Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America
by Alma Guillermoprieto
On This Page
Description
"Since Alma Guillermoprieto became The New Yorker's Latin American correspondent a decade ago, she has emerged as the most informed and admired writer on her part of the world. In these superb pieces of reportage and analysis she anatomizes a region we are intimately linked with yet sadly ignorant of. She writes in depth about three countries that are in deep difficulty." "Cuba, to which she returned after many years - a place in an exhausting holding pattern, waiting for Castro's departure show more yet anxious about what may replace him. Colombia, in which she has spent several years and which is fatally splintered among the government, the left-wing guerrillas who control large sections of the country, thanks in part to money from the drug trade, and the right-wing paramilitaries. Mexico, where she lives, which has been beset by the uprising in Chiapas (where she encounters the legendary masked leader, Marcos) and by the corruption of the government, yet is emerging for the first time into some kind of real democracy." "Finally, she gives us the stories of Eva Peron - and so of Argentina; Che Guevara - and so of the aborted Marxist revolution in Latin America; and Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist who in 1990 lost the battle of the presidency to Alberto Fujimori." "Looking for History is personal reportage that is infused with the author's unique understanding of a world that she is a part of, but that she can also stand apart from and sympathetically observe."--Jacket. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
I am amazed no one has reviewed thjs book yet. Alma Guillermoprieto is simply the most clear-sighted analyst of Latin American I have come across. These essays are about the continent in the 90's but many things are the same. She has the advantage of being both inside and out, a person who can be a Latin American and understand everything from the perspective of a Mexican, a Cuban or a Colombian but also someone who can adjust this understanding with the slightly different view of an outsider. If you are interested in Latin America you must read this book. In fact, I would say you must read all of her books.
Unique fusion of deep knowledge of countries' culture with their politics. You get an outsider's objectivity with an insider's awareness of links and resonance.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
19+ Works 689 Members
Alma Guillermoprieto worked for "The Washington Post" before joining "The New Yorker" in the late 1980s. She also writes for "The New York Review of Books". She is the author of two previous books, "Samba" & "The Heart That Bleeds" (both available from Vintage) & was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1995. She lives in Mexico City. (Bowker Author show more Biography) show less
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 197
- Popularity
- 165,259
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.81)
- Languages
- English, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
