Cross-cultural communication （78）　

78) The Two Ernestos
Have you ever come across a young person in the street wearing a T-shirt with a portrait of a man with a fearless face, wearing a beret and a beard? That person is Ernesto Che Guevara, who died 50 years ago in 2017.

The film “Ernesto”, which was released in October 2017, depicts the short life of Freddy Maemura, a second-generation Japanese-Bolivian who fought alongside Guevara as a revolutionary army to overthrow the military regime in Bolivia.

From a young age, Freddy aspired to become a doctor, and he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Havana in Cuba. He experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis shortly after enrolling, and this awakened him to international politics. At that time, Che Guevara visited the University of Havana to inspect the school, and he exchanged words with Freddy. Just before Freddy graduates, a military coup breaks out in his home country of Bolivia, and his homeland is overrun by the oppressive military regime. Freddy believes that it is his duty to fight against the military regime in his homeland, so he asks Che, whom he has only just met, for an interview, and after a series of twists and turns, he undergoes training with the revolutionary army and heads to Bolivia as a revolutionary soldier. As a revolutionary soldier, “Ernesto Medico” (Medico means doctor or medical care) was the code name given to him by Che. However, in the face of the overwhelming military might of the military government, both Freddy and Che were killed in action in Bolivia in 1967.

Now, this is where the original message of this column, “Intercultural Communication,” comes in. Joe Odagiri, who played Freddy Maemura, speaks Spanish throughout the film. Odagiri is fluent in English and has acted in several films in English, but he had not studied Spanish before the film, and he says he managed by doing some intensive Spanish training before filming and memorizing all his lines. I don't know anything about Spanish, but as far as I could tell from watching the film, the Spanish that Odagiri speaks is quite fluent and natural.

In my article Cross-cultural communication (46) , I pointed out that when making films like this in the future, it would be better to use Japanese actors who speak English even poorly. One may add English subtitles, if necessary. I think that this film “Ernesto” has unexpectedly demonstrated this point, and in that sense, I was very moved after seeing it.

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