And we sold the rain: Contemporary fiction from Central America

by Rosario Santos

These twenty-plus short stories by leading Central American writers, by turns unsettling, absurd, tragic, exhilarating, and mystical, introduce us to the people behind the front-page horrors . . . A Torruban Indian loses a month's pay with a bad roll of the dice . . . The beautiful young Anita hunts beetles and cockroaches . . . To up its popularity rating, a government stages the first "Miss Underdeveloped Contest" . . . After the 1954 massacres in Guatemala, children hold a funeral for a bird . . . Reflecting a wide range of styles, these stories point in new directions while evincing the particular strength and courage it takes to write in a war-torn country.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Spanish Literature

215 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twenty-four Central America short stories collected here by editor Rasario Santos, each story more marvelous than the next. From the introduction: "In Central America the story is performing its primordial function of mediating history, interpreting a brutal and brutalizing reality, and keeping hope and dignity alive as it has for centuries on this frail bridge between worlds." Here are my brief comments on six unforgettable tales:

AND WE SOLD THE RAIN by Carmen Naranjo (1928-2012, Costa Rica)
Carmen Naranjo’s story takes the form of a black humor bug so black, so caustic, the bug chews its way through the entire guava fruit and comes out the other side as a ball of laugh-out-loud hilarity. What a story! Set in a Central American country so poor it doesn’t even have a name. But, for certain, this unnamed country has debt, a ton of debt, the president and all government officials are up to their soaking wet eyeballs in debt. Make no mistake, not only higher-ups sopping wet but the country’s entire population of poor people are waterlogged, drooping wet sombreros, fungus-filled toes, an entire country of people so wringing wet they are now the green people, living their shiny wet green lives in a country where it rains day and night, nonstop, seven days a week.

Just how poor are these poor people? They live on radish tops, bananas and garbage; the Public Welfare Agency rations rice and beans as if medicine; they dodge bullets from drug lords who operate uncontrolled. Meanwhile, the president asks, ““Doesn’t anyone in this whole goddamned country have an idea that could get us out of this?” The poor citizens tell him that he and his cabinet should prey to the virgin. In desperation they try, but the virgin has gone deaf and ignores their pleas for help despite the fact the whole government cabinet implores her at the top of their lungs.

One brilliant ideas came from someone in the government: levy a tax on air – ten colones per breath. Another suggestion: a contest “Miss Underdevelopment” to be chosen from the multitudes of skinny, dusky, round-shouldered, short-legged, half-bald girls with cavity-pocked smiles and suffering from parasites. “If we could only export the rain,” bemoaned one minister. A great aha moment! An aqueduct is built by French technicians, those guardians of European meritocracy, running to an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. Sounds like the perfect solution but does anything ever really go right for such a poor country?



THE PROOF by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Born 1958, Guatemala)
One night, all alone in his house, young teenager Miguel opens the birdcage and grabs the canary in his fist, staring at the little bird with his eager eyes as if seeking an omen. Feeling the canary’s small body and feather in the clutch of his fingers, he decides to go down to the cellar. We read: “He crouched in a corner under the high vaulted ceiling, as Indians and savages do, face down, his arms wrapped around his legs, and with the canary in his fist between his knees. Raising his eyes into the darkness, which at that moment looked red, he said in a low voice: “If you exist, God, bring this bird back to life.” As he spoke, he tightened his fist little by little, until his fingers felt the snapping of the fragile bones and an unaccustomed stillness in the little body.”

What happens after his parents return home and after Miguel experiences a night of insomnia that’s a kind of nightmare? What happens when the maid who cares for the canary arrives the next morning and then secretly decides to buy a new canary? And lastly, what happens after that, when his father finds feathers in the cellar? Sentence by sentence, Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s very short story builds in drama, layer by layer, image by image, and takes on qualities of myth, legend, fable and allegory. As you read this tale you will feel a tangible, urgent tug to enter ever more deeply into the spirit of Central American storytelling.



CONFINEMENT by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Born 1957, El Salvador)
Horacio Castellanos Moya is the author of over a dozen novels and short stories, one novel about a sex-obsessed boozehound writer employed by the Catholic Church he despises to clean up the written testimonies of survivors from the massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier; another novel written as a furious one paragraph rant on the injustices committed against the people of El Salvador, a novel that earned the author death threats. In this short story Horacio Castellanos Moya lets us listen in on what goes through the mind of an El Salvador guerrilla in hiding, confined to a room in a home of a family sympathetic to his cause:

After three days, he feels a tightness in his chest as if facing the same four walls is a bad omen. He wishes he had a good book, knows he’s been on too many marches, wonders what his fellow guerrilla girlfriend is doing right now since his heart is all desire, like a mound of earth full of unsprouted seeds. Sure he writes poetry but tears up what he’s written. He really needs to find some peace and calm, frustrated that now when he has all the time in the world to examine his memories and emotions in depth, everything seems tedious.

He feels trapped in this hot room; he’d like to have a drink. If he could live his life over again, he’d live exactly as his instincts dictate; after all, he joined the revolution out of instinct, like a tiger sniffing out its prey. He thinks of the practice of confining a guerrilla is like the days Jonah spent in the belly of a whale. And when he gets out? He’d be happy, ready to dive back into the city, a good thing, like being born again.



THE PERFECT GAME by Sergio Ramírez (Born 1942, Nicaragua)
We sit in the stands with a father who has arrived at the stadium late (damn car broke down) to watch his eighteen-old-son’s professional baseball team, San Fernanco. Would the team use his son as a relief pitcher for the first time, ever? The father takes his seat high up in the cheep seats as he usually does, right behind home plate. He first looks up at the scoreboard – it’s the top of the 5th inning and both teams have failed not only score a run but both teams have failed to get a hit. He then looks over at the bullpen to catch a glimpse of his son. He doesn’t see him. What has happened? He looks down at the field and sees exactly what happened – his son is taking the mound. This is the very first time his son is pitching on the professional level. And he is the starting pitcher! Of all nights to have a breakdown on the highway! And not only is his son pitching but, glory of glories, so far he is pitching a perfect game!

So begins this heartwarming story of a father’s love for his baseball playing teenage son. And Sergio Ramírez has us right there in the stands living through each pitch as his son moves closer to pitching a perfect game and making history for himself, his team, his home town and for Nicaragua. Anybody who follows major league baseball knows how many baseball players are from Central America and perhaps is aware of the struggles these players endured beginning as kids out on a dirt lot next to a shanty town. And, of course, baseball in Sergio’s tale can be taken as a metaphor for life.



STORY OF THE MAESTRO WHO SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE COMPOSING A PIECE FOR THE MARIMBA by Mario Payeras (1940-1995, Guatemala)
Half fable, half magic, this tale of how Patrocinio Raxtun went into the jungle and dedicated his entire life to building and playing the instrument he loved with all the rhythms and marimba energy he could feel in the animals and plants, earth and sky, days and nights along with his bones and his blood. When he finally began to play “what he attempted to capture had to do with the wild tails of spinning kites that trace the Great Bear in the immense night sky of the altiplano, with the sadness of the iron cocks on rusting weather vanes, with the invisible pathways of the birds.”



A MARCH GUAYACAN by Bertalicia Peralta (Born 1940, Panamá)
Hot steamy passion, anyone? One quote will say it all: “Calmly she went into the kitchen. She picked up a knife and gripped it firmly by the handle. She thrust it into the heart of the man more than once. The blood ran in torrents, first steaming, then more slowly until it stopped. A lot of blood. It smelled. She made sure he was dead. She thrust the knife three more times into the body.”

[Robert Khorsand · Rating 5 out of 5]

«و ما باران را فروختیم»
نامِ داستانی‌ست کوتاه به قلمِ «کارمن نارانخو» نویسنده‌ی کاستاریکایی که با قلمش طنزی تلخ، خواندنی و عبرت‌ آموز خلق کرد.
داستان در کشور کاستاریکا رخ می‌دهد، روزگاری کشور در آستانه‌ی ورشکستگیِ مالی قرار می‌گیرد و به واسطه‌ی سررسید شدنِ اصل و فرعِ وام‌های بین‌المللی دولت‌مردانش به چه کنم چه کنم افتاده‌اند در حدی‌که رئیس جمهورش به طرحی همچون وضع مالیات بر مصرفِ اکسیژنِ هوا فکر می‌کند!
مردم در جامعه با دوگانگی‌ها و تضادهای فراوانی روبرو هستند مثل: گرانی‌های افسارگسیخته‌ی همه چیز در مقابل ارزانی یا ثباتِ قیمتِ مواد مخدر و نوشیدنی‌های الکلی و یا خود در فقر مطلق زندگی می‌کنند در حالیکه چشم‌هایشان در بازار به خودروهای لوکس بر می‌خورد و... .
تا اینکه سر انجام به شرحی که در داستان می‌خوانیم کاستکاریکا صادراتِ آبِ باران کشورِ خود را به امارات آغاز می‌کند و انقدر آب می‌فروشد تا کشورش دچار قحطی و خشکسالی می‌شود و مردم برای بقا مجبور به مهاجرت به امارات می‌شوند و ... .

پ.ن: این داستان یک طنزِ تلخه که اشاره داره به دورانی بحرانی از کاستاریکا اما سوال من از دوستانم اینه: این داستان‌ها برای ما ایرانیان آشنا نیست؟!؟

در آخر عرض می‌کنم که از نظرِ بنده‌ی حقیر نویسنده به خوبی از پسِ شروع و پایانِ داستان برآمد و تفکراتِ خود را در قالبِ داستانی کوتاه به خواننده عرضه کرد و من نقطه‌ی ضعفی در داستانش ندیدم که از آن ستاره‌ای کم کنم برای همین ۵ستاره برایش منظور می‌کنم با توجه به این نکته که در حال حاضر مطلع نیستم آیا تا به این لحظه به داستانِ کوتاهی ۵ستاره داده‌ام یا خیر!

ضمنا خواندنِ این کتاب را به دوستانم پیشنهاد می‌کنم و به واسطه‌ی اینکه فضای داستان برای ما ایرانیان آشناست به نظرم خواندنش خالی از لطف نیست، فایل پی‌دی‌اف کتاب را از لینک زیر می‌توانید دانلود نمایید.
https://t.me/reviewsbysoheil/149

[Arefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

چه اسم قشنگی!
چه مواجهه تلخی احتمالن با آینده نه چندان دور خودمون!
و چه پایانِ تلخ تری!

[Ellinor ﹏ · Rating 3 out of 5]

الو ، آنجا کشور باران است؟؟؟


پی نوشت دوباره وقتی چشمم به این ریویو افتاد (عه امروز ۱۵ آذر:))))
حالا حمیدرضا ی زیبا
بارون که میاد دیگه دست خودم نیس منم میبارم
ایران خانوم منتظرم نحسی ازت پر بکشه و کمتر جوونات پرپر شن
یا حداقل اونا که پر از شور زندگی ان رو نبر با خودت دیگه نمیکشم....

[Milad Rami · Rating 4 out of 5]

کوتاه,زیبا و تلخ

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

neat little collection of central american short stories circa 1989. the only authors in here i was previously familiar with were sergio ramirez and horacio castellanos moya. the stories i found the most interesting were by mario payeras, leonel rugama and mario roberto morales. of these the only one who seems to have much work in english is rugama, who died at the age of 20 and had a small collection of poetry and short stories published in English after his death: The Earth Is a Satellite of the Moon. the payeras story is about a guy who goes into the forest to make a perfect marimba and then play it until he dies and merges with the tree he's living in, it reads a bit like something from a folktale. the only work of his in english seems to be a non fiction account of guerilla warfare in guatemala(Days of the Jungle: The Testimony of a Guatemalan Guerrillero, 1972-1976), but he appears to have written a range of things including several novels and an interesting sounding book about the ecological history of guatemala.
the morales story was my favourite, it's a monologue with a lot of long sentences and parentheses about a guerilla fighter addressing a middle class friend of his who has given up the liberation struggle. it's actually an excerpt from a novel, Los demonios salvajes. i'd love to read this if the story is any indication of the novel's overall style, but it's not been translated. the author biography for morales at the back of the book says that an english translation of another novel, El Esplendor De La Pirámide, exists in manuscript, but this doesn't seem to have been published in the 30 years since this collection was done, which is a shame. it looks like there is a novel called Face of the Earth, Heart of the Sky in english translation, but i'm not sure which of his novels this is as the title doesn't seem to directly correspond to any of the spanish ones.
a lot of the other stories in the collection are pretty good too but they're all quite short so it's hard to evaluate many of the authors based on only these. most of them don't seem to have much work in english either.

[Paℓe mooŋ · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب، طنز تلخی‌ست که نشانه‌ی بی‌فکری دولتمردانی است که همه‌چیزشان را از دست می‌دهند و نیاز به کمک کشورهای دیگر پیدا می‌کنند و در نهایت باران، این نعمت الهی را نیز می‌فروشند.
شاید روزی برسد که این داستان به واقعیت تلخی در کشور ما مبدل شود.


https://taaghche.com/book/20941

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 2 out of 5]

داستان سرراست بود و از یک نقل قول از زبان وزیر خزانه‌داری نقل می‌شود. به‌تصویر کشیدن حماقتِ دَوَرانی رجال سیاستمدار.

[Dana Berglund · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of 20 stories written in the 1980s by authors from six different Central American countries (sorry, Belize--you were left out). As with any short story collection, there's quite a bit of variety in content and quality. One or two seemed to have translation issues that made them feel choppy and repetitive (rather than as a stylistic choice). A couple of them confused me. But some were moving and poetic, and some were made of anger and fire. Some were explicitly political, and in some you could feel war seeping through the cracks. Some were of more mundane happenings, while others were bizarre and had a touch of magical realism.

[Natty S · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's so little fiction from Central America that's been translated into English, so this was a lovely find at my local library. Lots of different styles. Given this was the 1980s, many of the stories deal with war. But other stories focus on domestic violence or baseball. I even learned a little history.

[Emad Mosaddegh · Rating 5 out of 5]

داستان درباره کشوری فقیر است که به بانک جهانی پول بدهی دارد و بسیار باران خیز است . رئیس جمهور و هئیت دولت تصمیم میگیرند که باران را به کشوری عرب نشین و خشک و پولدار بفروشند . پس از چندی بانک جهانی پول های فروش باران را میگیرد به جای بدهی ها و کشور عرب بدهی بالا می‌آورد و بانک جهانی باران های کشور فقیر را بلوکه می کند .

[Crystal Herrera pereira · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many different stories! All really paint the culture of Central American.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

heavy

[Maryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

واس نفس کشیدن هم دولت مالیات بگیره ☹️مشکلات مردم بخاطر سیاست اشتباه تاسف بار واقعا درد مردم و خود مردم ندیدن چرااا اخه؟
https://taaghche.com/book/20941

[Mohammad Ersi · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب خوب، ترجمه بد

[Ari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I was a Latin American Lit minor in school and have read a number of these authors before. With an exception of two stories, the selections were too short to get a good feel and felt poorly translated. That said, this is definitely a period piece. While one can get great writing that remembers the Central American war of the 80s and the Disappeared, this was writing from the front lines, so to speak.

[Felipe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less than half the stories are worth reading. The young writers are now better known, have the weakest stories from this 1988 book; the better stories happen to be by the older ones.

Unfortunately, this is probably the only English-language anthology of contemporary Central American writers available in the US.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good stuff:

Confinement -Horacio Castellanos Moya

The Maestro Who Spent His Whole Life Composing a Piece for the Marimba - Mario Payeras

The Perfect Game - Sergio Ramirez

And We Sold the Rain - Carmen Naranjo

Mr. Taylor - Augusto Monterroso

[Diane Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid collection of short pieces from Central America -- humor, horror, satire, romance, and lots of heartbreak.

[b bb bbbb bbbbbbbb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collection of contemporary short stories from Central America. Some good, some obnoxiously experimental, some boring.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of the twenty stories about 10 of them are quite good, 5 are ok, 5 are utterly incomprehensible.