A Place Called Milagro de la Paz.

A Place Called Milagro de la Paz, by Manlio Argueta. Trans., Michael B. Miller. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, 2000.

Manlio Argueta won international acclaim with The Valley of the Hammocks (1970), Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (1978), One Day of Life (1980), and Cuzcatlan, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986). In A Place Called Milagro de la Paz, perhaps his most poetic novel, Argueta continues his depiction of life among the common people, this time focusing on the strength and resilience of the women of the impoverished towns of his native El Salvador.

The story revolves around Latina, a character reputedly inspired by Argueta's mother, to whom he dedicates the book. Latina lives with her two daughters, Magdalena and Crista, in a shack on a rundown street in the village of Milagro de la Paz (Miracle of Peace), so named because the nearby volcano, in spite of frequent eruptions, has always spared it. The women eke out a living selling the clothes that Latina makes and the roses that Magdalena grows.

The volcano--forever threatening to erupt and destroy the town--is emblematic of ever-present danger. Milagro de la Paz is a place besieged by natural, unnatural, and supernatural forces. Armed soldiers occupy the streets. At night, seres desconocidos, or "unknowns," attack village residents, leaving the odor of gunpowder on their bodies and a ring of wounds resembling coyote bites around theft necks. Ghosts linger in the shadows. Earthquakes menace constantly. Real coyotes, opossums, buzzards, spiders, termites, and red ants threaten people and possessions. Yet, Latina, the archetypal Latin woman, carries on.

In spite of Latina's vigilance, Magdalena gets pregnant by a neighbor boy named Nicolas. Shortly afterward, the family dog turns up dead, its body smelling of gunpowder and its neck encircled by coyote bites. Then Magdalena is murdered, her corpse displaying the same telltale signs as the dog's. Nicolas is also found dead, dangling from the well. The reasons for the slayings are never clear, but no reasons are necessary. In Milagro de la Paz, people routinely perish without explanation. Death is a reality the inhabitants learn to live with.

One day, a little girl named Lluvia (Rain) appears unexpectedly in Latina's house, her braids bound in ribbons that look like butterflies and, indeed, sometimes seem to be butterflies. Latina takes her for a reincarnation of Magdalena and asks her to stay. Later, Crista seduces a handyman and has a baby to replace the one Magdalena lost. Now, the family is once again complete. Eventually, Latina even acquires a new dog.

However, the child, named Juan Bautista, has been badly scarred by the incessant, violence. He carries on long conversations in the outhouse with the dead Magdalena and is drawn inexorably to the well where Nicolas's body was found hanging. For a long period he becomes mute. Through Juan Bautista, Argueta shows the reader death from a child's perspective--terrifying and incomprehensible, yet alluring.

The risk-filled atmosphere of Milagro de la Paz makes inhabitants suspicious and jittery. They lie to protect themselves and others, creating a "slippery" reality that glides in and out of focus. Argueta creates a sense of collective paranoia through his staccato style, his vertiginously rapid changes of voice and perspective, his disconcerting repetitions, and his unexpected alternation of conventional narrative and playlike dialogue. He constantly throws us off balance, forcing us into a state of apprehensiveness that mirrors that of his characters.

Although A Place Called Milagro de la Paz contains elements of magical realism--the combination of the supernatural and the meticulously realistic associated with the novelists of the Boom--it lacks the playful, outrageous, tongue-in-cheek quality of the prose of, say, Garcia Marquez. In this sort of writing, the magical is taken as seriously as the natural; magic constitutes an alternate reality, and the author describes the most outlandish events as matter-of-factly as commonplace happenings. In Argueta's novel, most ostensibly supernatural events are actually rooted either in objective reality or in the characters' psyches. For example, Lluvia "miraculously" appears in Latina's house looking for a godmother who never appears. Much later, one of the village women admits she is the girl's godmother, but never claimed her because she thought Latina needed her more than she did. Similarly, the "voices" Juan Bautista hears are products of his insecurity with respect to his own identity, which exacerbates his obsession with death. At first, it appears both to him and to the reader that Magdalena is his mother and that she communicates with him from the other world. Later, it comes out that his mother is Crista, and that his conversations with Magdalena may be imaginary. In many ways Argueta's writing is closer to what has been called "the marvelous real," in which the sense of other-worldliness emanates from realities that are as astonishing as the supernatural. And yet, even this term does not describe adequately his style, which combines so many levels of truth that it defies classification.

In spite of the violence, the fear, the poverty, and the loss, Latina survives. Sustained by an old-fashioned, unadorned faith, she finds hope and strength. The novel is fraught with references that underscore the characters' religiosity. The names are especially significant. Magdalena is the kindhearted fallen woman. Crista--also called Crista-Nina (Christ child)--is a female Christ figure who gives new life. Juan Bautista (John the Baptist), always associated with the water in the patio well, represents reconciliation not only among family members, but also between past and present. And Lluvia is the living water that nourishes and revivifies the family.

A Place Called Milagro de la Paz is a tribute to the women of violence-ridden countries who, against the odds, maintain their families, their traditions, and their faith intact. Argueta has written a beautiful, inspiring novel that deserves the international acclaim that its appearance in English will help to achieve.

Critic, novelist, and short story writer, Barbara Mujica is a professor of Spanish literature at Georgetown University. Her latest book is Frida, a novel based on the tumultuous relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Frida is scheduled for publication in November, by Overlook Press.