The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now

by Alma Guillermoprieto

Book Overview

An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba. From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679428844
• ISBN13: 9780679428848
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 345 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.2" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Amazing Book, Well Worth Reading Even Though It's Old

I wish the author would update the book, since it is out of date, but it is still extremely compelling and still provides a GREAT portrait of Latin America. This is much better than some up-to-date but very dry & stuffy textbook. The Heart that Bleeds tells you what Latin America is really like. Plus, the author writes so well, the stories just fly by. Easy reading but yet so hard to read b/c of the heart-breaking true reports.

Different, Excellent Perspective

Alma Guillermoprieto's "The Heart that Bleeds" is an excellent companion to any more general Latin American history book. Providing thirteen case studies of great Latin American cities at different times from 1989-1993, this book reveals the "real" aspect of Latin America that is so difficult to attain in a "history" book. It is quite satisfying to read her first entry about Bogotá in 1989, then about Medellín in 1991, and finally Bogotá again in 1993. Questions posed in earlier chapters are tacitly answered in later ones. These chapters tend to carry a strong focus on the drug trafficking in Colombia and allow many trends to become apparent over this four year stretch of time. Where in 1989 police effectiveness may be called into question, by 1991 a restructuring is putting pressure on Escobar, and by 1993 police, private groups, and Escobar's enemies have all cornered him into a pit that he did manage to escape from. The air, the people, the reality behind the pleasure and pain are all vivid and crisp. Each chapter focuses on a different topic which expands, surprisingly well, into a more general analysis of the country or region in question. The three chapters concerning Colombia discuss the drug trafficking sure, but they they expand into the sicarios- young people hired as assassins to (oftentimes) support their family and their drug addiction. Another chapter reveals the almost comical indifference that has taken root out of necessity in urban inhabitants who must sleep through as many as eleven car bombs a night. The lives of judicial officials and politicians are also explored. Experts and locals related to each field are meticulously interviewed and their most pertinent details expressed through Guillermoprieto's prose. A chapter on Mexico City delves into the lives and ways of the garbage lords and garbage scavengers, who at one point held immense power over the city. Chapters about Brazil explore the country's rich spirituality and the fusion of cultures which many have embraced. All said, while this book will not teach you Latin American history, it will help you to see Latin America as not just two words in a book, but a living, diverse, and ever-changing part of our world. Highly recommended.

Beautiful, breathtaking, brutal

Alma Guillermoprieto presents a stark yet beautiful portrait of everyday changes going on in Latin America, from the life of Colombian youth involved in local gang violence to gender relationships in Mexico. The book is both insightful and poetic.

Masterful

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best and most fascinating book on political developments in a continent I have ever read. What makes this rise above all the other good books that have been written on similar subjects, is the author's ability to intimately describe personal details and relatively small events, whilst integrating these into a spectacular overview of the overall political landscape. This depth of knowledge and vividness of description can only be achieved by somebody as personally involved with the destiny of this beautiful continent as Ms Guillermoprieto.

One of the best books on contemporary Latinamerica

Alma Guillermoprieto utilizes all of her journalistic skill in capturing the essence of contemporary latinamerican life, from Mexico to Brazil, from Bogota to Peru. In a series of brief, insightful essays, Ms. Guillermoprieto introduces the reader to the lives of latin americans without forsaking the impact history has on our day to day life. With the eye of a keen observor, she offers up true life stories woven together with wide expanses of historical fact offering a complete picture of an entire country in a single essay. I love this book; I read it slowly because I didn't want it to be done with. I've practically made it required reading for my white friends who are allies in the ending of racism.