On a Thursday morning in 1981, four thousand campesinos (fieldworkers), fleeing a US-funded Salvadoran death squad, stumbled down the rocky, overgrown side of a hill to the Lempa River. Some were mown down by machine guns and the strafing of helicopters; others drowned as they were swept away by the river. The rest escaped to live the next eight years in UN refugee camps in Honduras. In 1989 many of these refugees returned to El Salvador as the repatriated community of Valle Nuevo. Companeros tells the stories of a twenty-five year relationship of accompaniment, healing, and forgiveness between Valle Nuevo and a small association of churches in the United States, Shalom Mission Communities. The two groups have come to embrace a transnational communion with one another despite the economic, political, and spiritual chasms that exist today. This work is a collective, collaborative effort of storytelling and theological reflection, interweaving oral and written accounts of suffering, thanksgiving, sharing, remembering, and proclaiming the death of Christ until he comes again.

By the time he was killed in the jungles of Bolivia, where his body was displayed like a deposed Christ, Ernesto "Che" Guevara had become a synonym for revolution everywhere from Cuba to the barricades of Paris. This extraordinary biography peels aside the veil of the Guevara legend to reveal the charismatic, restless man behind it. Drawing on archival materials from three continents and on interviews with Guevara's family and associates, Castaneda follows Che from his childhood in the Argentine middle class through the years of pilgrimage that turned him into a committed revolutionary. He examines Guevara's complex relationship with Fidel Castro, and analyzes the flaws of character that compelled him to leave Cuba and expend his energies, and ultimately his life, in quixotic adventures in the Congo and Bolivia. A masterpiece of scholarship, Companero is the definitive portrait of a figure who continues to fascinate and inspire the world over.

Central American pensadores have interpreted the theories of Marx and other scholars of revolution in diverse ways. In this book Sheldon Liss examines the political theory and ideology of some of Central America's most important radical thinkers, including non-Marxists, and demonstrates how they have challenged the tenets of imperialism and capitalism. Chapters on individual Central American countries begin with brief historical introductions that emphasize the rise of radical activities and organizations. Individual essays based on published writings, interviews, and scholarly analyses of their works then establish each writer's personal ideology, social and political goals, and theories of society, state, and institutions of power. Liss also examines their relationship to social and political movements and contributions to the national intellectual life of the past and present. In addition, Liss discusses the writers' understanding of the role of the United States in the Americas and beliefs about national struggles for independence. By focusing on political and social theory and on intellectual history, this book also provides the background critical for understanding recent developments and changes in Central America.

A portrait by an exiled former confidante seeks to capture the Cuban dictator's authentic voice while sharing the story of his life, covering everything from his early sexual experiences and perspectives on Che Guevara to his state secrets and philosophyon murder.

"Rambo took the barrios by storm: Spanish videotapes of the movie were widely available, and nearly all the boys and young men had seen it, usually on the VCRs of their family's more affluent friends. . . . As one young Sandinista commented, 'Rambo is like the Nicaraguan soldier. He's a superman. And if the United States invades, we'll cut the marines down like Rambo did.' And then he mimicked Rambo's famous war howl and mimed his arc of machine gun fire. We both laughed."—from the book There is a Nicaragua that Americans have rarely seen or heard about, a nation of jarring political paradoxes and staggering social and cultural flux. In this Nicaragua, the culture of machismo still governs most relationships, insidious racism belies official declarations of ethnic harmony, sexual relationships between men differ starkly from American conceptions of homosexuality, and fascination with all things American is rampant. Roger Lancaster reveals the enduring character of Nicaraguan society as he records the experiences of three families and their community through times of war, hyperinflation, dire shortages, and political turmoil. Life is hard for the inhabitants of working class barrios like Doña Flora, who expects little from men and who has reared her four children with the help of a constant female companion; and life is hard for Miguel, undersized and vulnerable, stigmatized as a cochón—a "faggot"—until he learned to fight back against his brutalizers. Through candid discussions with young and old Nicaraguans, men and women, Lancaster constructs an account of the successes and failures of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, documenting the effects of war and embargo on the cultural and economic fabric of Nicaraguan society. He tracks the break up of families, surveys informal networks that allow female-headed households to survive, explores the gradual transformation of the culture of machismo, and reveals a world where heroic efforts have been stymied and the best hopes deferred. This vast chronicle is sustained by a rich theoretical interpretation of the meanings of ideology, power, and the family in a revolutionary setting. Played out against a backdrop of political travail and social dislocation, this work is a story of survival and resistance but also of humor and happiness. Roger Lancaster shows us that life is hard, but then too, life goes on.