was feeling. He was so shocked by what he saw on his trip he had to do something about it. Eventually he went to Cuba to try to make it communist.
Today in Peru there is massive amounts of inequality. When Che went on his journey there was a lot more but it has been on the decline lately. One of the main things that the trip did to him was, change the way he looked at South America. He hated the inequality more than anything he experienced. He wanted to change that.
Currently in Peru the inequality has been on a decline due to labor markets growth. Also the per capita is increasing and the lower standards of living are increasing which is more important. The results are astonishing because over 500,000 people were lifted out of poverty in 2012. In 2009 UNICEF calculated that 78% of children whose first language was Quechua or Aymara lived in poverty, compared to 40% of those whose mother tongue was Spanish. In Che’s journey he encountered a family of Quechua who were living in a run down town. They were sitting by a brick building eating leaves from a plant. Che first hand encountered raw inequality. Each time he encountered a different perspective of inequality it changed him a little. When Che and Alberto were walking to the coal mine, they meet a couple that was homeless. They spent the night with them and realized how many people lived in poverty. Since Che and Alberto lived in the upper class in Buenos Aires, they never realized what the inequality was like.
Near the end of their journey they stopped at a leper colony in San Pablo, Peru. The sick people would stay on one side of the river while the healthy doctors and nuns stayed on the other. The lepers were treated as less equal and even not human. Che had a big problem with that but could tell that not many, if any at all, of the healthy people did. He ended up swimming across the river one night to spend his birthday with the lepers. I believe this is what changed Che’s life to the turning point where he had to do something about it.
