Searching for Everado: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala

Harbury's impassioned letter to her dead husband, a Maya Indian Guatemalan guerrilla leader known as Everardo, recounts the story of their relationship, which unfolded in civil war-torn Guatemala. Harbury, a lawyer with a history of social activism, met Everardo in 1990, when his country was ruled by a right-wing military regime and most of the population lived in dire poverty. Despite the difference in their backgrounds and Everardo's certainty that he would be killed, they married. He disappeared in 1992, and Harbury details her fruitless efforts to get help from the Guatemalan or U.S. governments until she conducted hunger strikes in both countries that drew attention to her plight. She finally learned that Everardo was captured by the army, tortured and killed on the orders of a CIA informant. Harbury makes clear to the point of polemic her strong commitment to the Guatemalan rebel cause and her idealistic love of the Maya people. (Mar.)