Between motorcycles and rifles: Anglo-American and Latin American radical archaeologies

Abstract

The recent English publication of Che Guevara's (1995) journal of his youthful motorcycle trip through South America, The Motorcycle Diaries, has generated a resurgence of public interest in the iconic figure of Che. The publicity blurb on the back of the book represents Che as a South American James Dean who embarked on a journey of discovery and adventure. In our opinion this comparison is extremely misleading because it confuses individual rebellion with true social revolution. This confusion makes the formulation of a radical praxis difficult because it mistakes the angst of youth for transformative social struggle. Just as Che and James Dean may be muddled so too may the attempts to build a radical praxis in Anglo-American and Latin American archaeologies be confused. © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.