Book description
Simon Bolívar once inspired a continent to rise from serfdom and
throw off the shackles of Spanish rule. With lance and law book, he
and his fellow Liberators set the course for independence, freedom and
equality. ¡Viva South America! sets out to discover if that dream
lives on. Is it fair to describe a land as 'independent' while poverty
still enslaves millions, where violence lurks in the shadows and where
lawlessness gnaws away at progress? Did the Liberators fail? Or are
leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales
resurrecting those long-ago ideals? Armed with a reporter's notebook
and an open mind, the author hits the road in search of answers.
Cutting a path along the highways and byways of the continent, this
book lifts the lid on the Liberators' legacies and sniffs behind their
modern-day statues. With the ghost of Bolívar as guide, the quest
takes the reader off the tourist trail and into the weird and
wonderful worlds of South American culture and society. By stepping
into people's homes and into inmates' prison cells, by climbing on to
dance floors and over road blocks, Oliver Balch unearths untold
stories from the front line of South America's contemporary fight for freedom.
Oliver Balch works as an independent journalist in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, where he writes regularly for the Guardian. His articles
have also appeared in the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Observer
and Fortune magazine. Away from his laptop, he has had jobs as a
labourer in Peru, a Bollywood extra in India, a missionary in Bolivia
and an English teacher to exiled Tibetan monks. This is his first book.
