Esta improbable tierra prometida
Alma Guillermoprieto

NONFICTION | 2026 | 272 pages

For over forty years, Alma Guillermoprieto has wandered tirelessly through the countries of Latin America, interviewing assassins and the families of their victims, talking to street sweepers and artists, rowdy carnival goers, and thoughtful politicians (and plenty of rowdy politicians as well).

Guillermoprieto draws out common threads in different contexts, like the effects of The War on Drugs in rural and poverty-stricken regions and the experiences of people mixed up in the fray of state- or cartel-sponsored violence. At the same time, she shows how Latin American art translates nostalgia and pain into great beauty.

In Esta improbable tierra prometida, the third volume collecting her reporting, she completes her complex and always compelling portrait of the Latin America of our times, in all its tragedy and glory, as it enters a new era of populism and demagoguery, and tries, yet again, to answer the great unsolved question: How do we change our future so that it does not so exhaustingly resemble our past?

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