Motorcycle Diaries

How are disparities in medical care portrayed throughout The Motorcycle Diaries?

Economic inequality is an important theme throughout Guevara’s memoir, and because of his medical background, these inequalities are often shown through disparities in the medical care that people he comes upon can access.  While this was a reoccurring theme throughout the book, one instance that was particularly enlightening was Guevara’s encounter with a woman in Chile with asthma on pg. 70. Guevara describes how the woman was also struggling with a heart condition and until recently had been forced to work as a waitress in order for her to try and scrape by. In seeing her misery, Guevara is struck by just how little he can do in that moment to help her, even with his medical training. He declares that those in power should spend much less time “publicizing their own virtues” and more money “funding socially useful works,” (pg. 70-71). While he is able to give her some advice and a few pills, he is not able to help her any further and must leave her in her unsanitary room with her family who seems to view her only as a burden. Later in the book, when Guevara is struggling with asthma himself, he is able to access much better treatment, both because of his and Alberto’s knowledge of medicine and because he can afford to. For example, on pg. 160, he describes how he was able to purchase a new French inhaler to treat his asthma. While much of the book focuses on medical disparities in relation to leprosy, I found this comparison particularly interesting because it highlighted Guevara’s  privilege compared to many of the people he met on his journey.