Twenty-four Central America short stories collected here by editor Rasario Santos, each story more marvelous than the next. From the introduction: "In Central America the story is performing its primordial function of mediating history, interpreting a brutal and brutalizing reality, and keeping hope and dignity alive as it has for centuries on this frail bridge between worlds." Here are my brief comments on six unforgettable tales:

AND WE SOLD THE RAIN by Carmen Naranjo (1928-2012, Costa Rica)
Carmen Naranjo’s story takes the form of a black humor bug so black, so caustic, the bug chews its way through the entire guava fruit and comes out the other side as a ball of laugh-out-loud hilarity. What a story! Set in a Central American country so poor it doesn’t even have a name. But, for certain, this unnamed country has debt, a ton of debt, the president and all government officials are up to their soaking wet eyeballs in debt. Make no mistake, not only higher-ups sopping wet but the country’s entire population of poor people are waterlogged, drooping wet sombreros, fungus-filled toes, an entire country of people so wringing wet they are now the green people, living their shiny wet green lives in a country where it rains day and night, nonstop, seven days a week.

Just how poor are these poor people? They live on radish tops, bananas and garbage; the Public Welfare Agency rations rice and beans as if medicine; they dodge bullets from drug lords who operate uncontrolled. Meanwhile, the president asks, ““Doesn’t anyone in this whole goddamned country have an idea that could get us out of this?” The poor citizens tell him that he and his cabinet should prey to the virgin. In desperation they try, but the virgin has gone deaf and ignores their pleas for help despite the fact the whole government cabinet implores her at the top of their lungs.

One brilliant ideas came from someone in the government: levy a tax on air – ten colones per breath. Another suggestion: a contest “Miss Underdevelopment” to be chosen from the multitudes of skinny, dusky, round-shouldered, short-legged, half-bald girls with cavity-pocked smiles and suffering from parasites. “If we could only export the rain,” bemoaned one minister. A great aha moment! An aqueduct is built by French technicians, those guardians of European meritocracy, running to an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. Sounds like the perfect solution but does anything ever really go right for such a poor country?



THE PROOF by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Born 1958, Guatemala)
One night, all alone in his house, young teenager Miguel opens the birdcage and grabs the canary in his fist, staring at the little bird with his eager eyes as if seeking an omen. Feeling the canary’s small body and feather in the clutch of his fingers, he decides to go down to the cellar. We read: “He crouched in a corner under the high vaulted ceiling, as Indians and savages do, face down, his arms wrapped around his legs, and with the canary in his fist between his knees. Raising his eyes into the darkness, which at that moment looked red, he said in a low voice: “If you exist, God, bring this bird back to life.” As he spoke, he tightened his fist little by little, until his fingers felt the snapping of the fragile bones and an unaccustomed stillness in the little body.”

What happens after his parents return home and after Miguel experiences a night of insomnia that’s a kind of nightmare? What happens when the maid who cares for the canary arrives the next morning and then secretly decides to buy a new canary? And lastly, what happens after that, when his father finds feathers in the cellar? Sentence by sentence, Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s very short story builds in drama, layer by layer, image by image, and takes on qualities of myth, legend, fable and allegory. As you read this tale you will feel a tangible, urgent tug to enter ever more deeply into the spirit of Central American storytelling.



CONFINEMENT by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Born 1957, El Salvador)
Horacio Castellanos Moya is the author of over a dozen novels and short stories, one novel about a sex-obsessed boozehound writer employed by the Catholic Church he despises to clean up the written testimonies of survivors from the massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier; another novel written as a furious one paragraph rant on the injustices committed against the people of El Salvador, a novel that earned the author death threats. In this short story Horacio Castellanos Moya lets us listen in on what goes through the mind of an El Salvador guerrilla in hiding, confined to a room in a home of a family sympathetic to his cause:

After three days, he feels a tightness in his chest as if facing the same four walls is a bad omen. He wishes he had a good book, knows he’s been on too many marches, wonders what his fellow guerrilla girlfriend is doing right now since his heart is all desire, like a mound of earth full of unsprouted seeds. Sure he writes poetry but tears up what he’s written. He really needs to find some peace and calm, frustrated that now when he has all the time in the world to examine his memories and emotions in depth, everything seems tedious.

He feels trapped in this hot room; he’d like to have a drink. If he could live his life over again, he’d live exactly as his instincts dictate; after all, he joined the revolution out of instinct, like a tiger sniffing out its prey. He thinks of the practice of confining a guerrilla is like the days Jonah spent in the belly of a whale. And when he gets out? He’d be happy, ready to dive back into the city, a good thing, like being born again.



THE PERFECT GAME by Sergio Ramírez (Born 1942, Nicaragua)
We sit in the stands with a father who has arrived at the stadium late (damn car broke down) to watch his eighteen-old-son’s professional baseball team, San Fernanco. Would the team use his son as a relief pitcher for the first time, ever? The father takes his seat high up in the cheep seats as he usually does, right behind home plate. He first looks up at the scoreboard – it’s the top of the 5th inning and both teams have failed not only score a run but both teams have failed to get a hit. He then looks over at the bullpen to catch a glimpse of his son. He doesn’t see him. What has happened? He looks down at the field and sees exactly what happened – his son is taking the mound. This is the very first time his son is pitching on the professional level. And he is the starting pitcher! Of all nights to have a breakdown on the highway! And not only is his son pitching but, glory of glories, so far he is pitching a perfect game!

So begins this heartwarming story of a father’s love for his baseball playing teenage son. And Sergio Ramírez has us right there in the stands living through each pitch as his son moves closer to pitching a perfect game and making history for himself, his team, his home town and for Nicaragua. Anybody who follows major league baseball knows how many baseball players are from Central America and perhaps is aware of the struggles these players endured beginning as kids out on a dirt lot next to a shanty town. And, of course, baseball in Sergio’s tale can be taken as a metaphor for life.



STORY OF THE MAESTRO WHO SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE COMPOSING A PIECE FOR THE MARIMBA by Mario Payeras (1940-1995, Guatemala)
Half fable, half magic, this tale of how Patrocinio Raxtun went into the jungle and dedicated his entire life to building and playing the instrument he loved with all the rhythms and marimba energy he could feel in the animals and plants, earth and sky, days and nights along with his bones and his blood. When he finally began to play “what he attempted to capture had to do with the wild tails of spinning kites that trace the Great Bear in the immense night sky of the altiplano, with the sadness of the iron cocks on rusting weather vanes, with the invisible pathways of the birds.”



A MARCH GUAYACAN by Bertalicia Peralta (Born 1940, Panamá)
Hot steamy passion, anyone? One quote will say it all: “Calmly she went into the kitchen. She picked up a knife and gripped it firmly by the handle. She thrust it into the heart of the man more than once. The blood ran in torrents, first steaming, then more slowly until it stopped. A lot of blood. It smelled. She made sure he was dead. She thrust the knife three more times into the body.”



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Twenty-four Central America short stories collected here by editor Rasario Santos, each story more marvelous than the next. From the introduction: "In Central America the story is performing its primordial function of mediating history, interpreting a brutal and brutalizing reality, and keeping hope and dignity alive as it has for centuries on this frail bridge between worlds." Here are my brief comments on six unforgettable tales:

AND WE SOLD THE RAIN by Carmen Naranjo (1928-2012, Costa Rica)
Carmen Naranjo’s story takes the form of a black humor bug so black, so caustic, the bug chews its way through the entire guava fruit and comes out the other side as a ball of laugh-out-loud hilarity. What a story! Set in a Central American country so poor it doesn’t even have a name. But, for certain, this unnamed country has debt, a ton of debt, the president and all government officials are up to their soaking wet eyeballs in debt. Make no mistake, not only higher-ups sopping wet but the country’s entire population of poor people are waterlogged, drooping wet sombreros, fungus-filled toes, an entire country of people so wringing wet they are now the green people, living their shiny wet green lives in a country where it rains day and night, nonstop, seven days a week.

Just how poor are these poor people? They live on radish tops, bananas and garbage; the Public Welfare Agency rations rice and beans as if medicine; they dodge bullets from drug lords who operate uncontrolled. Meanwhile, the president asks, ““Doesn’t anyone in this whole goddamned country have an idea that could get us out of this?” The poor citizens tell him that he and his cabinet should prey to the virgin. In desperation they try, but the virgin has gone deaf and ignores their pleas for help despite the fact the whole government cabinet implores her at the top of their lungs.

One brilliant ideas came from someone in the government: levy a tax on air – ten colones per breath. Another suggestion: a contest “Miss Underdevelopment” to be chosen from the multitudes of skinny, dusky, round-shouldered, short-legged, half-bald girls with cavity-pocked smiles and suffering from parasites. “If we could only export the rain,” bemoaned one minister. A great aha moment! An aqueduct is built by French technicians, those guardians of European meritocracy, running to an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. Sounds like the perfect solution but does anything ever really go right for such a poor country?


THE PROOF by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Born 1958, Guatemala)
One night, all alone in his house, young teenager Miguel opens the birdcage and grabs the canary in his fist, staring at the little bird with his eager eyes as if seeking an omen. Feeling the canary’s small body and feather in the clutch of his fingers, he decides to go down to the cellar. We read: “He crouched in a corner under the high vaulted ceiling, as Indians and savages do, face down, his arms wrapped around his legs, and with the canary in his fist between his knees. Raising his eyes into the darkness, which at that moment looked red, he said in a low voice: “If you exist, God, bring this bird back to life.” As he spoke, he tightened his fist little by little, until his fingers felt the snapping of the fragile bones and an unaccustomed stillness in the little body.”

What happens after his parents return home and after Miguel experiences a night of insomnia that’s a kind of nightmare? What happens when the maid who cares for the canary arrives the next morning and then secretly decides to buy a new canary? And lastly, what happens after that, when his father finds feathers in the cellar? Sentence by sentence, Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s very short story builds in drama, layer by layer, image by image, and takes on qualities of myth, legend, fable and allegory. As you read this tale you will feel a tangible, urgent tug to enter ever more deeply into the spirit of Central American storytelling.


CONFINEMENT by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Born 1957, El Salvador)
Horacio Castellanos Moya is the author of over a dozen novels and short stories, one novel about a sex-obsessed boozehound writer employed by the Catholic Church he despises to clean up the written testimonies of survivors from the massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier; another novel written as a furious one paragraph rant on the injustices committed against the people of El Salvador, a novel that earned the author death threats. In this short story Horacio Castellanos Moya lets us listen in on what goes through the mind of an El Salvador guerrilla in hiding, confined to a room in a home of a family sympathetic to his cause:

After three days, he feels a tightness in his chest as if facing the same four walls is a bad omen. He wishes he had a good book, knows he’s been on too many marches, wonders what his fellow guerrilla girlfriend is doing right now since his heart is all desire, like a mound of earth full of unsprouted seeds. Sure he writes poetry but tears up what he’s written. He really needs to find some peace and calm, frustrated that now when he has all the time in the world to examine his memories and emotions in depth, everything seems tedious.

He feels trapped in this hot room; he’d like to have a drink. If he could live his life over again, he’d live exactly as his instincts dictate; after all, he joined the revolution out of instinct, like a tiger sniffing out its prey. He thinks of the practice of confining a guerrilla is like the days Jonah spent in the belly of a whale. And when he gets out? He’d be happy, ready to dive back into the city, a good thing, like being born again.


THE PERFECT GAME by Sergio Ramírez (Born 1942, Nicaragua)
We sit in the stands with a father who has arrived at the stadium late (damn car broke down) to watch his eighteen-old-son’s professional baseball team, San Fernanco. Would the team use his son as a relief pitcher for the first time, ever? The father takes his seat high up in the cheep seats as he usually does, right behind home plate. He first looks up at the scoreboard – it’s the top of the 5th inning and both teams have failed not only score a run but both teams have failed to get a hit. He then looks over at the bullpen to catch a glimpse of his son. He doesn’t see him. What has happened? He looks down at the field and sees exactly what happened – his son is taking the mound. This is the very first time his son is pitching on the professional level. And he is the starting pitcher! Of all nights to have a breakdown on the highway! And not only is his son pitching but, glory of glories, so far he is pitching a perfect game!

So begins this heartwarming story of a father’s love for his baseball playing teenage son. And Sergio Ramírez has us right there in the stands living through each pitch as his son moves closer to pitching a perfect game and making history for himself, his team, his home town and for Nicaragua. Anybody who follows major league baseball knows how many baseball players are from Central America and perhaps is aware of the struggles these players endured beginning as kids out on a dirt lot next to a shanty town. And, of course, baseball in Sergio’s tale can be taken as a metaphor for life.


STORY OF THE MAESTRO WHO SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE COMPOSING A PIECE FOR THE MARIMBA by Mario Payeras (1940-1995, Guatemala)
Half fable, half magic, this tale of how Patrocinio Raxtun went into the jungle and dedicated his entire life to building and playing the instrument he loved with all the rhythms and marimba energy he could feel in the animals and plants, earth and sky, days and nights along with his bones and his blood. When he finally began to play “what he attempted to capture had to do with the wild tails of spinning kites that trace the Great Bear in the immense night sky of the altiplano, with the sadness of the iron cocks on rusting weather vanes, with the invisible pathways of the birds.”


A MARCH GUAYACAN by Bertalicia Peralta (Born 1940, Panamá)
Hot steamy passion, anyone? One quote will say it all: “Calmly she went into the kitchen. She picked up a knife and gripped it firmly by the handle. She thrust it into the heart of the man more than once. The blood ran in torrents, first steaming, then more slowly until it stopped. A lot of blood. It smelled. She made sure he was dead. She thrust the knife three more times into the body.”


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