FernFolio » South America

Sacred Leaf by Deborah Ellis

fernfolio — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:04:25 +0000

Newly escaped from the coca pits and mourning the death of his best friend Mando, twelve year-old Diego has found refuge with the Ricardos, a family of poor coca farmers. In return for their shelter, Diego tries his best to help the Ricardos, looking after two year-old Santo and helping with the garden while Mr. and Mrs. Ricardo, their son, Martino, and their twelve year-old daughter, Bonita, struggle to harvest the coca crops before disaster can befall them.
Word has reached the Ricardos that the Bolivian army has conducted raids on other farms, confiscating their coca harvest and destroying the coca plants. When the army arrives, and takes the coca, and tramples over the vegetable garden, Diego is overcome with rage and attacks the army trucks. He is arrested and taken to a nearby army base where he argues for the return of the coca harvest, the Ricardo’s only means of earning cash to pay for things they are unable to grow or make themselves, and where he learns that the American government is paying the Bolivian government to eradicate the coca crop in an effort to cut off the flow of cocaine into the States.
Determined to get their crops back, the Cocaleros, or coca farmers, set up a blockade on a nearby bridge and refuse to let traffic pass. When the army is sent to negotiate with the protesters, Diego is allowed to rejoin his friends, the Ricardos, and discovers that they and their neighbours are prepared to do whatever is necessary to get justice for themselves and for other Cocaleros across Bolivia.
As the blockade continues, Diego learns much about the quiet courage of grandmothers and children and little nuns, and just as much about the hypocrisy of many of those in authority. He and the other very ordinary Bolivians who occupy the bridge learn to organize themselves to meet the needs of one another, and to resist the urge to respond to the escalating threats of their adversaries with violence. Most importantly, perhaps, they, and Diego, learn that sometimes the best you can hope for is to meet violence and oppression with courage and dignity.
This sequel to Deborah Ellis’ I am a Taxi is a profoundly moving book, one that explore the fight of poor farmers in Bolivia, caught up in North America’s single-minded drive to stamp out the illegal cocaine trade, often without regard to the cost paid by those least able to afford it. Do not miss this book!
FernFolio Editor

I am a Taxi by Deborah Ellis

fernfolio — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:19:36 +0000

I am a Taxi is the story of Diego Juárez, a thirteen-year old boy who lives with his mother and young sister in the women’s prison of San Sebastián. He struggles to support his family by running errands for inmates housed in both the women’s prison and the men’s prison next to it. His parents, poor coca farmers, are serving seventeen-year sentences for trafficking in coca paste, the illegal substance made from coca leaves and used to produce cocaine. Located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the prisons of San Sebastián are filled to overcrowding with unfortunates who have been caught carrying coca paste, and, worse, innocents, such as Diego’s parents, who were simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Diego dreams of returning to the family farm and the simple, happy life of his early childhood. He works hard in school, and tries to help his mother with his young sister, Carina. He regularly visits his father in the men’s prison, and strives to ensure that both his parents and his young sister have enough to eat. He worries that his mother, who knits baby coats and sleepers, which Diego sells in the market square, will not be able to earn enough to pay the rent on their tiny cell and that they will have to return to the spot in the prison yard which they occupied for their first two years in the prison.
Preoccupied, one evening, by a schoolmate’s homework assignment he is completing to earn a few bolivianos, Diego fails to notice when Carina wanders off. Though she is found safe and sound, Diego and his mother are called before a prison committee and assessed a hefty fine. But worse, Diego is told that he can no longer work as a taxi. When his friend Mando whispers that he has met some men who are prepared to offer the boys some real money in exchange for a couple of weeks’ work, Diego ignores the warning bells in his head and grabs at the chance to improve his family’s financial situation.
Diego and Mando find themselves working in the illegal coca paste industry. As the dangers mount, Diego begins to wonder whether the two friends will ever escape the coca pits.
I am a Taxi is the tale of coca, a plant that the indigenous peoples of Bolivia believe is a gift to them from Pachamama, Mother Earth, and one they have used for millennia for food and medicine. Diego and the other inhabitants of San Sebastián, as well as many other poor Bolivians, are victims of the war on drugs, caught between poverty and affluent nations’ insatiable appetite for cocaine.
Detailed, evocative and beautifully written, Deborah Ellis’ book will grab you from the first chapter. I am a Taxi is a must read for readers in grades 7 and up.
FernFolio Editor

Colibrí by Ann Cameron

fernfolio — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:43:40 +0000

Thirteen-year-old Rosa has lived with her Uncle for almost as long as she can remember. Together, they travel from village to town, supported by Uncle’s begging and petty thievery, while he looks for the opportunity, the deal, the swindle, that will change his luck and land him on easy street.
Yet Rosa knows that her name is really Tzunúm Chumil, that she once lived with a mother and a father who loved her, and that she came originally from a town whose name begins with San. Uncle claims that her parents threw Rosa away, but she has dreams of being stolen from her mother’s arms when she was very young, and recalls whispered conversations about rich white people wanting to buy babies.
Though she is too old to be adopted, Uncle believes that Rosa will make him wealthy because a fortune teller has told him so. He keeps her clothed and fed, and drags she with him from place to place, exasperated by her inability to help him with his frequent swindles, and frustrated that she won’t hurry up and lead him to his treasure.
But Rosa’s life goes abruptly from bad to worse when Uncle decides that they will try their luck in San Sebastián, with his old friend Raimundo. Raimundo’s flattery and considering expression worry Rosa almost as much as his plan to involve her in the theft of a 400-year-old statue.
Set in Guatemala, where the author, Ann Cameron, has lived for over twenty years, Colibrí is a wonderful story of courage and persistence, and reminds the reader that there is no greater gift than a true and loving heart.
FernFolio Editor

The Remarkable Maria by Patti McIntosh

fernfolio — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 23:49:03 +0000

This is the story of Maria, a young HIV-positive girl living in the South American country of Suriname. Told in the first person, the book relates the experiences of Maria and her younger sister, Willy, who live with their very sick mother in the home of their uncle, until their mother’s death from AIDS. The girls are then sent to an orphanage, where they are made welcome by Mrs. De Groot and the other children, but, when Maria begins to attend the local school, she is shunned by her fellow pupils, while their parents demand that she be barred from attending. Then Maria is invited to appear on Babbel Box, her favourite TV show. At first, Maria is reluctant to accept, but she is told, “Don’t let people walk through your mind with their dirty feet.” Her appearance on Babbel Box marks a new beginning for this remarkable and courageous girl.
Winner of a 2006 Alberta Book Award, and illustrated by Tara Langlois, The Remarkable Maria can be found in the non-fiction section of our Library. Worth looking for!
FernFolio Editor