Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Alberto Granado,who accompanied Ernesto Che Guevara on a 1952 journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalised in Guevaras memoir and on-screen in The Motorcycle Diaries,died in Cuba on Saturday. He was 88.
Granado,an Argentine who had lived in Cuba since 1961,died of natural causes Saturday,according to Cuban state-run television.
Granado and Guevaras road trip,begun on a broken-down motorcycle they dubbed La Poderosa,or The Powerful, awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political convictions that would help turn him into one of the most iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century.
The two travellers both kept diaries that were used as background for the 2004 movie,produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. Granado was born August 8,1922,in Cordoba,Argentina,and befriended Guevara as a child.
As young medical students,the two witnessed deep poverty across the continent principally Chile,Colombia,Peru and Venezuela and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a particularly deep impression.
They parted ways in Venezuela,where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami,then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies. Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro as they sailed from exile in Mexico to Cuba in 1956. Their small band of rebels ultimately toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Years Day 1959.
Granado visited Cuba at Guevaras invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year. He had lived in Cuba ever since. In his biography of Guevara,Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose,but he sported a barrel chest and a footballers sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humour and a taste for wine,girls,literature and rugby.
According to Cuban television,Granado requested that his body be cremated and his ashes spread in Cuba,Argentina and Venezuela.
