The art and the reality is very difficult sometimes to reconcile, but also I don’t think that the poet have to be in an ivory tower just thinking bea… - Claribel Alegría Vides

I hope we go back into our Indian roots in the next century, bring them to the surface, study them. There is only an elite that knows of the great richness and wisdom in the Popol Vuh (The Book of the Dawn of Life), we are going to get as much from this as we do from our Spanish heritage.

I would love Central America to be one country. We are the same everywhere. We belong to this beautiful cosmic race and it is the cosmic race that is going to reign in this next century. It is the mixture of races that is so beautiful...We have to accept each other, if we mix fantastic. Why not? Not to make you marry someone that is not of your race; but if you want to, so what? I believe in the mixture. All of us have a gift to give. All of us.

Among my generation in Central America, women of the leisure class had the option of marrying or controlling their husband’s purse strings or of remaining chaste and virtuous, baking cakes for their nieces and nephews.