General Pinochet at the Bookstore Santiago, Chile, July 2004 The general's limo parked at the corner of San Diego street and his bodyguards escorted him to the bookstore called La Oportunidad, so he could browse for rare works of history. There were no bloody fingerprints left on the pages. No books turned to ash at his touch. He did not track the soil of mass graves on his shoes, nor did his eyes glow red with a demon's heat. Worse: His hands were scrubbed, and his eyes were blue, and the dementia that raged in his head like a demon, making the general's trial impossible, had disappeared. Desaparecido: like thousands dead but not dead, as the crowd reminded the general, gathered outside the bookstore to jeer when he scurried away with his bodyguards, so much smaller in person.
--Martín Espada
Martín Espada has been called "the Latino poet of his generation" and "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors." He has published sixteen books in all as a poet, editor, essayist and translator.