Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala By Daniel Wilkinson Reviewed by Mark D. Walker While researching for a documentary on the immigration crisis in Guatemala, I came across the reference of this book being one of the best books on the Guatemalan civil war, which lasted thirty-six-years and claimed some 200,000 people, the vast majority of whom died (or “disappeared”) at the hands of a U.S.-backed military government. The title sounded familiar, so I checked out my bookshelves and, low-and-behold, it surfaced and I’m so glad it did. The author was a young human […]

The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers by Moritz Thomsen Reviewed by Mark D. Walker After being thrown off his small farm on the Rioverde located in northern Ecuador after years of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then as a local farmer by his local partner Ramon, the 63-year-old author, embarks on a desperate journey on a second river—this one is in Brazil. The trek proves to be a time of reckoning, assessing and reflecting on his life, which he perceived was coming to an end. This book would be the third of the author’s four literary […]

The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy, Arturo Arias, Editor Reviewed by Mark D. Walker I learned of this book while helping produce a documentary on immigration problems in Guatemala, “Guatemala: Trouble in the Highlands,” when I announced that I was planning to recruit anthropologist David Stoll to work with us. I’d read his excellent studies, “Between Two Armies” and “Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans,” which he researched with extensive interviews in the Ixil Triangle region of Guatemala. But when I announced his involvement, a number of our advisors said they’d abandon the project if we included Stoll. Evidently, […]

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo Reviewed by Mark D. Walker I first learned of what is considered “one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature” while reading Paul Theroux’s, “On the Plain of Snakes.” In his critique of Mexican literature, he mentions “Pedro Páramo” because, unlike many Mexico’s best-known authors, Rulfo wrote about rural Mexico. He mentions that the book was published in 1955 and was one of procurers of “magical realism”, which influenced many of Latin America’s best authors. When I told my Guatemalan wife about the book, she told me she “hated it.” Evidently, the Belgium nuns who […]