Book Review

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When his own men are massacred, he shoots The fiction intersects with historical reality. Somoza is identified only as el hombre, but Sandino, rebel chief Pedron Altamirano, and Rigoberto Lopez Perez-who assassinated Somoza-all figure As with most wide-ranging novels, a certain amount of depth is sacrificed. We never get inside a character's head. There is a lot of description of place. The prose is evocative, and the reader frequently gets the sense of a camera panning a room, a This is because "To Bury Our Fathers" is an exile's book, a book •concerned with memory. Remembering the distant homeland, the exile is forced to live in the past, to settle accounts with his parents, with history. Coming full circle, the book begins and ends with characters remembering.

"To Bury Our Fathers" is a richly imaginative novel by a skilled writer. It is a dense, ominous story whose major literary device is foreshadowing. There is not a hint of propaganda or socialist realism in it; because of its almost dispassionate nature the nightmare world of the Somoza regime emerges more One cannot reflect on the artistic achievements of Nicaragua's vice president without thinking about the career of the North American president-also a It happens that caged monkeys are put to symbolic use in Ramirez' work; if a movie is ever made of the book, perhaps it could be double featured with "Bedtime for Bonzo" to contrast our two culand weak, a pawn rather than a villain.

in the foot to cover himself.

in the story. river, a settlement. forcefully.

cultural figure of sorts.

tures. the party and the split of three of the PT's federal deputies.

But the "crisis" in the PT, which has been largely overcome, was due to the capitulation of these middle-class figures to the pressures of the ruling class.

In fact, the working-class base of the PT in the Sao Paulo region voted overwhelmingly to expel the three deputies on the grounds they had crossed the class line by their support to Neves.

This is very significant. Most often, the leaders of the Latin American workers' movement end up capitulating to radical-sounding populists like Leonel Brizola [leader of the Democratic Labor Partyl, who is falsely presented by Peritore as a "socialist."

The PT leadership has also been correct to withstand the pressures of those forces inside and outside the PT who would like to overcome some of the A coward, he evades battle with the rebel troops.

himself An exile's book ists, but also of the traditional radicals like Peritore.

David Walters, San Francisco Farmworkers Dear editor, One important feature of the Aug. 3 Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) convention that needs to be mentioned is the extent of rank-and-file involvement. [See story in September issue of • Socialist Action.] Unlike other trade-union conventions, with their large percentage of full-time staff serving as delegates, the overwhelming majority of delegates to this convention were farmworkers. The convention was conducted in Spanish to allow the delegates to participate more fully.

Not only were a large percentage of the convention delegates women, but four of the