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Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story

par Marie Arana

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962280,533 (3.69)8
"Against the background of a thousand years of vivid history, acclaimed writer Marie Arana tells the timely and timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone). Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner's survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places. Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans. He was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the US in 1980. His story echoes the violence that has coursed through the Americas since before Columbus to the crushing savagery of the Spanish Conquest, and from 19th- and 20th-century wars and revolutions to the military crackdowns that convulse Latin America to this day. Xavier Albo is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people. He considers himself an Indian in head and heart and, for this, is well known in his adopted country. Although his aim is to learn rather than proselytize, he is an inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting the natives to Christianity, often forcibly, in the effort to win the New World. Ever since, the Catholic Church has played a central role in the political life of Latin America--sometimes for good, sometimes not. In Silver, Sword, and Stone Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. What emerges is a vibrant portrait of a people whose lives are increasingly intertwined with our own"--… (plus d'informations)
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» Voir aussi les 8 mentions

2 sur 2
Marie Arana infuses her history of Latin America with individual stories that make this book interesting and informative without being dry. However, there are little errors here and there that, without detracting from her overall narrative, made me wonder how slipshod the editing process was. That is what prevents me from giving this a full four stars. ( )
  doryfish | Jan 29, 2022 |
This is a history of Latin America from 1492 to the present.

The title sacrifices some accuracy for the sake of alliteration: a better title would be "Gold, Blood, and Christianity." The book is divided into three parts. The first part focuses primarily on the years that the Spanish colonized Latin America in pursuit of gold. The second part discusses the violence endemic to Latin America, going all the way back to pre-colonial times, but focusing mostly on the constant cycle of revolution and violent despotism after the Spanish left. The third part is about the role of Christianity in Latin American history, especially the Jesuits and the current popularity of evangelical Protestantism.

The structure of the book is both a strength and a weakness. By dividing the history into three themes, Arana ends up going over the 500-year history three times, even if she does focus on different time periods in each section. Arana also tries to humanize the history by interspersing each section with details about the life of a contemporary person who lives in Latin America and whose life reflects the theme she is discussing. Those biographies are interesting, but I found them to be a distraction from the larger narrative.

This would probably not be a good book to use in a classroom, but it is a good book for someone who is curious about Latin American history - by grounding the history in three themes and the lives of three people, Arana makes the history easier to digest and remember. There is a lot of detail in the book, and sometimes I wish that instead of, for instance, detailing the revolutions that happened in each country one by one, she had focused on a larger narrative, but other readers might appreciate the level of detail. ( )
  Gwendydd | Oct 25, 2021 |
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"Against the background of a thousand years of vivid history, acclaimed writer Marie Arana tells the timely and timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone). Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner's survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places. Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans. He was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the US in 1980. His story echoes the violence that has coursed through the Americas since before Columbus to the crushing savagery of the Spanish Conquest, and from 19th- and 20th-century wars and revolutions to the military crackdowns that convulse Latin America to this day. Xavier Albo is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people. He considers himself an Indian in head and heart and, for this, is well known in his adopted country. Although his aim is to learn rather than proselytize, he is an inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting the natives to Christianity, often forcibly, in the effort to win the New World. Ever since, the Catholic Church has played a central role in the political life of Latin America--sometimes for good, sometimes not. In Silver, Sword, and Stone Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. What emerges is a vibrant portrait of a people whose lives are increasingly intertwined with our own"--

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