Alberto Granado, who accompanied Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on a 1952 journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalised in Guevara's memoir and on-screen in The Motorcycle Diaries, died in Cuba.
Granado (88) an Argentine who had lived in Cuba since 1961, died of natural causes
yesterday morning, according to Cuban state-run television.
Granado and Guevara's road trip, begun on a broken-down motorcycle they dubbed La
Poderosa, or The Powerful, awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political
convictions that would help turn him into one of the most iconic revolutionaries of the 20th
century.
The two travellers both kept diaries that were used as background for the 2004 movie,
produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles.
Granado was born August 8th, 1922, in Cordoba, Argentina, and befriended Guevara as a
child.
As young medical students, the two witnessed deep poverty across the continent - principally Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela - and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a particularly deep impression.
They parted ways in Venezuela, where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating
leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami, then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies.
Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro as they sailed from exile in Mexico to Cuba
aboard a yacht called the Granma in 1956. Their small band of rebels ultimately toppled
dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day 1959.
Granado visited Cuba at Guevara's invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year with his family, teaching biochemistry at Havana University. He had lived in Cuba ever since, maintaining a low profile.
One of his sons, also called Alberto Granado, is head of Cuba's Africa House, a centre in
Havana that celebrates African culture.
In his authoritative biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was "barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose, but he sported a barrel chest and a footballer's sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humour and a taste for wine, girls, literature and rugby".
According to Cuban television, Granado requested that his body be cremated and his ashes
spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. Funeral arrangements were not announced.
Guevara was captured and killed by soldiers in Bolivia in 1967 as he tried to foment
revolution in the Andean nation.
AP