Why do We Love Our Land?!

We don’t love our land because of its great size and power,
because of its weakness or tiny size,
because of its snow and white nights or its solar rain,
We love it, simply because is ours.
— Luis Cardoza y Aragón

Luis Cardoza y Aragón is another great Guatemalan writer, born in La Antigua Guatemala in ~~1904~~1901. In the 1920s, Cardoza y Aragón moved to Paris, France where he became friends with André Breton. Influenced by the avant-garde members of the surrealist movement, his first work titled “Luna Park” was published in 1923 and dedicated to the Guatemalan writer Enrique Gomez Carrillo (1873-1927). He also go to know fellow Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias who came to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Decades later in 1991 Cardoza y Aragón wrote a book entitled “Miguel Ángel Asturias, Casi Novela” (Ediciones Era) about their time in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s that earned him the 1992 Mazatlan Literature award in Mexico. (source Wikipedia)

For being such small country, Guatemala produces many great writers, most of them are forced to live in exile though. What a paradox that is. For instance, all three names above Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Asturias (Nobel Prize of Literature 1967) and Luis Cardoza y Aragón lived most of their lives in exile. They are also considered the best Guatemalan writers of the 19th – 20th centuries.