Guatemala

My History with Needles

By strange alchemy, a treatment for allergies also cured my aversion to literature. It was those jabs that made me a writer.

June 23, 2021

Canción

In Guatemala City, the shadows of the past weigh heavily on the living.

November 9, 2020

El Lago

The lake in front of us was a thick green. A pea-soup green. It seemed emptier, smaller. Its putrid smell was now everywhere. I asked him about the lake’s current condition. He’d been there for over half a century. He’d seen its blue, pristine waters turn green and thick and foul. He’d seen all the fish disappear.

August 15, 2019

An End to the Drug War?

As a normally pro-forma gathering of hemispheric leaders gets under way in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, Latin America could instead be approaching its declaration of independence from the United States. For the first time, the region might come out against a US policy. Unimpeachable US allies, like Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla and Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos, who is the meeting’s host, have expressed their support for legalization of the drug trade. And, as is not infrequently the case in matters concerning Washington’s home hemisphere, the US has been caught unaware.

April 12, 2012