- Monica Lavin, El
Universal, Mexico City
David Unger’s latest
book in English is a beautifully and intelligently crafted coming-of-age novel
about an Indigenous Guatemalan woman. After three previous publications in
Spanish as Para mi, eres divina (Random House Mondadori, Mexico, 2012, Editorial
Cultura, Guatemala, 2014, & Storytel audio, 2018, In My Eyes You Are
Beautiful is finally published in English.
In a recent interview
with the author, I asked him why it has taken so long he replied. “ Para mi,
eres divina has been published three times in Spanish translation, but my agent
couldn’t sell it to an English-language publisher. This begs the question of
why. Either the novel wasn’t up to snuff, or U.S. editors felt uneasy
publishing a novel about an indigenous Mayan girl written by a “Caucasian” man.
Howard Aster, from Canada’s Mosaic Press, loved the novel and didn’t see a P.C.
issue here. I am grateful to him for that, so after 12 years since I completed
the novel, it has finally seen print. I hope that now that it is in English, it
can be translated into other languages because I feel the story has personal
and universal appeal.”
David Unger is one of
the most widely published and well-known authors of fiction, short stories,
articles, translations, and children’s books in Spanish and English. In 2014 he
was honoured with Guatemala’s Miguel Angel Asturias’ National Literature Prize
for Lifetime Achievement. He is one of the few internationally recognised
authors who critically examines the huge social inequality in his home country,
Guatemala. His clarity of thought regarding the problems facing the Guatemalan
indigenous and working-class people is second to none. His hostility to the
Guatemalan ruling elites and their Yankee capitalist backers is admirably
portrayed in his novels. He “explores the tensions, character and texture of
Central America as few other writers have done.”
The last few years have
been a busy time for Unger. Just recently, Penguin published a new and splendid
English translation of the dictator novel “El Señor Presidente” —“Mr President”
with an introduction by Gerald Martin. The new translation has been met with
much praise.
In My Eyes, You Are
Beautiful is a coming-of-age novel that narrates the life of a young indigenous
woman. I asked David Unger if the main character was real or based on someone
he knew. He says, “Olivia Padilla Xuc was inspired by someone who isn’t
Guatemalan or indigenous. Most of my novels have had male protagonists from a
privileged class. In this novel, I wanted to write about the indigenous
population who, for the most part, have been either ignored, romanticised or
mistreated by those in power. During the Ubico dictatorship of the 30s and 40s,
the Maya were forced into labour because tending to their families and crops
meant they were idle. This was a crime! Olivia believes in herself, and because
of that, she can transform her life from one of servitude to one of
independence and achievement. In many ways, she developed in unpredictable
ways. At times, I felt I had been a kind of Geppetto and she a Pinocchio-like
figure.”
Like most of Unger’s
work, In My Eyes, You Are Beautiful takes place during a particular historical
moment in Guatemala. It starts in 1970 and ends in 1990 while Olivia Padilla
Xuc is still a young woman, which begs whether Unger is planning a sequel. The
twenty-year period covered by the novel is one of Guatemala’s most brutal. The
genocide carried out by the Guatemalan ruling elite and its army is well documented.
Guatemalan history has
been dominated by the so-called “bonds” between Guatemala and Washington.
Dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American capitalism,
with help from its junior Guatemalan partners, carried out the brutal
exploitation and bloody oppression of Guatemala’s population of workers,
peasants and indigenous peoples. The First Banana Republic. The country’s economy was run by the United Fruit Company and other U.S. banks and
corporations, whose interests were defended by military dictatorships that
regularly massacred and executed workers who dared to strike or protest.
The bloody period
covered by Unger’s book is a by-product of the 1954 Central Intelligence
Agency(CIA) led coup that overthrew the democratically elected president. Jacobo
Árbenz, who was not a communist, initiated a limited land reform that included
the appropriation, with compensation, of lands controlled but unused, by United
Fruit.
The coup led to three
decades of unparalleled brutality and murder on an industrial scale. The war
claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people, most of them indigenous
peasants wiped out in a genocidal campaign by a military that was trained and
armed to the teeth by America.
According to Andrea Lobo,
“ In a confidential memo drafted in the wake of the coup against Árbenz, the U.S.
National Security Council stated that Washington’s aim in the region was to
compel Latin American countries “to base their economies on a system of private
enterprise, and, as essential to that, to create a political and economic
climate conducive to private investment of both domestic and foreign capital.”[1]
If Unger does a sequel
to this book, it will cover important political events from 1990 onwards. On
December 4, 1996, a peace accord was signed. A top Guatemalan general and other
government members joined guerrilla leaders in signing a “definite ceasefire”
in Oslo, Norway. “With this agreement, the weapons will be silenced forever,” said
Rolando Moran, a Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union commander, a coalition
of three guerrilla movements.
“The “truth commission,”
established as part of the peace process to investigate past human rights
violations, was denounced by human rights activists as a travesty. The
commission’s final report would not name any individuals who violated human
rights, and its findings could not be used to bring anyone to trial. The
commission had only six months to investigate the decades-long war. The
agreement left Guatemala’s social structure, the fundamental cause of the
bloodshed, untouched. Most of the population comprised poor peasants living in
rural villages and labouring in highly exploitative agricultural labour. At the
same time, a tiny elite of wealthy families ruled in Guatemala City and
maintained its monopoly of the country’s economic and political life.”[2]
Whatever David Unger
does next, his book is a significant landmark in the study of the lives of
ordinary indigenous and working-class Guatemalans. His opposition to the Guatemalan
and Yankee elites is to be commended. I wish him every success in his next
adventure. It remains to be seen if Unger has another book in him. If not, I want
to wish him a long-due retirement.
[1] Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The American Republics, Volume IV -
Office of the Historian
[2] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/28/twih-n28.html
