[Guevara, Ernesto "Che"]

1 printed and typed sheet of pink carbon paper with mounted passport portrait  photograph (6 7/8 x 9 3/4 in; 175 x 248 mm overall). Dated "Septiembre 9, de 1953". Signed "Ernesto Guevara" on the lower left and numbered 242/53.  Two small circular punctures to the right edge, with minor fading to the outer left edge.  

on the road with che, his south american visa

Following two expeditions through South America in 1950 and 1951 (later made famous by the memoir The Motorcycle Diaries), Guevara returned to Argentina to pursue his medical studies, receiving a degree in June of 1953. He left again almost immediately, traveling through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia before settling for a while in Guatemala. It was about this time that he acquired his nickname "Che," an Argentine expression meaning (more or less) "hey there."

Guevara was deeply affected by the economic conditions he had observed throughout his travels, which motivated and informed his then-burgeoning Marxist philosophies. This document captures a portrait of the young argentine revolutionary at a pivotal moment in his personal and political evolution before he left to join Fidel and Raúl Castro in their efforts to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.