Guatemala, el silencio del gallo

In the 1960s, Luis Gurriarán, a young missionary fresh out of seminary, arrived in Guatemala with the task of evangelizing a Mayan indigenous village. The caciquismo, the impressive misery and the brutal exploitation of these natives stirred their faith, which began to walk the path of a utopian, social Christianity. In the midst of the Cold War, with the Western axis determined to persecute subversion in Latin America, the evangelizing work of these missionaries was often in the spotlight. Despite the problems and tensions, the alliance - not very frequent - of the Church with the poor gave rise to a slow transformation towards the progress of the communities in which they settled. Between investigative journalism and historical narrative, this book, now in a new revised and expanded edition, breaks the existing silence about the bloodiest and least known war in America, while allowing us to understand both Liberation Theology and the Central American guerrilla movements of the 20th century. The testimony of this Spanish missionary, who, along with Rigoberta Menchú, denounced the Guatemalan government of Ríos Montt in 1982 before the UN, reviews forty years of history based on letters, photographs, recordings, documents and dozens of conversations with his nephew and author of the work, Carlos Santos.