Children of the Volcano

Alison Acker’s book provides a look at living conditions in the war torn “banana republics” of Central America. Published by the radical Between the Lines Press, the book is based on four months’ travel in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. The author chooses to give us a glimpse of Central America through the eyes of children. The book is composed of a series of interviews with children and young people between the ages of 7 and 24, and these portraits of young orphans, soldiers and workers caught in a dangerous world, often victims of the brutality of war, have a particular poignancy. As the author points out, this is not a scientific sampling, but simply a selection of interviews with people she came across on her travels or met through various agencies. However, the casualness of the survey is consonant with the charm of its child interviewees. The brave tales of these children serve to heighten the horror and inhumanity of poverty and repression, and political exploitation.