Title

Looking for history: dispatches from Latin America.

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 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.

Identifier

2653238

375420940

Creator

Guillermoprieto, Alma

Format

1st ed.

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

2001

Program air date: June 24, 2001

Publisher

Pantheon Books

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations

Notes from front endpapers: "Apr. 26, 2 p.m., Thurs. -- Subcomandante Marcos - unmasked as Rafael Guillein: The unmasking, p. 207; Zapatista, Chiapas. - Columbia: didn't elect mayors until 12 yrs. ago (2000); Andrés Pastrana, Pres. - p. 185: land reform, Colosio assassination, campesinos, Zapatistas, Chiapas. - p. 194: What do the campesinos want? - Maoist movement - 1) good farm equipment 2) a dignified life with a little rest 3) education for children to be whatever they like. - Marcos, 33, guerilla leader; Zapatistas obsessed with Salinas. - Only way to win - 1994. - Salinas; Indian uprising in Chiapas; reform ; PRI losing its grip [Diego Fernando de Cevallos]; campesinos paid to stay on farms; newsprint under control of government; cynicism about politics; Colosio murdered; Zedillo, Cardenas. - The TV debate - only 40 million tuned in: PRI, PRD, PAN. - Cameras could only show upper torso; no second debate. - Peru: Alberto Fujimori vs. Vargas Llosa, 1994. - A neo-liberal who admired M. Thatcher. - Mario got 27.6%, Fujimori 24.6%; Fuj. won election by 23%; Llosa went back to Spain; Shining Path. - Notes from back fly leaf and back endpapers: "Che: died 1967. - Latin America's 21 nations. - "The harsh angel" - deported Argentina 1953; a stop in Bolivia; 9 months in Guatemala; 1954: arrived in Mexico (2 years); met Fidel in Udex, 1955; Nov. 1956 sailed for Cuba; refused to bathe, tie his shoe laces; kept diaries, released in 1995; left Cuba; 1965 in Congo; farewell letter to Fidel (p. 82). - Alaide Foppa - great friend of my mother's - 5 children - lived in Mexico but from Guatemala - sons killed - husband walked into traffic - Alaide tortured, 1980, Christmas. - p. 19: Columbia: 40 million, size of Central Europe. - 1999: 3rd largest Foreign aid, $289 million, $1.5 Bill. over 3 years. - 1986 trip to FARC headquarters, 60 miles from Bogota. - Bolivia/Peru: Geo. Bush, late 80's war against drugs; coca plants sprayed out of existence; then Columbia: drug traffickers vs. guerillas. - Rosa: tortured, talked to me in prison; pliers on teeth. - Colombia's military units linked to paramilitary massacres. - Aid package: anti-guerilla package disguised as an anti-drug package. - Colombians don't believe anyone could be dumb enough to fight drugs with the military's assistance. - No large decrease in hectares from Peru/Bolivia and Colombia: 1995: 214,800; 1999: 183,000. - Mexico: 31 states; Parties: PI, PRO, PAN - 6 states' governor. - Started campaign on internet, hired Dick Morris. - Drugs - Mexican: "All politicians are crooks" . - Explain Mexico! - How big? - How many parties? - Biggest cities? - How much education? - Problems, p. 302. - 96 million; 35 votes cast. - Carlos Salinas, 1988: most corrupt. - Ernest Zedillo, 1994. - 45 million in poverty - 3 million pay taxes. - MacArthur Fellow, 1995. - New York Review of Books - The New Yorker. - Where have you lived?" -- Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. -- Examples: p. 109: "The officially enshrined ideals of selflessness and sacrifice have been undermined more thoroughly by tourism and the corruption and cynicism provoked by the hunt for dollars than anyone would like to admit." - p. 202: "Only slowly did it dawn on me that he too was a utopian, dealing in closed universes, good and evil, and dreaming of egalitarian, redeeming poverty just as the visionary Church does, or the campesino communities so eager to pursue a vision of hope". - p. 283: "Conditions in Mexico at present seem so awful that it is hard to keep in mind how many changes for the better there have been in Mexican public life." - p. 299: "Now the left is in disarray, but its various warring factions agree on one thing: they will not help Fox rule."

Subject

"Guevara, Ernesto, 1928-1967."

"Perón, Eva, 1919-1952."

"Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936-"

"Violence--Colombia--History--20th century."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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