Publisher's Synopsis
"At midnight on Tuesday, some desconocidos [unknown men] arrived in a [yellow] pickup. They went to the house of Mario Puzul, jefe of the group [of commissioners]. They broke into his house and took him by force of arms to the car. His wife says that he recognized the jefe of the group and said, 'Buenas noches, my lieutenant,' but the lieutenant didn't answer. Mario said good-bye to his wife and his brother, Francisco. The car left and the uproar began, ringing the bells and the people gathering. But there was nothing they could do.""On 16 November 1985, a military commissioner was killed. They say that many people saw it. They took the military commissioner out of his house and then to the corridor [porch] of the municipality, where they hacked him into pieces with a machete and left him."This is the story of Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán, a Maya Indian who resides on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. The story narrates Ignacio's life town, and country during the 1980s, a period when many campesinos found themselves caught between two fires—the insurgency of the guerrillas and the counterinsurgency of the army. Meanwhile, Ignacio and his fellow townspeople attempted to maintain as much normalcy in their lives as possible. They cultivated their bean and corn fields, educated their children, and practiced either folk Catholicism (a blend of Catholic and Mayan beliefs and practices) or evangelical Protestantism.
