Novel
El sitio de las abras
Not translated into English
Fabián Dobles · 1950
Synopsis
Around 1875, Espíritu Santo Vega and his sons clear the mountain forest and found, in clearings, the abras, a community of small farmers; his wife Lola Sánchez, a healer and a woman of decision, joins them, and the family prospers. The sale of the neighbouring hacienda to the rich Ambrosio Castro, a schemer more townsman than ploughman, and then the actions of his son Laureano, threaten the lands of the abreros. More than twenty years later, a second part follows the exploited farm workers of the hacienda, whom Martín Vega sets about organising into a union.
Context
The novel appeared in Guatemala in 1950 and was awarded a prize there, according to José Fabio Garnier, who includes it among his hundred Costa Rican novels. An ellipsis of at least twenty-seven years divides it into a happy past and a degraded present. Carlos Molina and Edwin Salas read in it a Marxist intention that is supplanted by a petty-bourgeois mentality: the conflict is treated in moral terms, private property is not called into question and the hero counts for more than the class. In 2022 the Ministry of Education issued a free edition of it for schools.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, in two parts separated by a generation, rich in peasant vocabulary.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize in Guatemala, selected among the hundred Costa Rican novels of the National Library and reissued for schools.
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