Wounded Falcons

 

author: Jairo Buitrago

translator (from Spanish): Elisa Amado

illustrator: Rafael Yockteng

Groundwood Books, 2021 

grades 3-up

“It was a bad day at school.” Young Adrián’s face is bloody and bruised, his shirt is torn, and his fists are clenched with rage. It’s always a bad day at school. Adrián gets into trouble with everyone—except his friend, Santiago, who never has any problems and never has any bad days. Yet the two are friends.

Before going home, the two friends sit in the middle of a garbage-strewn empty lot “that doesn’t belong to anyone, where no one ever comes.” In a clump of grass, Adrián finds a young, wounded falcon, scared and unable to fly. The boy wraps the bird in his jacket to keep her warm, and promises to take care of her.

At home, Adrián looks to his mother for advice about curing the bird’s broken wing—but receives instead a mean-spirited promise: We already know what happened at school…Later, your father will give you what you deserve. The next day, Adrián skips school and meets up with Santiago in the empty lot “where no one ever comes.” Santiago takes him and the falcon to someone who “cures broken bones”—and pays for the treatment with his Christmas money. Together, the two friends gently care for the wounded falcon. And in science class, “even though the others laugh and whisper,” Adrián speaks for the first time, giving a talk “about birds of prey, about their strength, about their beauty.”

Adrián encloses the falcon and her nest in a box he has built and sets it in a tree. When he is sad, he visits with the falcon: “They know each other, they can feel their hearts beating when they are together.” 

Weeks later, there is a storm—and the two friends discover that “the falcon has gone with the squalls of rain and the wind.” The next day, they go back to the lot “that belongs to no one, where no one comes.” They look up and see a falcon—like a bolt of lightning—dive from the sky, grab a pigeon in flight—and scream to salute them. Santiago sees tears on his friend’s cheeks: “his friend who never cries, not even when they were both little children.” As the two friends silently go home,

Santiago thinks that Adrián has a big heart, even if he gets into trouble. Tomorrow when they leave school to go to the empty lot that belongs to no one, where no one comes, maybe they can see the falcon hunting again, and they will be closer than ever.

Young readers will intuit that the title—Wounded Falcons—refers to both the bird of prey and the bullied child. For the falcon and Adrián—both wounded and now healing—it will be a good day.

Buitrago’s sparse descriptions and economy of words—together with Yockteng’s digitally-created illustrations that resemble pen-and-ink drawings—lay out the scenarios and encourage young readers to draw their own interpretations and conclusions. The final illustration will surprise them. 

•Wounded Falcons is highly recommended for home, school and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/18/2021)

Niños: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile

author: María José Farrada 

illustrator: Maria Elena Valde 

translator: Lawrence Schimel 

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers 

2021 

grades 3-up 

(Chilean)

On September 11, 1973, a U.S.-led coup d’etat assassinated Chilean President Salvador Allende and overthrew his populist government; and installed in its place the fascist regime of General Augusto Pinochet. For the next 17 years—until democracy was restored—Pinochet ruled with an “iron fist”: imprisoning, torturing, murdering and “disappearing” thousands of Chilean citizens. Among these 3,197 desaparecidos, 34 were children. 

In Niños: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile, Chilena author María José Ferrada and illustrator María Valdez remember and honor those disappeared children whose names and ages are listed on a final page. Each poem and illustration, titled with a child’s first name, is a gift to the children and their parents—and to the people of Chile, who still mourn and remember.

That none of these short, beautifully illustrated poems mentions Pinochet or the despicable things that he did is a metaphorical payback to him and to dictators in general. All children’s lives should be full of love and beauty, and, in a sense, Ferrada’s tender poems and Valdez’s soft illustrations name and remember these children as their lives should have and would have been. In imagining these children’s lives without violence, they’ve returned to these niños desaparecidos the lives and childhoods that the fascists stole from them. 

Here, young readers meet, among others:

Alicia, who releases her birthday balloons to give a gift to the wind

Jaime, who learns to sing from a bird nesting nearby

Soledad, who writes a symphony from the sound of raindrops on the roof

Paola, whose heart buzzes when she sees an insect for the first time

Eduardo, who watches the flight of the first leaf of autumn 

Jessica, who leaves a gift for the ants disappearing over the edge of a table

Felipe, who turns a light bulb on and off like a miniature sun

Jose, who invents his own dictionary

Orlando, who draws insects to march in single file

Sergio, who plants words in a flowerpot so he can watch them bloom

Valdez’s double-page spreads of soft-edged artwork—accomplished in watercolors, charcoal, graphite, and pastels, on a muted palette of grays, greens, blues, and browns with touches of yellows—are serene and beautiful. They complement the gentleness of the poems and the imagination of the children.

In her dedication, Ferrada, who works as the children’s editor of Memoria Chilena (Chilean Memory), a digital resource center of the National Library of Chile, writes:

This book is an homage to those thirty-four Chilean children, who in these pages play, dream, and listen to the voices of their mothers. Because this is what we think children should do. But this book is also a reminder, an alarm. For we tell this story knowing that at this moment, many children feel afraid, suffer tragedies, and even lose their lives because of political violence. To those children, and to the memory that helps us defeat monsters, we dedicate this book. 

Towards the end is a list of the full names and ages of the 33 children, victims of Pinochet’s fascist regime. Some were only a few months old. The final poem, opposite a blue sky with animals leaping in the clouds, is for a child named Pablo:

When I grow up I’ll be a tree, a cloud,

a wave,

a snail.

And all those shapes

that can be seen in the clouds I’ve learned to stare at.

A tree, a cloud, a wave, a snail.

When I learn to speak,

these words will be the first things I’ll say.

Below this poem, there is another name: “Pablo” is Pablo Athanasiu, who had been disappeared as an infant and was found, alive, as an adult:

Niños is also dedicated to Pablo Athanasiu, who had been part of this list until August 7, 2013, when the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo found him alive. We dedicate this book to him and hope the stars always shine for him.

*Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 2/25/21)

Notes: 

In its previous edition, Niños received recognition from the Academia Chilena de la Lengua (Chilean Academy of the Language) for the best literary work published in Chile, the Premio Municipal de Literatura de Santiago (Municipal Prize of Literature of Santiago) in the category of youth literature, and was chosen to represent Chile in the catalog, La Organización Internacional para el Libro Juvenil (International Organization for Children’s and Young People’s Books; in English, from IBBY, or International Board of Books for Young People). 

For older students (high school-up) and their teachers, I highly recommend the documentary film, The Judge and the General, which chronicles the investigation by Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán, a former backer of the Pinochet regime, of the mysterious disappearances of countless political opponents—and his own personal and political transformation—BHS

All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon

author: Tim Z. Hernández

University of Arizona Press, 2017

grades 9-up 

Mexican

The crops are all in and the peaches are rottnin’ 

The oranges are piled in yer creosote dumps

Yer flyin’ em back to the Mexican border

To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane

All they will call you will be…deportee.

Ever since the Great Depression, the US has had a “revolving door” policy tied to its capitalist economy. When the economy starts to pick up, the door opens to immigration as a source of cheap labor; and when times get tough—immigrants (“illegals”) are the first to be blamed, rounded up and deported.[1]

In 1942, with increased demands for production, the US and Mexico initiated the Bracero program, which brought millions of Mexican “guest” workers to US agricultural fields in California and Texas. This program was immensely profitable for the large growers, who used it to thwart unionizing efforts and drive down wages of all agricultural workers.[2] By the autumn of 1947, soon after World War II ended, Mexican labor became dispensable, and more than 600,000 were rounded up and sent back to Mexico—even though many were US citizens.

On a cold winter morning on January 28, 1948, a plane crash at Los Gatos, California—what was then called “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history”—claimed the lives of 32 passengers, including 28 Mexican agricultural workers.[3] At the time of their deaths, these Mexican citizens were in the process of being deported by the US government.

Within a few days of the crash, the members of the flight crew had been identified and their remains collected and returned to their families and communities. But the Mexican citizens on board remained anonymous—and newspaper stories for that day referred to them only as “deportees.” When their charred remains were interred in an unmarked mass grave in the Central Valley, the records of Holy Cross Cemetery identified each person simply as a “Mexican National.”

Just a few days after the tragedy, on February 3, the great Woody Guthrie, protesting the anonymity of these farm workers and their tragic deaths, penned a poem entitled “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” Guthrie’s poem later became a song and, through the years, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen have brought it to wide audiences.

Inspired by the song and motivated by his dying grandfather’s memories of life as a campesino—and with a combination of dogged journalistic spirit and empathy, heart and Chicanismo—Hernández set out to uncover the family stories of these passengers. The search, he writes, “required traveling six decades back in time, to numerous cities, ranchos, and barrios, in three countries, three languages, with limited resources, and only a single shred of old newspaper as the clue.” Hernández was eventually able to locate the families of seven of the “anonymous” agricultural workers who perished in the crash. Here, readers—told from the beginning when and how these campesinos would meet their tragic deaths—come to know them as real people with families, friends and communities; real people with impossibly difficult lives and also with loves and passions and dreams.

Major sections—“The Witnessing,” “The Stories” and “They’re Flyin’ ‘em Back,”—begin with a line from the song, and readers will find as well several aged, almost unrecognizable black-and-white family photos mixed in. Together, this approach effectively sets each telling into a time and place, and encourages readers to want to learn more.

These engaging, sometimes heartbreaking stories are circular and multilayered. Often beginning decades after the tragedy with a relative’s memory told contemporaneously, Hernández’s own recreations connect the tellings and take them back in time. Here, Ramón, as a young man about to head north, stops at the community’s ejido:

The whispers of birds in the nearby bushes could be heard. In the perfect silence of the evening, Ramón looked across the ejido and could almost envision the well. He could see the glistening rows of water and hear the infinite trickling of a stream. It was the sound of (the community’s) success. His own success. He could see the corn growing to unfathomable heights, garbanzos as large as fists. The fertile earth a shade of red, umber, its scent wafting like a sash across his chest. There was only one choice. As much as he hated to admit it, el Norte was the only solution.

With the community depending on him, Ramón tells his wife: “Necesito ir pa’l Norte…. I have to, mi amor. It’s the only choice.”

Above all, the narratives—what the relatives wanted to tell—are stories of humanity and kindness. Here, Jaime tells of how he remembers his uncle, Guadalupe:

“My uncle was a very tall man, and oftentimes, when he would go, he would cross el Río Bravo, and he would help the women and children cross by carrying them on his back, or on his shoulders. Yes, my uncle did that, and people knew him for that. How he would help people cross.”

As they read the events on the day of the tragedy—interspersed with recollections from before—readers will have become familiar with, not only the campesinos themselves, but also their families and communities. Early that morning, for instance, Luis is looking at Casimira’s photograph and is excited about their upcoming wedding. It’s forty-one degrees in downtown San Francisco, and the passengers are boarding the bus that will take them across the Bay Bridge toward Oakland. When they arrive at the Oakland Municipal Airport, a member of the flight crew instructs them: “Formen una sola linea, por favor.”

A light gust of wind blew José Sánchez Valdivia’s baseball cap off his head, and he scooped it up before it had a chance to go skipping down the tarmac…. Everyone made small talk to pass the time…. The air was frigid still, and María huddled against her husband, Lupe. Ramón and Guadalupe spoke of plans for the ejido, and how it would be nice to return home again…

The family members’ tellings, in all their intimacy and love, are beautiful to read—all the more so because we know how these stories end. The events before, during and after the crash, in all their minute detail, are painful to read, but high school students will gain an empathetic perspective, the scope of which they may never have experienced before.

While these family tellings maintain the loving intimacy of relatives, friends and communities, Hernández’s journalistic perspective places readers into the picture that’s generally seen only in headlines or sanitized stories. With detail as important as the family stories, he writes, for instance, about the degradation of the fitness evaluations—which he calls the “bracero entrance exam”—that guaranteed that only those who were fit enough to be field laborers, yet “would not look to raise trouble” were deemed capable of enduring life as braceros in el Norte. 

It was not until 1989—more than 40 years after the tragedy—that Jaime Ramírez, carrying with him a newspaper clipping from 1974, which had a list of those who had been killed in the crash—was able to find the unmarked gravesite where his grandfather, Ramon Paredes and uncle, Guadalupe Ramírez Lara, were buried. He showed the list to Hernández in 2013, and gave him an audiotape of Woody Guthrie’s song. “Had it not been for the song,” Hernández writes, “I would’ve never known about the plane crash in the first place. The song, by all definitions, was the beacon.”

There is much more to All They Will Call You, including stories of the flight crew members; Hernández’s interview with Pete Seeger; the story of a troubled young man named Marty Hoffman, who wrote the music; an account of the day of the memorial headstone celebration; photographs of the author with some of the families; and a long, long list of acknowledgements.

Hernández’s Field Notes (2012-2015) begins with a section from “La Huesera” by Ire’ne Lara Silva:

…here, where the world is undone, and their bodies are remade, their spirits rise in star-flecked spirals. The pooling blood runs backwards, their splintered hearts come together. I know all their names. I will call them, and they will come…

In All They Will Call You, Hernández transforms his tape recorder into a tool for gathering stories. “While the telling itself is true,” he writes, “its loyalty is not to people of fact but rather to people of memory…. In this way, it’s inevitable that some rememberings will contradict other rememberings…. In this case, perception is truth.”

There is no pretense of objectivity here, nor should there be. Trusting in the multiple rememberings and perceptions of the tellers here—rather than attempting to sift out or retell one “truth” of a story—is the mark of a brilliant advocacy journalist.

Indeed, All They Will Call You is intense and compassionate, and places teen readers into the stories and struggles that have at least as much meaning today as they did almost seven decades ago. And together, they serve as a model for readers considering a career in the kind of journalism that speaks truths about power.

Especially now, in these dark and dangerous times, it’s important for readers to know the “deportees,” how hard they worked and shared with their communities. They were disrespected in life, and in death, they were just tossed away. All They Will Call You is a humbling book that honors and memorializes these “deportees” and all the humble people whose backbreaking work puts food on our tables. To say the least, it’s major Pulitzer Prize material.

Miguel Alvarez Negrete ¡Presente!	Francisco Durán Llamas ¡Presente!
Santiago Elizondo García ¡Presente!	Tomás Gracia de Aviña ¡Presente!
Salvador Hernández Sandoval ¡Presente!	Severo Lara Medina ¡Presente!
Tomás Márquez Padilla ¡Presente!	Luis Medina López ¡Presente!
Manuel Merino Calderón ¡Presente!	Martín Navarri Razo ¡Presente!
Ramón Ochoa Ochoa ¡Presente!	Ramón Paredes González ¡Presente!
Alberto Carlos Raygoza ¡Presente!	Guadalupe Rodríguez Hernández ¡Presente!
María Rodríguez Santana ¡Presente!	José Sánchez Valdivia ¡Presente!
Jesús Santos Meza ¡Presente!	Baldomero Marcos Torres ¡Presente!
Bernabé García López ¡Presente!	Rosalio Estrada Padilla ¡Presente!
Juan Ruiz Valenzuela ¡Presente!	Elias Macías Trujillo ¡Presente!
José Macias Rodriguez ¡Presente!	Wenceslao Ruiz Flores ¡Presente!
Ignacio Navarro Pérez ¡Presente!	Luis Miranda Cuevas ¡Presente!
Apolonio Placencia Ramírez ¡Presente!	Guadalupe Ramírez Lara ¡Presente!

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 4/26/17; revised last four paragraphs, 4/28/17)

---

[1] An excellent source of historical information is 500 Años del Pueblo Chicano / 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures by Elizabeth (“Betita”) Martinez, reviewed on this site.

[2] See also The Bracero Program: 1942-1964 by Sarah Hines, http:///www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/21/the-bracero-program-1942-1964/

[3] This is the number that was officially recorded; there may have been as many as 39 Mexican passengers on board.

ABeCedarios: ABCs in English and Spanish // Opuestos: Opposites in English and Spanish // Colores de la Vida: Colors in English and Spanish // Count Me In! Numbers in English and Spanish // Animal Talk: Animal Sounds in English and Spanish

Oaxaca has had a wood carving tradition since long before first contact; the products of this tradition—from sacred to practical to whimsical—have taken the forms of religious statuaries, cooking utensils, household instruments, children’s toys and the like. Fast-forward to the 1950s, when a shepherd named Manuel Jiménez from the town of Arrazola was carving little wood animals while grazing his sheep at Monte Albán. When a white guy who owned a folk art shop in Oaxaca City “discovered” Jiménez and offered to buy everything that he could produce, others started to imitate Jiménez’s style, and the craft spread to San Martín Tilcajete and La Unión.

At about the same time, the opening of the Mexican span of the Pan American Highway brought to Oaxaca an influx of tourists, whom folk art dealers realized would happily purchase both replicas of old carvings and work that had no longstanding cultural traditions. This beginning of the folk art woodcarving practice has brought construction of paved roads, schools and hospitals to the area, and has been an important source of cash income for the woodcarvers and their families. And it’s one of the crafts that have made the state of Oaxaca world famous.

Weill, an English teacher who is fluent in Spanish, spent a Fulbright Teacher Exchange year in Mexico City and travelled to Oaxaca on weekends. Initially drawn to its abundance of crafts, she later enrolled in a doctoral program, researching intercultural collaboration in folk art production—and what would result if artisans created what pleased them rather than what might appeal to potential buyers. She also wanted a platform, as she told me, to showcase the work of the artists and artisans in ways that would recognize their unique talents.

Weill’s academic work eventually became a cross-cultural collaborative art project with several folk art producing families in Oaxaca. If a project were to be collaborative as well as cross-cultural, Weill would find out, she would have to give up a lot of control and become “joined at the hip” with the families with whom she worked. And everyone would have an equal voice.

One of the results of this collaboration is a series of five adorable bilingual concept books that introduce the littlest learners to the alphabet, colors, counting, opposites, and animal sounds. Anyone who is able to sit still for a moment will thoroughly enjoy the brightly colored- and -patterned wooden animalitos, on highly saturated backgrounds that bring to mind the texture of plastered walls.

author: Cynthia Weill 
artists: Armando Jiménez, Moisés Jiménez  
Cinco Puntos Press, 2007, all grades
Mexican

The first in the series, ABeCedarios: Mexican Folk Art in English and Spanish, features well known animals (“the Elephant / el Elefante”), and rare (“the Quetzal / el Quetzal”), and imaginary ones (“the Unicorn / el Unicornio”), and one that is as yet “undiscovered” (the mysterious “X / el/la X,” a winged creature that breathes fire); as well as animals for which there are uniquely Spanish sounds (“el Chapulín” to demonstrate “ch,” “la Llama,” to show “ll,” “el Ñu” or “gnu,” and “el Zorro,” to depict “rr”).

 

author: Cynthia Weill
artists: Martín Santiago, Quirino Santiago
Cinco Puntos Press, 2009, all grades
Mexican

The second work, Opuestos: Mexican Folk Art Opposites in English and Spanish, depicts contrasting concepts on opposing pages (“asleep / dormido” and “awake / despierto”), sometimes depicting the same animal (“inside / adentro” and “outside / afuera” the frame) and sometimes showing a different animal or insect: The opposing concepts “high / alto” and “low / bajo,” show a butterfly on the upper left corner of the left page, while a dog, on the center of the right page, looks hungrily up at it; in another spread, two almost identical dogs, one with a “long / larga” tail faces one with a “short / corta” tail.

author: Cynthia Weill
artists: Rubí Fuentes, Efraín Broa, María Jiménez, Jesús Sosa, Angélica Vasquez, Carlomagno Pedro Martínez, Eleazar Morales, René Mandarín, Eloy Santiago, José Miguel Pacheco Aguero, María Jiménez  
Cinco Puntos Press, 2011, all grades
Mexican

In the third librito, Colores de la Vida: Mexican Folk Art Colors in English and Spanish , the animals—done in different techniques this time—are mostly displayed on background colors that correspond to the animals themselves. So, for instance, two purple bunnies (with orange carrots, which add some contrast and realism) sit on and opposing a “purple /  morado” background, and a glorious orange lion (with a full mane and what appear to be actual orange slices as ears and eyes) sits on an “orange /  anaranjado” background. I especially like the question at the end (with a cow and her calf on a green background and the lettering on a blue background):  Can you say all the colors in Spanish? / ¿Puedes nombrar todos los colores en inglés?

author: Cynthia Weill
artists: Guillermina Aguilar, Josefina Aguilar, Irene Aguilar, Concepción Aguilar
Cinco Puntos Press, 2012, all grades
Mexican

Unlike the others, Count Me In! A Parade of Mexican Folk Art Numbers in English and Spanish features all humans, decked out to participate in a festival called “Guelaguetza,” which is Zapotec for “to share.” Except for the initial two-page spread, which shows a line of people beginning the parade (Here comes the parade! / ¡Aquí viene el desfile!), all of the other illustrations (along with captions that will entice the youngest of listeners) land on the right-hand pages on solid backgrounds with only the numbers 1-10 in English and Spanish. Opposite “four / cuatro,” for instance, is this: The giants are my favorite! See the person wearing the costume peeking through from inside? / ¡A mí me encantan los gigantes! ¿Ves a la persona que lleva el disfraz mirándonos desde adentro?

author: Cynthia Weill
artists: Rubí Fuentes, Efraín Broa 
Cinco Puntos Press, 2016, all grades
Mexican

And finally (for now), there’s Animal Talk: Mexican Folk Art Animal Sounds in English and Spanish. Here, probably the most beautiful and detailed animals and insects in the series demonstrate how sounds from everyday animals and insects (roosters, kitties, fish, goats, tigers, cows, horses, dogs, frogs, piggies, lions, snakes, turkeys, and owls) make sounds that may or may not be pronounced differently in two languages. For example, Roosters say Cock-a-Doodle-Doo. Can you? / Los gallos dicen Ki-Kiri-Ki. ¿Puedes tú? But fish say “glub-glub” in both languages. And the humor is sometimes slyly tucked in for the benefit of children who may be bilingual: Turkeys say Gobble Gobble / Los pavos dicen Gordo Gordo (!) The back cover, which may be my favorite, clearly and hilariously demonstrates how and why this all works: Sometimes they’re talking to you. / A veces me están hablando a mí.

Bilingual, colorful, inviting, absolutely adorable—and definitely child-centric—these libritos will capture and hold the attention of the littlest to the biggest kids (and adults alike—I keep coming back to them, and I’m known to be hard to please). All are highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 6/1/16)

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

[Reviewer's note: I want to share with readers some information about how this project's collaborative plan becomes a reality. Cynthia Weill and the artists work together for between two and four years to produce each book. (Cynthia mentioned to me that her role often includes babysitting so that the artist families can concentrate on their craft.) She pays the artists market rate for their work, which she then donates to the Field Museum of Chicago. After each book has been produced, Cinco Puntos Press gives each artist family 100 copies of the book that features their work.] 

Surviving Santiago

author: Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Running Press, 2015 

grades 7-up 

Chilean, Chilean American

Surviving Santiago, Miller-Lachmann’s companion-sequel to Gringolandia, takes place in 1989, in the waning days of the US-sponsored Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, after the plebiscite that removed him from power, and before he actually stepped down. It’s told from the POV of 16-year-old Cristina Isabel Aguilar Fuentes, known in her adopted country and by her friends as “Tina Aguilar.”

Tina’s mom—who, in Gringolandia, had relocated with her family to Wisconsin, and now is divorced from Marcelo and remarried—has sent her to live with her papá for the summer; and returning to her homeland is the last thing Tina wants to do. It’s a strange place, Santiago de Chile, not a place she remembers, and not a father she remembers. Marcelo, a revolutionary who had been tortured by the regime, has come out scarred, inside and out. He is addicted to alcohol and when he drinks, he becomes violent and abusive. Papá had wanted Tina to spend the summer with him, but when she arrives, she finds she’s on her own.

Throughout, Miller-Lachmann paints a complex and realistic picture of what torture under the dictatorship did to individuals and families—in this case, post-traumatic stress causes Papá to lash out at those he once loved. Tina soon sees how he dehumanizes Tía Ileana—who is lesbian and the only person who takes care of him. Tina remembers her papá from childhood—how he would drive the children to school, how they would go to the beach, how they would play cards together. But now, she abhors that he has become, as she spits out, “a bigot and a jerk.”

Indeed, Marcelo is a broken person, yet he never drinks at work, because this work is too important to screw up. His friend and colleague, Ernesto, adores him. “We worship him, Ernesto says. “He taught us everything we know about investigative journalism.” “During the plebiscite,” he tells Tina, “he was on the air for thirty-five hours straight. Said he couldn’t sleep until he knew the bastard was going down so he might as well work, but I’m sure it’s an on-air record.”

As in Gringolandia, there’s a metaphor here that’s not really a metaphor: Papá has rescued two parrots who had been abused by a bird torturer; one was un desplumado who eventually grew back his feathers, and the other has chewed off part of his foot. What will happen to Papá as a result of the torture he suffered at the hands of the Pinochet regime? Will he heal or will he remain physically and emotionally broken?

When an attractive, motorcycle-riding dude—a delivery boy—arrives on the scene, something is not right. Although Tina and Frankie share a love of Metallica and both are dealing with fathers who have alcoholism, Frankie’s extreme right-wing views of the regime and Chile’s history and world events—such as how “Franco stopped the Communists” in the Spanish Civil War—are the opposite of what Tina knows to be true. And they’re the opposite of all that her papá has fought and suffered for. Still, Tina sees Frankie in a way that only a love-struck teenager can: she senses, yet ignores, the oncoming danger. This is Chile, after all, and Augusto Pinochet is still in control. The military police and the regime’s hired guns are still “disappearing” people. In this tense, dangerous scenario, what’s Frankie’s role? Who is he, really?

As the tension builds and careens to a satisfying conclusion, everyday people try to survive and families continue to search for the bodies of their “disappeared” relatives, those who had been imprisoned and tortured struggle to become whole again, and Pinochet and his thugs do their best to see that his fascist legacy continues. This is 16-year-old Tina’s narrative—usually on-point, sometimes naïve, but every word believable.

Where appropriate in narration or dialogue, Miller-Lachmann uses idiomatic Chilean Spanish, and seamlessly inserts English interpretations (some of which will be a hoot for Spanish-speakers):

The moment I set Pablo down, he fluffs his tail and takes a dump on the counter. Tía Ileana yells at me. She hasn’t yelled at me since I got here, but I guess I’d yell too if a bird pooped where I sort of cooked.

¡Pégame un tiro ya! Pablo screams back.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” I murmur, stroking his head.

He keeps screeching, “Just shoot me,” in Spanish….

When the parrot quiets, I say, “Hello. How are you?”

“¡Alfonso, conch’e tu madre!” the parrot squawks at me.

I don’t reward him for calling someone named Alfonso his mother’s private parts. Instead, I repeat, “Hello. How are you?”

This time, the bird squawks, “Vamos, pajero dormilón.”

Laughing, I say, “I did get my lazy ass out of bed.”

Like Gringolandia, Miller-Lachmann’s latest effort is one I’ve read several times and I’ve wanted to quote from practically every page. It’s that good. And, like Gringolandia, Surviving Santiago is an important historical novel, and is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 6/26/15)

Gringolandia

(Note: This is an updated version of the review, which corrects the location of the swimming pool depicted on the cover of Gringolandia.)

author: Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Curbstone Press, 2009

grades 7-up 

Chilean, Chilean American

During the years of the US-installed and –supported Chilean military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean secret police (DINA) operated clandestine prisons in which they tortured or executed thousands of people. Villa Grimaldi—which the torturers referred to as “el Palacio de la Risa” (the “Palace of Laughter”)—was one of four of these torture centers on the outskirts of Santiago. From mid-1974 to mid-1978, the DINA killed or disappeared 236 of the 4,500 prisoners held there.

Sometime towards the end of the Pinochet regime, the torture centers were all but razed, probably as an attempt to erase from public consciousness what happened there. In 1978, Villa Grimaldi was sold to a developer and, after a public campaign was launched in the name of human rights and historical memory, the infamous torture center was transformed into the Villa Grimaldi Corporación Parque por la Paz, a memorial of the lives taken there.

Part of what is left of “El Palacio de la Risa” is a nondescript swimming pool that had been used in the tortures. Now, with discolored green tiles covering the bottom, it is fenced off for both citizens and tourists to view. A photograph of this swimming pool—with a dove flying out of it—is the cover of Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s amazing young adult novel, Gringolandia.

Having Chilean friends who were tortured in those years—as do I—Lyn told me that she started working on Gringolandia in 2004, after the revelations of the tortures committed by military police personnel of the US Army and other US agencies conducted at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Then, she said, as during the Pinochet dictatorship, people were generally shrugging off torture as an aberration or justifying it as a way of obtaining information. Meanwhile, FOX media, in its award-winning drama series “24,” helped create the kind of division and suspicion to convince people to “follow the leader” rather than protest.

Meanwhile, the stories of the Chilean people—victims, survivors, and disappeared—were not being told and, given the responsibility of our government for installing and supporting the dictatorship that tortured, murdered or disappeared some 35,000 people, Lyn told me, she set out to create a young adult novel that “was real, honest and truthful” to tell those stories.

Much of Gringolandia is narrated by Daniel Aguilar, an immigrant teenager living with his mother and younger sister in Madison, Wisconsin. Part One, entitled “Then,” is told in third person; detailing Daniel’s beating and the horrific arrest and torture of his father, Marcelo, an underground journalist and revolutionary, by the Chilean secret police.

Someone grabbed Daniel by the hair and jerked his head back. He looked up into the covered face of the tall one. The boss. The man’s eyes were black and terrifying in the shadow, and his mouth, a little round hole cut out of the mask, moved like the mouth of a robot.

“Boy, you watch this,” he snarled. “This is what happens to communists.”

The helmeted soldiers left. The tall man crouched and ground his knee into Daniel’s shoulder blades. Rough hands in his hair twisted his head back. The other three masked men pounced on Daniel’s father, aiming blows at his head and body. His glasses flew off and were crushed beneath a black boot. He fell to his knees. Blood ran down his face into his beard.

Daniel closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound of his father coughing and choking, horrible gasps. They’re beating the life out of Papá. Someone…make them stop. When Daniel opened his eyes again, his father was on hands and knees. A soldier’s boot struck the side of his head. He flopped onto his back and lay motionless.

“Let’s get him out of here.”

Part Two, “Now,” begins almost six years later. While Papá remains imprisoned in Chile, Daniel, his mother and younger sister have fled to Madison, Wisconsin. Mamá works with the Latin America Solidarity Committee, and Daniel, now 17, has carved out his own niche: a junior in high school, he plays lead guitar in a rock band and is dating a minister’s daughter. But Daniel is also traumatized and silenced; he keeps his head low and doesn’t call attention to himself. “Here, nobody talks about it,” he says, “at least not outside social studies class. And when they do it in class, I make my mind go somewhere else.”

When he drives to the airport to pick up his newly-released father, Daniel finds Papá damaged in body and spirit: partially paralyzed, Marcelo is a self-destructive alcoholic who has nightmares, lashes out at his family and can’t stand to be touched—and is bitter at having been exiled to the place he calls “Gringolandia.” It would appear that the dictatorship has succeeded in silencing both Daniel and Marcelo.

In Parts Three and Four, we meet Daniel’s girlfriend, Courtney—“La Gringa”—a well meaning but naïve, self-centered young woman who passionately wants to be part of something she doesn’t understand—and unwittingly comes close to sabotaging the survival of both the family here and the underground movement in Chile.

Although the dictatorship succeeds in breaking up Daniel’s parents’ marriage, it doesn’t succeed in silencing Marcelo—and it leaves Daniel with an important decision to make: Should he remain in the relative safety of family and friends in Madison, or risk torture and death by joining his father in combating a brutal dictatorship in Chile? What Daniel decides will have teen readers thinking deeply and making connections between the microcosm of their own families and the macrocosm of the world outside.

In Part Five, “A Bird Named Pablo: A Metaphor,” the dictatorship has been defeated by, of all things, a plebiscite, and Marcelo, back in Chile, is healing from his wounds—physically and spiritually. Here, he has written an incomparably beautiful story about a conure (a protected species in Chile)—tortured by a torturer—whom Marcelo has rescued and rehabilitated—and who builds a family of his own. A metaphor that’s too close to home to be a metaphor.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s book is complex and multilayered and beautifully written. It takes twists and turns and shifting perspectives, but the overarching theme is Daniel’s struggle with guilt over his father’s arrest, and his struggle to reconnect with a person who is substantially different than the father he knew and loved. “Papa’s words race through my mind,” he says.

I want to think of him as a hero and me as the son of someone who did great things. Like investigating secret prisons and bearing witness to what went on there. But there’s a huge empty space in my chest when I think of all the time we missed together. Five years, three months, and sixteen days, to be exact. And when I walk out of the studio, my fists are again clenched, and my neck and shoulder ache, as I think of how he put us in danger, ordered us out of the country—and still wants to go back there.

The story of how one small family survives a cruel and sadistic regime is a gift to all of the survivors of dictatorships, those who have become permanent residents of the US and those who have repatriated. Without polemic, without didacticism, Lyn Miller-Lachmann has created a disturbing, thought provoking novel that succeeds in being “real, honest and truthful.” Gringolandia is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 7/15/13)

Note: A number of excellent videos exist about Salvador Allende, the 1973 coup, the Pinochet dictatorship, and the quest for justice. They include: the three-part The Battle of Chile, directed by Patricio Guzmán (1975, 1977, 1979); Chile: Obstinate Memory, directed by Patricio Guzmán (1997); The Pinochet Case, directed by Patricio Guzmán (2001); A Promise to the Dead, directed by Peter Raymont (2007); The Judge and the General, directed by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco (2008); Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi, directed by Quique Cruz and Marilyn Mulford (2009); Salvador Allende, directed by Patricio Guzmán (2011); and  No!, directed by Pablo Larraín (2013).  —BHS

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.