One Day of Life

by Manlio Argueta, Bill Brow (Translator)

Awesome for the authenticity of its vernacular style and the incandescence of its lyricism, One Day of Life depicts a typical day in the life of a peasant family caught up in the terror and corruption of civil war in El Salvador.

5:30 A.M. in Chalate, a small rural town: Lupe, the grandmother of the Guardado family and the central figure of the novel, is up and about doing her chores. By 5:00 P.M. the plot of the novel has been resolved, with the Civil Guard's search for and interrogation of Lupe's young granddaughter, Adolfina. Told entirely from the perspective of the resilient women of the Guardado family, One Day of Life is not only a disturbing and inspiring evocation of the harsh realities of peasant life in El Salvador after fifty years of military exploitation; it is also a mercilessly accurate dramatization of the relationship of the peasants to both the state and the church.

Translated from the Spanish by Bill Brow

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Latin American, Banned Books, War, Spanish Literature, Novels

215 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to “poetic sounds” began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta’s interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the "Committed Generation". Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library.

He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generación Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo López Vallecillos (1932-1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935-1975), Alvaro Menen Desleal (1931-2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932), Mercedes Durand (1932-1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1932), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that "Generación Comprometida" and "Círculo Literario Universitario" were two different groups, it's been said that "Generación Comprometida" would be formed three or four years after the "50's Generation", a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the “Cenáculo de Iniciación Literaria” such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo López Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menéndez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values.

Some of Argueta’s works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las Américas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de la Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta’s writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador’s cultural identity.

Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small vi

Reviews

[AiK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Это еще одна книга об ужасах гражданской войны. Действие романа происходит в Сальвадоре, родине автора. Но самому автору пришлось бежать в Коста-Рику, и там он опубликовал этот роман. Контрастом лирическому повествованию служат те жестокие, бесчеловечные методы, которыми пользовалась полиция и армия Сальвадора для борьбы со своим собственным народом. Старая Лупе и ее дети и внуки – простые, честные труженики, прозябающие в ужасающей нищете, когда нет денег даже на еду. Лупе – очень симпатичный персонаж, от нее веет добротой. Она любит солнечный свет, но в предрассветные часы любит в щелочку между жердей хижины наблюдать за утренними звездами и подмигивает им. Сальвадорские фермеры устроили митинг у дверей банка с требованием снизить цены на семена и удобрения, но власти начали преследовать участников и членов их семей. Мужчины вынуждены были уйти в горы, оставив в домах беззащитных женщин и детей. Полиция устроила самую настоящую кровавую бойню, бессмысленно убивая просто для запугивания то священника, то жителей деревни, пытаясь на корню подавить всякое несогласие, малейшее неподчинение. Это не просто убийства, а извращенные или особо жестокие убийства. Изощренные пытки и зверские истязания (просто не хочется их перечислять, но они приводящие в содрогание) стали их обычным делом. Полицейские не щадят даже животных, как будто они в чем-то повинны. Самое поражающее - то, что эти солдаты, полицейские – такие же бедные парни, из таких же нищих деревенских семей. Переодевшись в гражданскую одежду, они становятся неотличимы от остальных бедняков. Адольфина узнала в одном полицейском сына соседки, торговавшей на местном рынке зеленью и пыталась усовестить его, но безрезультатно. Вот этот феномен непонятен с точки зрения человеческой психологии, хотя на практике это происходит в любой стране, в том числе и моей. Священники пытаются внушить людям, что жизнь на небесах важнее, чем земная, что не стоит бороться за свои права. Неграмотная Лупе понимает, что под добродетелью понимается покорность, смирение со своим бесправным существованием. Права – это то, что люди осознали, что они у них есть, и это осознание привело к тому, что они начали выдвигать свои законные требования. На фоне этой нищеты, особняки и джипы богачей выделяются ярким контрастом. Ради них власти устроили настоящий террор против собственного народа, которого открыто объявили врагом, и заставляют людей скандировать, что народ - враг. Книга написана очень красивым, богатым языком, недаром автор поэт.

[₊ ˚ ale ࿓ ♡ ⋆｡˚ · Rating 2 out of 5]

sometimes i really hate what i'm studying 💀🙄

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories of horror plus the very acceptable way in which they are told... It is realism truly too real to escape or ignore.

The title in English "One day of life" refers/alludes to one day that's very different, supposedly, from your (the reader's) own. This translation evokes that Otherness. Even the title is mistranslated! However, the legitimate and extremely 100% correct way of translating the book in Spanish, "One Day in the Life" properly places the tale as an everyman parable. But in this instance in El Salvador. & in this instance not men but womenfolk. Though its not too hard to see parallels between these miseries and our own, dictatorship now not an act of fiction.

[Andrew Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven’t given a book 5 stars for a long time, maybe the aura of just having read it. It portrayed the misery of living under the rule of thugs. A possibility we all should be aware of.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lupe es una campesina que vive en las afueras de Chalatenango, hacia el nordeste de San Salvador, y a menos de 40 km. de la frontera con Honduras. Ronda, tal vez un poco más de cuarenta años, y ha tenido con su marido José (Chepe) dos hijos ya crecidos, que formaron familia propia, incluyendo a su nieta Adolfina; y después de muchos años los tres más pequeños, los cipotes como se los denomina en la zona.

El día en que transcurre la historia, Lupe arranca su actividad de madrugada, cuando la estrella se alinea con la ranura en la pared, en un rico intercambio con las variaciones de las luces del cielo, de los pájaros y las variaciones del clima.

Y a través de un lenguaje poético e hipnótico, lleno de modismos locales, deshilvana su monólogo interior, en el que alterna lo que está ocurriendo con recuerdos del pasado, y que en momentos se abre a monólogos o diálogos de otros personajes.

Forma parte de una población pobre y con escasa instrucción, sensata y honesta, con una rica experiencia de vida, que se esfuerza por el bienestar de sus hijos; y la historia transcurre en un momento en que, estimulados por los curitas jóvenes, hijos del Concilio Vaticano II, los campesinos comienzan a tomar conciencia de su propia dignidad, a organizarse y comenzar a reclamar humildemente por su derecho a una vida mejor. Y la relación, ya tensa con la autoridad policial y militar, se comienza a volver cada vez más hostil y cruel.

Una historia contada con belleza y afecto por personajes muy querible, y una lectura que, más allá de muchas situaciones muy duras, he disfrutado y celebrado como excelente literatura.

A modo de Postdata
Quienes hemos podido ver como siguió esta historia, no podemos evitar cierta tristeza, sabiendo que estos reclamos legítimos en sociedades profundamente injustas y desiguales, con toda su honestidad, en muchas ocasiones terminaron atrapados en medio del ajedrez geopolítico de la Guerra Fría, con acciones atroces de represión y situaciones cercanas a la guerra civil.

Manlio Argueta (El Salvador, 1935), un magnífico escritor, formó parte del grupo literario denominado Generación Comprometida, que a partir de su sensibilidad por el sufrimiento de los más pobres, en muchas ocasiones adhirió a diversas formas de revolución socialista.

[Gisele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Antes de leer este libro era raro que leyera algo escrito por los autores de mi tierra y es algo de lo que profundamente me lamento. Un dia en la vida es el vivo retrato de la vida de una mujer en los tiempos de guerra en El Salvador. Cuando la injusticia por parte del gobierno estaba a la orden del dia. Donde los ricos se enriquecian mas y mas a costa de los pobres y donde el estado ignoraba la sed de justicia por parte de las victimas. Es un relato que te abre los ojos. Donde te das cuenta de la cruda realidad que se vivia en esos tiempos.

"Nos quieren meter a punta de machete y balazos la resignacion de nuestras miserias"

Aunque naci en el tiempo de los acuerdos de paz, mis abuelos, mis tios, mis padres quienes la experimentaron, quienes la vivieron, la recuerdan como uno de los peores tiempos que se vivio el pais. Muchos huyeron, muchos fueron masacrados, muchos fueron maltratados, asesinados e ignorados por un sistema de justicia que se suponia tenia que defenderlos. Inclusive hoy en dia todavia existe la repercusion de esos sucesos en la vida diaria de cada uno de nosotros. La violencia esta a la orden del dia originada de una sociedad y un estado fallido desde los primeros comienzos de los acuerdos.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the unassailable heights of the MORAL HIGH GROUND, the author manipulates the reader from the very first sentence. Though I have no doubt that atrocities were committed in El Salvador, it seems entirely probable that this happened on both sides, a complication that this book never even contemplates. I despise this kind of agitprop masquerading as literature, wherein the reader is manipulated to feel badly for not having the appropriate reaction to the author's button-pushing.

If you enjoy being played like a cheap violin, this shameless exercise in emotional manipulation may be for you. If you ask for a little more in your reading, then give it a miss.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Seriously folks ; this was in every Used Bookshop there for a while. Absolutely everywhere. So of course I took no interest in it. Then I picked up a free copy and looked at the gr=data :: 428 Ratings · 57 Reviews. Lesson not necessarily learned given that it's probably not a very good novel. We'll see.

We did see and it's not a bad novel(la) at all. You can read it in an afternoon. A topical piece about the kinds of violence our policy makers supported back in the '80s, this one set in El Salvador. It's pretty brutal. But what you read is a Rising Up. And a crushing down. And no kidding, it's the kind of stuff RURD is simply built for. As topical, those of a certain political stripe will call it propaganda, which it is, but propaganda for the good guys. Aesthetically, the prose is more or less that of the illiterate uneducated peasants who variously narrate the novel ; the passing of the 'I' from one character to another provides for adequate structural interest. Even if you see it absolutely everywhere, don't hesitate to pick up a copy. You know, tolle, lege.

[Giuseppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book with its lyrical, raw, angry and jubilant writing style follows the extended family and community of an El Salvadorian town which has been repressed by the state and helped by the church during El Salvador's brutal civil war, made famous by figures such as Archbishop Romero.

In the story the peasants of El Salvador have organized into the National Federation of Christian Cooperatives (F.N.C.C.) and in doing so they have become regularly terrorized by the Salvadorian National Guard who proudly wear their "shit colored" uniforms of disgrace. Though the story took place close to 25 years ago the situation surrounding it has not changed drastically; state sanctioned terror in El Salvador has not ceased, we in the northern "America" merely hear about it less. Throughout the novel, which takes place over a single day, the tone changes from tranquil, to agitated, and gently into simple flashes of jubilation, jumping to celebration, to action and finally to hope with triumph in the face of dangerous and murderous adversity: The State of El Salvador. The family discusses their love for each other, folk superstition, their knowledge of human rights as they are written in the El Salvadorian Constitution (which they had no concept of previously) and their need to fight for what they now know, their relationship to "God", the church and the importance its' role plays in their lives.

This novel's narrative transcends the adversity to deliver a message of hope and celebration, despite the brutal climate they find themselves in. (A Priest is beaten to within an inch of his life, sodomized with a stick, and left for dead at the side of a road by the Salvadorian National Guard.) I enjoyed it thoroughly. I read it in less than a week lazily loafing about as I house sat. I would suggest this book to anyone who believes in the freedom and inherent worth of the human spirit.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

El Salvador in the 1980s. Written in the simple and direct language of the ordinary people, this powerful novel describes one day in the life of a peasant family that is at once oppressed by the US-sponsored military dictatorship and ready to resist these very forces that have kept them in the dark.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1980, One Day of Life takes place sometime in the mid-70s in El Salvador, and details the unrest of the rural communities which preceded that country's civil war. The book's primary voice, Guadalupe Guardado, speaks about her day, beginning in the predawn, and continuing throughout the day. At first there is a sense of being alive, but as the day goes on, more and more of the injustice and horror that she experiences is revealed.

Interspersed between the description of Lupe's day are accounts from various other personalities, including Lupe's granddaughter, her grown daughter, an unnamed police officer trained by the U.S., and other voices which add background to the events that Lupe experiences. Together, the two strains of narrative combine to highlight the tragedy of this family--and, by extension, the rural population of El Salvador.

Judged purely on its literary merits, I found the book slow going for about the first 3/4s of it. A reader more attuned to the history of El Salvador, or someone familiar with the politics of the time might not have this problem--in some ways, for me, it was like trying to catch a moving train. But aside from that, the introductory chapters with their attention to the peasant way of life were not very eventful. This starts to change toward the end of the book, and it's an unfortunate fact that what makes the story more gripping is the tragedy that was no doubt true in a general sense if not the particular.

A few years ago, I read a very similar book, published only a year after this one, called El Infierno, by Carlos Martinez Moreno, which dealt with the struggles between the government of Uruguay and the Tupamaro guerrillas. While One Day of Life did try to personalize the tragedy by placing the character of Lupe foremost as a kind of center around which to build the narrative, both novels rely heavily on vignettes to communicate the events, vignettes which seem to be the anonymous voices of survivors who just want someone to hear their story. The fractured style of these novels, with their disrupted timelines, their disembodied voices, and their atrocities, may actually be the best way to intimate the confusion and sorrow of the time, regardless of literary merit. It may be a bit difficult for someone not entirely familiar with the history to catch on at first, but they are certainly effective at communicating the tragedy of that time.

[Max Dreyfus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intenté leer este libro muchas veces sin éxito. Siempre lo abandonaba, no lograba conectar con la novela.
Hasta que asimilé el concepto de "toma de conciencia". Esta revelación vino a través de la lectura de la biografía del padre Rutilio Grande, en la que se explica detalladamente el proceso de evangelización, toma de conciencia y organización de las comunidades que se llevó a cabo en la zona rural de Aguilares (30 kms. al norte de San Salvador).
La novela narra la vida de Guadalupe Fuentes de Guardado y su familia. A lo largo del día se cuenta su historia, de explotación, toma de conciencia, represión (aborda sin eufemismos el terror vivido en las zonas rurales de El Salvador a causa de la represión) y esperanza en un lenguaje propio del campesino salvadoreño.
Esta edición (Biblioteca Básica de Literatura Salvadoreña - DPI) tiene una presentación escrita por Rafael Lara Martínez que argumenta sólidamente su hipótesis de la fusión de testimonio y poética tan bien lograda en este libro.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok güzel bir roman. El Salvador köylülerinin gözünden devlet terörünü görme fırsatını veriyor okura.

El Salvador'daki devlet terörü 1981'de yaklaşık 17 bin kişinin hayatına mal oldu. ABD'de eğitim gören devriyeler köy köy gezerek insanları katlediyor, köyleri yakıyorlardı. Bu roman da devriyelerin sık sık uğradığı, insanları kaçırıp işkence ettiği bir köyde geçiyor.

Tüm roman tek bir günde geçiyor ve dünyayı 4 kişinin gözünden görüyoruz: Büyükanne, torunu, kızı ve asker. Yazar büyük bir ustalıkla bu dört kişinin iç dünyasını gözümüzün önüne sermiş. Etkilenmemek mümkün değil.

Bu kuşatma zamanlarında Türkçeye kazandırılsa ne güzel olurdu.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simple story, a simple style. Poignant and charming, even though the events recounted are harrowing. In spite of them, there are moments of humor, just as there is in real life. A short read, books like this are books that people in this country might try reading, to ¨walk a mile in the other´s shoes¨.

[Behrang · Rating 4 out of 5]

دراهمیت فوق العاده رمان روزی از روزهای زندگی
همین نکته بس که از انتشارش تا به امروز جزو متون معتبر درسی آکادمیک در کشورهای آمریکای لاتین می باشد

[Omar Abu samra · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Who is our worst enemy? And we shout the people, who is the worst enemy of democracy, the people, and we shout with all our might, the people, the people, the people.”

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Un Dia de la Vida" was published by Manlio Argueta in 1980, the year in which the Salvadorean Civil War grew so savage that the Archbishop of San Salvador was assassinated while celebrating mass. Argueta's subject here is the peasants who, unlike church leaders, were being killed without international outrage or even interest. Per the title, the action of the novel, as narrated by several generations of the female members of a family, takes place in a single day, although some of them are old enough to remember official violence in the distant and not-so-distant past. The Chalaltenango of this narrative is a place of government terror, where organizing farmers to ask for lower prices on seeds and fertilizer is a capital crime (sentence to be executed without benefit of judicial process), where men sleep in the hills to stay out of the jails in which torture is inventive and varied, where a thirteen-year-old girl is treated as a security threat. The dialect of Argueta's uneducated but not inarticulate narrators is a rustic Spanish with aboriginal traces: pigs are "chanchos", dogs are "chuchos", light-complected men are "cheles." The memories of these women are detailed and vigorous, yet oddly unemotional when describing the brutal execution of one man of the family and the imminent murder of another. That lack of fear and sorrow, even if hidden from the murderous authorities, robs the narrative of some of its impact despite the discipline of Argueta's use of narrative voice or his celebration of women of the Salvadoran countryside. But the story itself has an inescapable power because of Argueta's recreation of a world so vicious and so mad that one child has witnessed so much torture that he can laugh as he recounts it and another is forced to deny that she knows a detained family member.

[Daniel Polansky]

12 hours in the lives of a brutalized peasant family during the civil war in El Salvador. It’s always a dangerous thing for an educated person to write from an uneducated person’s perspective, it’s a very fine line to hit, and I’m not 100% certain I felt Argueta did it here. There’s a bit of a whip lash in the heroine’s internal monologue from earthy, personal concerns to too-precise summations of the political circumstances afflicting her and her family. I appreciated this more frankly for the moral weight than its actual aesthetic. Which isn’t to say it’s bad, really, it’s just not spectacular. This is why it makes no sense to write reviews about books, because at the end mostly you’re just like, yeah, this was fine, there are better books and worse books.

[Yarithssia Portillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fácilmente se ha convertido en uno de mis libros favoritos. El lenguaje que utiliza, los salvadoreñismos, el arte de incluir tantas historias y cualidades de la vida en el campo en la narración de un solo día.

Sin duda como salvadoreños hemos llegado a normalizar el periodo de guerra, porque así lo vivimos, porque es la historia que nos precede, porque no conocemos otra vida.

Ese debe ser precisamente uno de los puntos por los que este libro es el que tiene más traducciones a otros idiomas y es tan reconocido a nivel mundial.

En la actualidad aún tenemos gente que vivió la época previa a los acuerdos de paz, es importante no dejar que se pierda ese período. Documentar cómo lo vivieron nuestras familias que si bien tendrán puntos en común, cada quien vivió su historia diferente.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I remember how my father held the last one by his feet so that blood would run to his head, but nothing happened. He died with his head caved in. All their heads sunk in after serious bouts of diarrhea; once diarrhea begins there’s no salvation. They all died before their first birthday.
Children die of dehydration only when they’re very little, since their bones are very soft, and if you’re not careful, they get diarrhea and the forehead sinks in.
Children go to heaven. That’s what the priest used to say. And we never worried. We always believed that.
Our only concern was that they might die suddenly, without having been baptized. Then it would be really bad.”

“That business of intelligence has something to do with nutrition.”

"What's important is to be aware that one is poor, that only that way will we become strong enough to claim, to demand that which we have a right to. Everything else is a farce. What we must always insist on is the rights of the poor. Machetes don’t move by themselves.”

“To respect one's neighbor was really to respect the landowner. And to respect the landowner was to conform to his whimsy. If there were no beans to eat after working on the plantation, it was because
the landowner couldn't manage, the landowner was suffering losses. If there were no hammocks to sleep in, it was because the harvest had not left the landowner enough time to provide them. And there we were without food, waiting for the afternoon or the evening to go home to eat, a whole day without eating; or we'd go to sleep under the pepetos trees in the coffee fields. The torture they put us through: anxiety and restlessness. Who had made the rich so evil?
The whole night we talked like this, both of us wrapped up in the same Guatemalan blanket.”

“There isn’t enough money to buy even a balm. That’s why it’s better to prefer home remedies, such as chicken fat, iguana lard, snake powders, guarumo leaves or fox lard. In sum, all those things that give children some relief, even though they say it’s better to get away from the custom of using things that are not from the drugstore. Well, in any event, there aren’t doctors around here. I, at least, and I thank the Lord, don’t know about doctors; I don’t know what they’re like. And they say there are rich folk that don’t know, or don’t want to know them doctors either, can you believe that? They say that even in the big cities with all them lights, still some people believe in the stars, yet they don’t send the medicine or the lights to us.”

“Poverty more than anything forces one to clarify a lot about life, but I was never able to understand a whole bunch of stuff. What we’ve got isn’t rebelliousness but awareness.”

[aaliyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

AH! ANOTHER AMAZING BOOK!! an airport read (yay!) and a solid 4.5/5.

it has an interesting narrative style for sure, and the story is compelling. however, it’s really the characters that bring the quality—lupe is SUCH an awesome character! and the sense of resilience and love you get from the women of the story is actually such a beautiful thing.

(and the ending, no spoilers, is what made this go from a 4 star read to a 4.5. EEEEE!!!!)

shoutout to therese for the recommendation hehehehe :)))

[Mike Prewitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off very good but got very confusing near the end. This novel was pretty brutal and graphic so it might not be for everyone. Again I would never be interested in this but I had to read it for class.

[Lauren Ahmad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sure this book is so much more effective in Spanish. Always skeptical of male authors writing in a women’s perspective— apparently he interviewed a bunch of women who experienced the el Salvadoran civil war and used those for this. Which is cool. The second half of the book is 5/5 stars, the first half was kinda meh for me. New perspective very good. Very violent and blunt but not needlessly

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this atrocity is before the timeframe of this book, it serves as a prolog that sets the tone for the grim story: In El Salvador in 1932, the government responded to a strike by workers by massacring an estimated 30,000 people, or 4% of the population, in one week.

The atrocity has become known as “La Matanza,” or “The Massacre.” In addition to the quote above, here’s more in the next 4 paragraphs quoted from the Zinn Education Project at zinedproject.org:



“On January 22, 1932, in the Central American nation of El Salvador, 30,000 people — most of whom were indigenous — died at the hands of Salvadoran soldiers for protesting the government and the oppressive policies of president Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.

In the 1920s, the price of coffee dropped steeply, threatening the oligarchs’ export business. To make up for their loss of profits, the ruling families took over even more land from peasants and cut their workers’ wages in half. Following elections in 1932, in which the government refused to seat elected members of the Communist Party, Salvadoran peasants organized a popular insurrection to demand better living and working conditions. Most of these peasants were part of the indigenous population.

This event became known as “La Matanza,” or “The Massacre.” The military government established following La Matanza went on to ban every vestige of indigenous culture, including language, traditional clothing, and music. To avoid further persecution and murder by government troops, the indigenous people began to hide all outward signs of their identity.

La Matanza and the military rule which followed set the political tone of the next several decades in El Salvador, as military dictators followed one another into the 1970s.”

Now on to the book. I’ll start with two quotes that give you an idea of the author’s short, simple style of writing, and also help set the tone for the story. The characters we hear from are all women. Here are two quotes from the main character, a grandmother named Lupe, as she thinks:

“The children are company, but because they’re still little, they don’t mind playing by themselves, in silence. Only when they are sick do they cry. God has given me good children, I can’t complain. Sick ones, that’s true. Parasites eat them from the inside, and the children defend themselves by sleeping. Lucky that they have not been awakened. God is great.”

“I foresee the worst. When death comes, it alerts you before; it does not come all of a sudden. It always makes a loud noise as if it were riding a horse galloping on a path of stone, its hooves clattering on the stones, miserable death. It makes fun of us because it knows we cannot restrain its runaway horses. It looks for us and finds us always poor. There are problems in life. A child is sick, the beans have burned. A son wounded or dead. We are always losing in this game.”

The setting is a small rural town in El Salvador during the more recent civil war, roughly through the 1980s. The main characters are peasants with pigs, chickens, eggs and corn. Men are frequently absent for days on distant coffee and pineapple plantations. Kids drop out of elementary school to start working, many at age 7.

In a way the story is not really about ‘a day’ Because Lupe thinks back through her whole life and various incidents and many tragedies. She particularly thinks of her oldest son who was killed by the civil guards.

People are active in demonstrations trying to form agricultural cooperatives. The demonstrations are broken up by police and the guards always with violence and killings. Lupe’s village has a reputation for activists and the guards come trying to arrest the men. The men start sleeping out in the hills but then the guards start arriving to beat and mistreat the women so that the men will come home so that they can be arrested. The guards torture and behead people. In one scene an entire village is burned to the ground. In another scene the police and guards massacre a busload of mostly kids who had gone to a demonstration in San Salvador, the capital. The story is based on real events.



In addition to politics and rebellion, a lot of the story follows the evolution of the Catholic Church and the arrival (or transformation) of priests who are activists. In the old days the priests were concerned only with the money they earned from ceremonies for ‘hatching matching and dispatching’ and the only advice they could offer was guidance on getting to a better life in the Next World. Over time the priests become activists and try to help peasants in THIS life as well as the next one. The guards turn on the priests.

The paragraphs that follow contain additional historical information compiled and somewhat edited by me from Wikipedia. Note the complicity of the US in a lot of what has gone on:

“The United Nations reports that the civil war [the timeframe of this book] killed more than 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992, along with approximately 8,000 disappeared persons. Human rights violations, particularly the kidnapping, torture, and murder of suspected FMLN sympathizers by state security forces and paramilitary death squads – were pervasive. [The FMLN is the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front that was backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba.]

The United Nations estimated that FMLN guerrillas were responsible for 5 percent of atrocities committed during the civil war, while 85 percent were committed by the Salvadoran security forces that were trained and backed by the US military during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Elections were rigged so that right-wing leaders won. On 28 February 1977, a crowd of political demonstrators gathered in downtown San Salvador to protest the electoral fraud. Security forces arrived on the scene and opened fire, resulting in a massacre as they indiscriminately killed demonstrators and bystanders alike. Estimates of the number of civilians killed range between 200 and 1,500.

In February 1980, Archbishop Óscar Romero published an open letter to US President Jimmy Carter in which he pleaded with him to suspend the United States' ongoing program of military aid to the Salvadoran regime. One month later the Archbishop was assassinated while celebrating Mass. At his funeral a week later, government-sponsored snipers in the National Palace and on the periphery of the Gerardo Barrios Plaza were responsible for the shooting of 42 mourners.

The National Guard and the newly reorganized paramilitary ORDEN, with the cooperation of the Military of Honduras, carried out a massacre at the Sumpul River on 14 May 1980, in which an estimated 600 civilians were killed, mostly women and children. Escaping villagers were prevented from crossing the river by the Honduran armed forces, and then killed by Salvadoran troops who shot them in the river in cold blood.

On 2 December 1980, members of the Salvadoran National Guard were suspected of raping and murdering four American Catholic nuns. This incident received a lot of attention in the US press and an investigation by the military junta was demanded. Later, US Ambassador Robert E. White said that he could find no evidence the junta was "conducting a serious investigation". White was dismissed from the foreign service by the Reagan administration after he had refused to participate in a coverup of the Salvadoran military's responsibility for the murders at the behest of Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

The government began making ‘sweeps’ of rebels in rural areas. On December 11, 1981, one month after the "sweep" through Cabañas, the Battalion occupied the village of El Mozote and massacred at least 733 and possibly up to 1,000 unarmed civilians, including women and 146 children, in what became known as the El Mozote Massacre. The Atlácatl soldiers accused the adults of collaborating with the guerrillas. The field commander said they were under orders to kill everyone, including the children, who he asserted would just grow up to become guerrillas if they let them live. "We were going to make an example of these people," he said. The US steadfastly denied the existence of the El Mozote massacre, dismissing it as “leftist propaganda," until secret US cables were declassified in the 1990s.”

I know this ‘review’ has been more of a history lesson than a book review. But it’s good background if you decide to read this short, shocking book. And there’s a current events aspect to it. Although guerrilla activity has largely ended, urban and rural gang violence related to drug lords has replaced it and El Salvador remains a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. There are El Salvadorans who have crossed through Mexico with great hardship and are standing along the Rio Grande right now waiting to get across. And apparently there are people who call themselves Americans who think that the Massacre at Sumpul River wasn’t such a bad idea.



The author, b. 1935, has written about 15 books including several collections of poetry. Only a few are available in English. One Day of Life appears to be his best-known work in both English and Spanish. Like so many Latin American authors, his writings got him in trouble with the right-wing dictators and military men, so he lived in exile in Costa Rica from 1972 to 1993.

Top photo from archive.revista.drclas.harvard.edu “FMLN guerrillas on New Year's Day, Tenancingo, El Salvador, 1985. Photo by Scott Wallace”
The city of Santa Ana from fairobserver.com
The author from Wikipedia

[Jean Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relentlessly hopeful and comprehensive in its demands. I picked up this book because I was familiar with the publisher - one of the best decisions I've made in a while. Like Ngugi, Argueta is precise: what's important for the rural poor, for the farmworker, "is that our children don't die" (23). That's it, the basic demand. To live upright, alive to the infinite capacity of a humanism that is beholden to the poor and dispossessed.

The criminal authorities - the El Salvadorian battalions, the Kikuyu home guard - are defenceless. They cannot contain those whose consciousness demands that one must "sacrifice oneself for those who are exploited" (172). To die a dignified death is to die for the people, to die like Chepe and Justino as "everyone's peer" (110), and to live like Adolfina and Lupe, rejecting the plantation owner's rendering of the world as his. The sky and the horizon belong to the people, boundless people who have come to their senses. To live for others, to breathe for others (194).

[Biblibio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not expecting to like this as much as I did. One Day of Life is not the sort of political piece I was expecting, but that's not to say it isn't deeply political. Argueta tells his story almost exclusively from the point of view of poor, largely uneducated women, touching on a lot of issues of racial discrimination (poor Indians versus foreigners), as well as the way in which war uniquely hurts women (rape and violence featuring not insignificantly). The politics are constantly present, but the ideologies take second stage to the more human side-effects of violent, militant authorities. It tells a powerful tale.

The writing shifts tone according to the POV (which weaves around one primary narrative), going from a simple sort of poetry to a rougher style. I found that unlike many novels, these shifts actually helped carry the story without getting too bogged down in one specific slice of life. Rather than eliminating the emotional connection to Lupe's main story, the other angles seemed to enhance it.

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Kindness should not be confused with submission."

I first read this book over 20 years ago, and in 1992 spent a couple weeks in El Salvador right as the FMLN had negotiated a cease-fire with the government.

Re-reading the book now, in 2014, brought back many memories of meeting campesinos in the countryside and seeing the affection of the people everywhere for the assassinated Archbishop Romero.

This is a wonderful novel filled with poetic prose and the author captures the dignity and humanity of peasants caught in a violent situation of poverty and State-sponsored violence.

[Mshelton50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Manlio Argueta's One Day of Life. Recommended to me by a Salvadoran friend, the novel tells the story of one family in 1980 El Salvador, and of efforts by the peasants to organize cooperatives and obtain better farm loans. The matriarch of the family, Guadalupe Fuentes de Guardado, is the primary narrator. Argueta does an excellent job conveying the poverty of the workers, and the savagery of the authorities. If I could have done, I would have given the book four and a half stars.

[Héctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving novel based on the events that took place during 1 day in the life of a peasant salvadoran woman; it depicts the human tragic story of salvadoran or rather Central American life in the 1980's. a must read for every Latin American or anyone interested in feeling and sharing the pain of our sad history in Latin America. I just read somewhere that this book was placed 5th among the most recognized books written in Spanish in this century. Well done Manlio!

[Michelle Lemaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through a fictionalized account, this book chronicles the soical activism of the poor in Central America. A true call to arms. Beautifully told. Horrific in its depictions of a real life wartorn country.