Walking to La Milpa: Living in Guatemala with Armies, Demons, Abrazos, and Death

Milpa means cornfield, which is sacred to farmers of Central America who depend on corn for sustenance. The term is a symbol of the culture that Villatoro, a poet and novelist (A Fire in the Earth), wished to experience. In 1989, he and his wife left Alabama to live in Poptun, a Guatemalan village, as lay missionaries of the Maryknoll order. The author was not entirely an outsider: his mother, a San Salvadoran who had fled to the U.S., kept alive her Latin culture and Villatoro grew up in East Tennessee feeling close to it. Nevertheless, to the Poptun villagers he was a gringo. Here, in a series of vignettes, he conveys the character and ambience of the town and its people, whose lives are suffused with fear and violence. However, Villatoro does not discuss politics but focuses this sensitive memoir on the warmth and fortitude of the people. (Oct.)