Erased Faces

Deep in the jungle of Chiapas, Mexico -- Graciela Limon paints for her readers a vibrantly vivid picture of a very real, and until now, mostly faceless world. In her captivating pages, she takes us far beneath the "plush green-black canopy" of mahogany and ceiba trees, to a place where we are surrounded by "the incessant cacophony of the forest" -- where we find ourselves immersed and enmeshed, for 258 pages, in the heart and soul of the Mexican indigenous world. It is a world that human/e civilization has left behind -- where men are brutalized and over-burdened like beasts, and "women toil, breaking their backs, growing old before their time, buried in the mud of ignorance" -- until Limon's Juana, Orlando, and other Zapatista rebels, refusing to accept their fates, scream out: "Ya basta! No more!" Limon has done it again! = another wonderful job of interweaving the beautiful rainbow threads of a very profound forbidden love into the background tapestry of her story -- that which colorfully develops between the insurgent Juana Galvan and a recruited Chicana photographer, Adriana Mora. Although the two women have lived their lives separated by thousands of miles -- meaningful dreams, visible scars, and inexplicable emotional ties attest to their belief that they have loved one another before.As Limon writes, "we repeat ourselves," .... a phrase that refers not only to the belief in reincarnation held by the Lacandon people, but also to humanity's insistence, persistence -- and resistance to change -- AND challenge a(n all-too-often racist/classist/sexist/homophobic) "status quo."In Limon's pages, and outside of them as well!, the struggle for freedom in the (erased) face/s of oppression goes on ....and crimes of pure hatred ("puro odio") exact a terrifying toll on our/selves and our world.**********A masterfully crafted and expertly executed "wake-up call" for a sleeping world -- this is a timely and necessary novel with a very important message -- and in her creation/writing of it, Limon, like her Adriana, has taken on the highly courageous and commendable role of a missionary "of sorts."..... her best to date!