The Dream and The Reality
Here I am in the above picture, in Havana, standing before a statue of Jose Marti, Cuba’s greatest hero, who inspired many of the genuine Cuban Revolutionaries of the 1950s and before (and not just Castro and Guevara’s eventual Communist, Russian-backed regime). The weapon below is a replica of the kind that was provided to an impoverished Cuba by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. Such weapons were taken into combat during the Bay of Pigs episode and set aside in case of Nuclear War in the Cuban Missile Crisis. These events feature in the subject matter of my first published novel, “The Shadow of Guevara,” which focuses on the Revolutionary War and the earliest years of Castro’s government, as it moved to embrace socialism.
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu was an enormous inspiration to Che Guevara, in terms of fighting for the indigenous and semi-indigenous people of Latin America, who he felt were marginalised and exploited by U.S. capitalism in particular. His visit there is outlined in his Motorcycle Diaries. Below you see my brother, Donal, and I at the summit, surrounded by vast mountains and sky, and the terraced platforms that were used for farming.
Lake Titicaca and Chivay
Below is a picture of a reed island on Lake Titicaca in Puno in Peru. Some locals live on these tiny islands throughout the years, a frightening situation, the likes of which infuriated Guevara. This was given that the land, in all its majesty and beauty, belongs to the native people, and so they should not be relegated to living on miniscule islands. Further below is a picture of the wonderful landscape in Chivya, near the Colca Canyon, another unique and breath-taking land formation in the region, typical of Peru and Latin America.
