Casa Refugio Che Guevara

On the outskirts of Cusco, overlooking the city, is Casa Refugio Che Guevara so named as it was the place then-23-year-old medical student Ernesto "Che" Guevara and 29-year-old biochemist Alberto Granado stayed during their motorcycle journey across Latin America.

Motorcycle Diaries, a travel memoir written by Ernesto, documents how the adventure changed his life forever. He would never become the doctor he was planning to be, instead, a Marxist Revolutionary, inspired by the injustices and poverty he bore witness to during this trip.

Ernesto, a heart driven soul, sought to change the world, but believed he had to see the world before doing so. It is in Cusco, at the top of Machu Picchu, where Ernesto first considered revolution as a way to give rights back to the common worker and close the gap between the rich and poor.

The powerful Incan society ruled all of Peru, some of Bolivia--Ernesto's birth place--and parts of other regions for more than 100 years, a stark contrast to the shadow Incan descendants of today who survive on very little and have few rights. 

As I look around at the abject poverty surrounding Cusco, it is simple to empathize with Che's revolutionary ideals. He sought to give voice to the suffering and demand equality for human rights and worker's rights.

People often wonder why I consider Che a hero. In many respects it is because he fought and gave his life for a cause he deeply believed in. He did not pay lip service to a cause, he became the cause. 

When you travel the world and bare witness to the hardship of so many people in so many places, and observe frequent injustices and mass oppression carried out by a few powerful people, it's impossible not to see equality and worker's rights as the nobelest of causes worth dying for.