November 2019 | SMITHSONIAN.COM 51with his childhood friend Cami-
lo Sánchez, and after training
as commandos, the pair went to
fi ght in Angola in 1987, then Nic-
aragua. In the mid-1990s, while
in his 30s, Ernesto transferred to
the security unit assigned to pro-
tect Cuban offi cials. The sanctifi -
cation of Che, already underway,
went into an even higher gear
following the collapse of the So-
viet Union, which plunged Cuba
into an economic crisis—food and
fuel rationing, malnutrition, and
increasing isolation due to the
ongoing U.S. trade embargo. Gov-
ernment propaganda spotlighted
Che’s self-sacrifi ce. Meanwhile,
Ernesto tried to live a normal life.
He married and had a daughter
and a son, also named Ernesto,
who is now 22 and the only male
of Che and Aleida’s ten grandchil-
dren. In 2002, Ernesto married his
second wife, the Greek-born Ma-
ria Elena Giokas, with whom he
has two daughters, ages 15 and 5.
For Ernesto to be leading mo-
torcycle tours named after his fa-
ther’s bike raises questions a Freudian might have a fi eld day
with. But he rejects any psychological explanation as simplis-
tic. “In truth, my love of bikes was not from a need for connec-
tion with Che,” he says. “It just seemed natural. All the kids
in Havana were doing it. I also went into the commandos,” he
adds, “but it wasn’t because my papa was a guerrilla leader. I
went to Angola out of a sense of duty, like any young man in
Cuba would have.”
Ernesto got his fi rst Harley as a teen, he says—naturally, at
the same time as his sidekick Camilo. They sped around Ha-
vana even before they had licenses, and became expert at re-
pairing the machines. The Harley connection is not as eccen-
tric as one might think in the shadow of U.S.-Cuban tensions,
Ernesto points out. Before the revolution, every police offi cer
in Cuba rode a Harley, which created a reservoir of spare parts.
He and Camilo had longed dreamed of leading bike tours,
but getting up-to-date Harleys seemed fanciful given the
trade embargo. Then, in 2011, the Cuban government encour-
aged limited entrepreneurship to stimulate the moribund So-
cialist economy. By 2015, the future seemed auspicious: Presi-
dent Obama normalized U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations and
eased travel restrictions, bringing a fl ood of U.S. visitors. With
funding from a friend and investor in Argentina, Ernesto ar-
ranged for a dozen shiny new Harleys to be shipped from the
U.S. factory to Cuba via Panama. Poderosa Tours was a hit,
and Ernesto now leads up to 15 tours a year. Even the tight-
ening of the embargo by President Trump in 2019 has made
little dent in their popularity, since Americans are still able to
get travel visas to Cuba through a dozen diff erent categories.WE PROCEEDED INTO THE Escambray Mountains on the south
coast, the city of Santa Clara, and fi nally the beach-fringed is-
land of Cayo Santa Maria on the north. This last was the most
relaxing stretch for biking. The cay is reached by the best road
in Cuba, a meticulously engineered causeway that runs ar-
row-straight for 30 miles across 54 bridges spanning islets and
reefs. Potholes are rare, so the bikers could open up the throttles.
Soon we were rumbling back into Havana, where I had one
fi nal mission: to meet Ernesto’s older brother Camilo in the
former Guevara family residence. Most of its rooms now serve
as offi ces for the Che Guevara Study Center, built across the
street in 2002. (I had asked Cuban offi cials to meet Che’s wid-
ow, Aleida March, but got nowhere; a shy and private wom-
an, she has always stayed out of the limelight.) I had read that
Che’s small study is preserved in the old house as a shrine,
and is still fi lled with his annotated books and with souvenirs
from his international trav-
els, including a bronze statue
of “the New Soviet Man”—all
exactly as they had been the
day he left for Bolivia in 1966.
I took a cab to Nuevo Ve-
dado, an upscale suburb, and
entered the former Guevara
residence, an Art Deco struc-
ture painted a cheerful blue
and shaded by bougainvillea,
with geometric colored win-
dows. Wearing his long hair
tied back in a ponytail, loose
cotton trousers, leather san-
dals and an arty silver thumb
ring, Camilo resembled a Hol-
lywood producer on vacation.
We sat down next to a bust of Che and chatted about recent
events, particularly the tightening of the U.S. trade embargo
and the confusing restrictions on travel from Americans.
Camilo was more outspoken than Ernesto had been. “We
are entirely unsurprised,” he declared. “It’s the same imperial“Che’s life gives us hope. It was an act of
solidarity with his fellow human beings. People
have forgotten today that to be human is to be
part of the human race.”