Voices of Latin American Life – serie

Communities organizing to end Brazil's urban war on drugs

Communities organizing to end Brazil's urban war on drugs

In September 19, 1985, a powerful earthquake hit Mexico City in the early morning hours. As the city collapses, the government fails to respond. Long a voice of social conscience, prominent Mexican journalist, Elena Poniatowska chronicles the disintegration of the city's physical and social structure, the widespread grassroots organizing against government corruption and incompetence, and the reliency of the human spirit. As a transformative moment in the life of Mexican society, the earthquake is as much a component of the country's current crisis as the 1982 debt crisis, the problematic economic of the last ten years, and the recent elections. In masterfully weaving together a multiplicity of voices, Poniatowska has reasserted the inherent value and latent power of people working together. Punctuated by Poniatowska's own experiences and observations, these post disaster testimonies speak of the disruption of families and neighborhoods, of the destruction of homes and hospitals, of mutilation and death the collective loss of a city.Drawing the reader dramatically into the scene of national horror through dozens of personal stories, Poniatowska demonstrates the importance of courage and self-reliance in redeeming life from chaos. Elena Poniatowska, a prominent and prolific Mexican journalist and novelist, has written twenty-five books. Several have been translated into English, including "Massacre in Mexico" about the 1968 student/worker uprising in Mexico City, and the forthcoming "Tinisima", which centers upon the life of Tina Modotti. Aurora Camacho de Schmidt is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Swarthmore College. She has worked as a writer and as the National Representative for the Mexico-U.S. Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee. Arthur Schmidt is Associate Professor of History and former Director of the Latin American Studies Center at Temple University. He is the author of "The Social and Economic Effect of the Railroad in Puebla and Veracruz, Mexico, 1867-1911".

In My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary, Mar\u00eda Eugenia V\u00e1squez Perdomo presents a gripping account of her experiences as a member of M-19, one of the most successful guerrilla movements in Colombia's tumultuous modern history. V\u00e1squez's remarkable story opens with her happy childhood in a middle-class provincial household in which she was encouraged to be adventurous and inquisitive. As an eighteen-year-old university student in Bogot\u00e1, Mar\u00eda Eugenia embraced radical politics and committed herself to militant action to rid her country of an abusive government. Dedicated and daring, V\u00e1squez took part in some of the M-19's boldest operations in the 1970s and 1980s and became one of its leaders. She was able to avoid detection for nearly twenty years in the movement because she was both clever and considered too attractive to be a guerrillera. Her vivid narrative brings to life the men and women who were her comrades and conveys their anxiety and exhilaration as they carried out their actions. When she tells of her love affairs with some of M-19's top leaders, she cannot separate romance from camaraderie or escape a sense of impending tragedy.If V\u00e1squez gave us only a rare insider's account of youth culture and a guerrilla movement in a Latin American country, this would be a book well worth reading. But she also gives us an unsparing analysis of what it meant to be a woman in the movement and how much her commitment to radical politics cost her.

Favelas, or shantytowns, are where cocaine is mainly sold in Rio de Janeiro. There are some six hundred favelas in the city, and most of them are controlled by well-organized and heavily armed drug gangs. The struggle for the massive profits from this drug trade has resulted in what are increasingly violent and deadly confrontations between rival drug gangs and a corrupt and brutal police force, that have transformed parts of the city into a war-zone. Lucia tells the story of one woman who was once intimately involved with drug gang life in Rio throughout the 1990s. Through a series of conversations with the author, Lucia describes conditions of poverty, violence, and injustice that are simply unimaginable to outsiders. In doing so, she explains why women like her become involved with drugs and gangs, and why this situation is unlikely to change.

A riveting memoir of Mexico's "dirty wars"

How the border shapes the experiences and opportunities of Mexicans on each side