Alberto Granado

What began as a journey to discover a homeland turned into a political odyssey for Alberto Granado and his friend Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Granado, who died March 5 at 88, wanted one more thrill before settling down as a biochemist in Argentina, so the two set out on a faulty motorcycle in 1951 to find South America. Instead they found poverty. Their journals, which became the basis for the film The Motorcycle Diaries, trace their political move toward Marxism. Afterward, Granado stayed out of politics and went back into medicine. Guevara, however, helped Fidel Castro overthrow then Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista and attempted to spark other revolutions around the world. And it all began, Granado said, with two boys “who went looking for adventure and found the truth and tragedy of our homeland.”