Bird/Life, Bird/Death

by Jonathan Evan Maslow

Book Overview

Book by Maslow, Jonathan Evan This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440507081
• ISBN13: 9780440507086
• Release Date: August 1987
• Publisher: Laurel Press
• Length: 249 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Bird watching and civil war

A little anger isn't bad. When you think of the collection of knaves, brutes, and simple ^$%@#s who rule many of the world's countries, you can get pretty steamed up, especially if you happen to see some of the happy results in person. What would be weird is if you didn't get angry. OK, Jonathan Maslow did go to Guatemala to trace the fate of the quetzal, a long-tailed bird that is not only the national symbol of that troubled Central American nation, but also gives the name to its currency. The quetzal has been important to Central Americans perhaps for thousands of years. Their great green tail plumes of the male bird were traded up and down from New Mexico to Peru. Indian armies believed that the quetzal flew overhead and blessed their endeavors. To kill a quetzal merited the death penalty. Just as the Maya people survived (despite all attempts to wipe them out) in Guatemala and make up more than half the population today, so the quetzal survived as a symbol. There's even a Quetzal Restaurant right near here, in Lynn, Mass., run by Guatemalan immigrants. But Maslow did not just let it go at that---a trip into the forests to find the quetzal. He took note of what was going on around him and got angry. Good for him. The vulture was more of an apt symbol for the brutal, even crazy military rulers of Guatemala in the 1980s, unhappy country. He went to check out the vultures too, in a hellish dump. Massacres, executions, assassinations, disappearances, torture---these were the norm in Guatemala. When it was all over, some years after Maslow left, it is estimated that 200,000 people had died. Nobody will ever really know. At the same time, the country's poverty (in a rich land with hard working people !) meant that Indians had to keep on cutting the forest to make more cornfields, which, thanks to total lack of care by the government, would erode quickly. Maslow paints two sides of the picture very clearly---the beauties of nature, the general kindness of the local people (quetzal)---and the suspicion and disinterest of the official class living in gated luxury coupled with the signs of war all around (vulture). Such an approach could be simplistic, but it is very effective. One man, a rich landowner named Don Alfredo, who owns part of a mountain where quetzals live, seems to straddle the two groups, trying to protect his property at the same time as preserving the quetzals and treating the local peasants fairly. BIRD OF LIFE, BIRD OF DEATH is a good book because besides being well-written, it doesn't hesitate to go beyond its orignal objective---birds---and portray with considerable ironic or sarcastic anger the ugliness of a society at war with itself.

Captured the time and place

Maslow makes the reality of Guatemala in chaos both achingly plain and somehow funny at the same time. His political views are a subtext to a panorama of human and natural history. Very acute observations by someone who had to be crazy to pursue the quetzal into the Highlands and survive. One of the best books I have read in a while; I couldn't put it down.

the tragedy and wonder of Central American birding

Maslow does a fine job of presenting his quest for the the magnificent quetzal, legendary bird of the Mayans. The book chronicles not only his search for the bird and aspects of its natural history, but presents encounters with many other birds of Central America as well. Home to some wondrous birds in the almost magical rain forests, Maslow shows though that the avifauna and the land they inhabit is threatened by instable politics, unchecked population growth, and deforestation. A must read for any interested in birds south of the border.