Uninterrupted View of the Sky

author: Melanie Crowder

Philomel, 2017 

grades 9-up 

Bolivian, Aymara

Seventeen-year-old Francisco Quispe loves soccer, but even though he’s smart, he doesn’t expect much of a future in school because of discrimination related to his Aymara heritage and appearance. Along with his friend Reynaldo, he dreams of selling knockoff soccer shirts and equipment in the market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where he has lived his entire life.

In an instant, his life changes when his mother tells him and his eight-year-old sister, Pilar, “Papá ran out of gas on the highway” and has been arrested. The reader is as confused as Francisco is. Why would a taxi driver walking to the gas station be in trouble with the police? 

“The police…said that he was going to make cocaine with that gasoline.” Mamá leans over the sink. Her head hangs below her shoulders, and her fingers grip the chipped porcelain. “It’s a lie and they know it.”

Because Francisco’s father is Indigenous, the police consider him guilty of Bolivia’s infamous Ley 1008, with no way of proving himself innocent. Unable to cope as a single mother with the stigma of a husband in prison, Francisco’s Mestiza mother abandons the family, so Francisco and his eight-year-old sister, Pilar, must live in the men’s prison with their father where the bathrooms are fouled with sewage and prisoners must pay for their own cells. Before they can afford a cell with Mamá’s final paycheck, Pilar is sexually assaulted, and both Francisco and his father are beaten by other inmates. Yet Francisco and Pilar are allowed to leave the prison in the daytime to attend school, and in those hours of freedom, he embarks on a quest to save his family—and himself.

Francisco decides that he wants to become a lawyer to help his father and others in prison as a result of Ley 1008, which gives police unlimited powers to detain persons suspected of manufacturing cocaine and other controlled substances. The law was passed in 1988 in response to pressure from the United States, which faced a drug crisis and scapegoated Indigenous Bolivians who for centuries have used the coca leaf in sacred rituals. Never a strong student—because he believed university to be an impossible dream—Francisco faces even greater odds in the form of application fees he has no way of paying. He makes a Faustian bargain with his old friend Reynaldo, who has run away from home and become a drug dealer due to family problems and despair for a better life through any other means now that Francisco can no longer go into business with him.

Crowder portrays the economic and racial divides in Bolivia without preaching. The book uses very little Spanish or Aymara—basically just enough to communicate that this is a different place and culture—which helps to avoid the awkwardness that comes from writers trying too hard to prove their knowledge of the language. Francisco is a complex and compelling character, loyal to his sister, his father, and his friends (which makes it all the more painful when they appear not to return his loyalty). When given the choice between taking Pilar to their grandparents in the Altiplano, he is torn between her safety and her opportunities in life—for the school there ends after a few grades—and he is worried that leaving his father alone in prison will break him. Complicating his decision is Soledad, an Indigenous classmate whose drug-addicted father is also in prison and who grew up fighting sexual harassment on a daily basis. Soledad teaches these survival skills to Francisco and Pilar, but as he becomes attached to her he also learns how to approach someone who has been abused. Also complex and fascinating is Francisco’s relationship with best friend Reynaldo and the other students in his class, who avoid him because he lives in prison but come to be tempted by the easy riches of the drug trade that contributed to the passage of the draconian law. 

An Uninterrupted View of the Sky takes place around 2000. Opposition to Ley 1008 contributed greatly to the election of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2006. While the law is still on the books, Morales has sought to strengthen legal protections for people, particularly Indigenous people, accused of drug crimes, and to improve prison conditions. An Uninterrupted View of the Sky is highly recommended.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann 

(published 8/15/17)

A shorter version of this review first appeared in The Pirate Tree (thepiratetree.com).

Children of Guatemala // The Children of the Sierra Madre // Children of Yucatán // The Grandchildren of the Incas

author: Jules Hermes

photographer: Jules Hermes

Carolrhoda Picture Books / Lerner Publishing, 1997

grades 2-4 

Maya

Children of Guatemala is an interestingly uneven book. It is not blatantly patronizing or ignorant; the author is really working at being an observer, even though he constantly shows his frame of reference—downtown Minneapolis. For example, he says that “[t]he market offers a break from everyday work and gives friends a chance to catch up on the latest news.” Jules! No, wait! The market is the goal! The object of the week's labors! The place to sell what you produce, to trade for essentials, to buy what you need to feed your family! Then, it is a place to hear the news, to catch up on important events, and, always, a place to socialize. It's not the mall!

On the other hand, Hermes is not afraid to discuss political situations, from the horrible 1990 massacre by the government in Santiago Atitlán, to the 80,000 Maya who have been brutally murdered by their own government since 1978, the longest “civil war” ever. He also talks about the lack of government support for public education and shows teachers and students picketing for quality education.

Hermes ought to have mentioned Rigoberta Menchú, the Mayan hero who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her unflagging quest to educate the world about Guatemala’s genocide against its indigenous peoples. That would be the logical extension for study from this beautifully photographed book. Marginally recommended.

author: Frank Staub

photographer: Frank Staub

Carolrhoda Picture Books / Lerner Publishing, 1996

grades 3-5

Tarahumara

In Children of the Sierra Madre, Staub highlights the U.S. influence on Latin America, using as an example the Tarahumara who live in the Sierra Madre region of Mexico near Chihuahua. He describes a strong class system in this region, ruled by the “white” Mexicans with the “Mestizos” doing all the work, even though many of his photos show “white” Mexicans and Mestizos doing just about same thing. I don't know, as a Chicana, I think we’re all pretty much a mixture of whoever landed on our shores or stormed up our creeks.

Staub obscures the issues of the theft of Tarahumara land and impoverishment of the people by presenting fact as opinion: “[M]any Tarahumara want to live apart from Mexicans, whom they think of as intruders in their land.” He describes the Tarahumara, rather than as the freedom fighters they have always been, regarded by most Mexicans with awe because of their steadfast opposition to colonialism, as merely “wanting to stick to the old ways.”

Staub’s discussion of Tarahumara religion is useful as a model of why one ought not to interpret a culture one doesn’t understand. He says, “Many Tarahumara have combined Catholicism with their traditional religious beliefs. They believe the Christian god is the same as their god, called Onoruame (Great Father) or Repa Beteame (He Who Lives Above).” Way wrong. Part of the Tarahumara’s self-imposed isolation is to worship the gods they choose. The Catholic Church reluctantly had to let the Mestizos as well as the Indigenous population maintain their own gods, as long as they took the form of the Catholic ones. For example, the Virgin of Guadalupe, with her dark skin and close ties with the people, is not the Virgin Mary; she is the people’s representation of Tonatzín, the goddess of home and hearth, and is only one of the aspects of Cuatlique, the Mother of the Gods. The church let that one slip by because forcing Guadalupe out would have caused mass revolt; it was easier to “say” she was the Virgin Mary. Every church in Mexico has at least one statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, usually where Jesus should be; in small churches there often is no statue of Jesus at all. This book is terrible. Not recommended.

 

author: Frank Staub

photographer: Frank Staub

Carolrhoda Picture Books / Lerner Publishing, 1996

grades 3-5 

Maya

Children of Yucatán is a travel guide rather than a children’s book, highlighting the exotic in dress, food, marketplaces, and of course, “ruins.” To the Maya, these “ruins” are temples, holy places that, despite the best efforts of the conquistadores and the Catholic Church, have endured.

Deeply embedded throughout the text is an attitude of paternalistic superiority and colonialist arrogance. Here is but one example out of many insulting passages:

One reason the people of Yucatán treat their ancestors with such respect is that they have provided their grandchildren with an important source of income. People come from all over the world to see the wonderful stone structures the ancient Maya left behind. And when visitors come, they spend money on food, hotels, and souvenirs.

This is one of the worst racist, elitist, patronizing, and paternalistic attitudes toward another culture I have seen in my 48 years of teaching. Not recommended.

author: Matti A. Pitkanen

photographer: Matti A. Pitkanen

Carolrhoda Picture Books / Lerner Publishing, 1991

grades 2-4 

Inca (Quechua, Aymara)

The photographs in The Grandchildren of the Incas are stunning; they are of people being themselves, looking into the camera more with pride than with fear. They are a gritty look at how the Quechua and Aymara have been able to survive Spanish conquest. Many continue traditional ways, living in the mountains, herding sheep, llamas and alpacas, and of course, farming the rugged slopes of the Andes Mountains.

The text is, for the most part, clear and accurate, especially about farming and herding. I found it curious, though, that the author tells us that almost every man, woman, and child wears a hat, but doesn’t mention the extreme cold and the need to protect the head from hypothermia, even though everyone wears sandals. He also mentions people leaving their mountain villages to work as servants in the cities to “make more opportunity for” themselves, but does not say that they are trying to help their families survive.

What bothers me most is the glossing over of the Spanish conquest. When Pitkanen says that “[n]ow the treasures are gone and so are many of the Inca's buildings,” the brutal manner in which the Inca Empire was destroyed and the people forced into slavery, with the survivors thrust into abject poverty, comes off as trivial. To his credit, the author mentions that the Inca fought back and that, “[d]uring the last half of the 20th century, the Quechua have begun to work together to make some changes. They have regained some of the land that was taken from them, and they are starting to demand that the people in government pay attention to their needs.”

Overall, I would use the book, mainly for its realistic photos: an unromantic look at a people struggling for survival. But I would direct students to look up Tupac Amaru and read about indigenous resistance movements. They might learn a lot about what was done in the name of Christianity and the people who are still fighting for their lives. Marginally recommended.

—Judy Zalazar Drummond

(published 4/11/13)

These reviews, in a slightly different form, first appeared in A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin (AltaMira Press, 2005). We thank the publisher for permission.