Suchergebnisse

Columnist Alvaro Contreras Velez waved a blunt, black pistol. He held it with firm delicacy, his little finger extended elegantly. "I take this everywhere I go," he said. He slipped the piece back into his desk drawer then seated himself on the couch. He talked about Guatemala, the most beautiful of the Central American states, the most populous, yet a dark and dangerous place. He said he thought his people were tired of military rule. It has been interminable in their history. They would probably vote against General Anibal Guevara and for one of his three civilian opponents in the elections of March 7, three days away.General Romeo Lucas Garcia's time in office had run out and General Guevara was the government's hand-picked candidate. Urgent needs were pressing upon the regime: helicopters, possibly napalm, and weapons of a heavier order than they could get from Israel, their regular supplier.

She's an airline hostess, with the conventional beauty of the type. Above an open and smiling face the copy reads: "Lindsay MacGowan's grandfather came from Glasgow. Her grandmother came from Dublin. She wants to fly you home with her to Argentina."Lindsay and two of her compatriots were featured in an advertising campaign for Aerolineas Argentinas late last year. Their purpose was to persuade American readers of Business Week that Argentina and its national airline are European, which presumably suggests efficiency and, as the ad puts it, customer treatment that is "Stylish and rather grand," not South American, which suggests the opposite.

When at last they allowed him in he saw that they had begun work on the Moneda. They had rebuilt the bombed portions of the walls. They put new mortar over the scorched parts and they refilled the bullet holes. But the rubble remained piled up inside. He suspected they took it out at night. It was another country, more placid. Compared to the way it had been it was now a cemetery. But that metaphor had been overused. After dark, a liquid silence filled the streets. The military curfew was enforced; night prowlers were shot, it was said. The iron gates of the Hotel Crillon clanged shut at eight o'clock. He had made it back just in time.

Cata had moved the children's beds out of the front room; no alarm motivated her, rather calm prudence. The house stood next to a union hall. "Someone might put a bomb," she said. That was in January, 1975, high summer in Argentina, when everyone was preoccupied with bombs. Late one night Susana, Cata's daughter, sprang from her bed. There had been a clap of thunder. "They've bombed Government House!" she exclaimed, still groggy.Late one night Susana, Cata's daughter, sprang from her bed. There had been a clap of thunder. "They've bombed Government House!" she exclaimed, still groggy.

The peddler assembled a pyramid of small, red envelopes on the grass at his feet. He was hawking a nostrum, which he declared would cure everything from impotence to corns to alcoholism. His curly black hair glistened in the milky Peruvian sun. His assistant, a young boy, was transfixed by an iguana, as the crowd was transfixed by the voluble huckster. Figuratively he held them in the palm of his hand while the boy literally held the iguana in his. He stared at it, as if waiting for it to change into something other than a lizard.It was Saturday afternoon. In the center of town foreigners picked over Indian blankets and dickered inexpertly for ceramics, copper masks of Inca deities, and the handbags woven in bright colors that are all the rage these days in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

Brazil has always been an inward-looking country. The national consciousness is transfixed on the mystery of Amazonia, the nation's own dark heart. And it has been the abiding dream of generations to conquer the country, to open that heart. In the past the lust for adventure and sudden wealth, the lure of the wilderness, drew some over the water highways to the outposts of the gem seekers. But no great number of Brazilians ever penetrated the Amazon region. It was always too difficult, the forest too resistant.The sun comes suddenly each day over the Amazon: It warms the gliding brown rivers, the veins of the living forest that feed the giant trees. It gives the jungle back its voice, muted by the night.