Two books to be considered here address issues of poverty and power in Latin American countries where the lives of the poor are made more onerous by government action and where the military often views life as cheap and the life of the poor as expendable. One of the books was written by a member of the poor and downtrodden class in Brazil, while the other was written by a primary school teacher who witnessed the events he recounts concerning an Army attack on a Guatemalan village. The two books come under the heading of personal narratives and stand as eyewitness accounts of life in a certain class in Latin America. Victor Montejo's Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village is told by an observer, a man from outside the community who was present when the attack on the village occurred, while Child of the Dark is the diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, a woman who lived on the streets of Sao Paulo and who wrote her diary on scraps of paper from that same street environment. The two books together offer a devastating portrait of the lives of the poor in Latin America, as well as the degree to which the authorities in this part of the world are enemies of the poor and are waging a direct war on them. The two narratives gain power by being in the words of people who experienced the world described and who were shaped by that experience.
Child of the Dark could have been written about the slums of any number of countries, for the horrors of such a slum are repeated around the world. The dynamics of such a life are detailed in this book in a matter-of-fact way that is in keeping with the author's life--she is fully accustomed to this way of life and to the damage it does to individuals and families. It is not that she approves or even accepts--she tolerates because she has no choice in the matter. David St. Clair as translator writes a preface that sets the story more firmly in a historical and social context, for he is outside the ...