A portrayal of the troubled countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, as the author travels through them by train and bus. The author shows daily lives lived against a backdrop of continued and seemingly endless political friction and conflicts, in places that exhibit the contradictions inherent in an area of which Porfirio Diaz said: "Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States". It is an observation that serves as an epigraph to the book, as a means of showing how fervent Catholicism can live side by side with extreme violence, how people can show alternating friendliness and suspicion towards strangers, and how the attitudes with which Central America and the United States regard one another can be a mixture of both fear and longing.
- ISBN10 0747524335
- ISBN13 9780747524335
- Publish Date 18 January 1996 (first published 1 January 1900)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Edition New edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English
- URL http://bloomsbury.com/Trade/