An all-Latin American hero

Granado says he knew more before the trip about the Greeks and Romans than about the Incas. "While other people from their social class were looking towards Europe," explains Salles, "they started looking towards Latin America."

SALLES covered their journey three times: "Twice for scouting and the third time while shooting the film. What soon became apparent was that the Latin America we were crossing was very similar to the one Alberto and Ernesto had crossed in 1952. That gave me the certitude that we could make a film that talked about our present as well as our past, and lent a sense of urgency to it."

When Bernal (whose credits include Amores perros and Y tu mam· también) and the Argentine actor Rodrigo de la Serna, who plays Granado, roared off on their bike in the autumn of 2002, Argentina was in the jaws of a catastrophic recession. "The country was the lowest it had ever got, on the brink of civil disorder," observes Bernal. "Ernesto left Argentina during its moment of glory, when it was a powerful, rich country. What is progress and what is under-development? In Argentina today, the polarities between rich and poor are incredible."

The second source of the film is Granado's journal, published as Travelling with Che Guevara. "Alberto's diary was very factual, with more details," says Rivera. "He made entries every day, like a good biographer. Ernesto skipped days, but his diary was more reflective about what things mean, as opposed to just what happened. In his beautiful passages about the ocean, or Chichina [his girlfriend], you get the sense of a romantic poet."

Guevara becomes increasingly angered during the film by the social outrages he encounters. "He was unique, a man of complete integrity," Salles says. "There are very few people who speak what they think and then act according to what they say. This consistency is, I think you would agree, a rarity in the political arena."

Such uncritical reverence exposes the film to charges of myth reinforcement and hagiography. "That danger is always there," says Salles. "Can we agree with everything Che expressed? Probably not. He was an unorthodox thinker, whose quest never truly ended.

"After the Cuban revolution, he could accept that status quo but he went off to fight in the Congo and Bolivia. He never gave up. This man lived and died for his ideals. You have to respect him and the importance of his legacy."

Salles cites a speech near the end of the film - closely based on a passage from Guevara's diary - in which Ernesto proposes a toast to a united Latin America. "When I first read that speech, the idea of a unified continent seemed very utopian. Seen from a distance, the different countries seem pretty self-contained. But as we were shooting, we started to see that we are much

more part of a single world than we had realised.

"What you have to understand is that, compared to Europe, our countries are young, cultures in the making. We are in a society whose identity is not fully crystallised. Yet the interest we have in each other has increased over the last years."

From a European standpoint, it is easy to view Guevara as a dinosaur of radical chic.

"He's seen in a very shallow way, and even shallower outside Latin America," says Bernal. But The Motorcycle Diaries brings together a rare Latin American coalition of film artists - from Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Argentina - for whom Guevara is the emblem of a new sense of identity, confidence and freedom.

"Maybe his image is idealised," says De la Serna. "Maybe those who wear T-shirts with his face on them don't know much about his work. But he is an image of hope, and that's what I thank him for."