A Mexican goes in search of his father. On her deathbed, his mother has told him to return to her native village in the south to search him out: ‘Just as you pass the gate of los Colimotes, there’s a beautiful view of a green plain tinged with the yellow of ripe corn. From there you can see Comala.’ But when the man gets to Comala, he finds an arid plain and an empty village, with nothing except the voices of the dead to speak to him. It soon seems that he too is bound to die.

From these slender elements, the Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo weaves a story that relentlessly draws the reader in, and says more about life as well as death in rural Mexico than many longer and more elaborate works. Rulfo is a story-teller who is well aware that poetry comes from knowing what to leave out as much as what to leave in.

The narrative of Pedro Paramo – the name of the protagonist’s father – consists of some 60 fragments. These fragments are the voices of the ghosts still present in the village of Comala, who between them gradually build up the jigsaw of his father’s life and death. Pedro Paramo, we discover, was the local landowner, who accumulated his lands and power by treachery or by brutally arranged marriages, until at last he fell for a woman he found it impossible to win, as she retreated first into madness and then – inevitably in this novel – death.

The 100 or so pages of the novel are held together not only by the gradually unfolding story, but by repeated images and expressions that broaden out the impact of the local events and endow them with a more general resonance. The voices of the former inhabitants of Comala give a stark impression of life as something suffered rather than created.

Pedro Paramo was originally published in Mexico in 1955. Despite the fact that Rulfo only wrote this novel and the short stories of The Burning Plain, he has been universally acknowledged as one of the masters of recent Mexican writing, both because of the sobriety and resonant understatement that he consistently achieves, and because of the way he uses these gifts to capture the emptiness and despair of rural Mexico. This is a Mexico which has been abandoned to suffering for centuries, but which still retains its capacity to burst into shocking life.

Pedro Paramo is a classic in the truest sense. It is a book that has profoundly influenced the making of literature, and continues to resonate in other books.

President Hugo Chávez openly defies the ruling class in the United States, daring to push forward new productive relationships, to advance social reform that provides access to health care and education, to remove Venezuela from the economic orbit dominated by the United States, to diversify its production to meet human needs and promote human development, and to forge an economic coalition between Latin American countries.

But as Bush Versus Chávez reveals, Venezuela’s revolutionary process has drawn more than simply the ire of Washington. It has precipitated an ongoing campaign to contain and cripple the democratically elected government of Latin America’s leading oil power. Bush Versus Chávez details how millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are used to fund groups – such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Office for Transition – with the express purpose to support counter-revolutionary groups in Venezuela. It describes how Washington is attempting to impose endless sanctions, justified by fabricated evidence, to cause economic distress. And it illuminates the build-up of U.S. military troops, operations, and exercises in the Caribbean, that specifically threaten the Venezuelan people and government. Bush Versus Chávez exposes the imperialist machinations of Washington as it tries to “subvert a socialist revolution for the twenty-first century.”

“An essential read for understanding the conflict between the United States and Venezuela” Noam Chomsky.

Published in 1967 as Cien Años de Soledad, this novel is considered Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, the breakthrough work that put him on the literary map. It was written in eighteen months of solitude, where Gabriel García Márquez locked himself into his room with paper and cigarettes, writing day and night while his wife took care of family affairs. Translated into thirty some languages, winner of four international prizes, One Hundred Years of Solitude is certainly one of the most remarkable books ever written, a tale that spans generations, told against a backdrop where the absurd can seem logical and the sensible ludicrous.

It is almost impossible to provide a clear and concise summary of this book. In essence, the novel paints the picture of an enduring family living in a South American town called Macondo, a mysterious place where every day brings its inhabitants a share of wonder, magic, grief, sorrow, and almost magical opportunities for transformation. The book picks up the Buendía family from its establishment by a eccentric patriarch and a tenacious matriarch, and tracks their descendants through the family’s rise, fall, and decay. The book is woven from a rich tapestry of unique characters, each brimming with a life that makes their passions and quirks seem like reflections of us all – it is an emotional swirl that is sensuous and filled with sentiment, but never sensational or sentimental. As we follow the Buendía family through growth and decay, war and peace, hardship and joy, we realize that we a witnessing nothing less than the slow process of life itself – like watching rust form beautiful patterns on an old metal gate.

Naomi Klein’s classic work combines on-the-ground reporting with original analysis in a trailblazing book that’s as much an handbook for activists as an inspired work of cultural criticism.

No Logo describes the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing, which has evolved to become a major shaper of culture, transforming corporations from producers of products to “branders,” trafficking in dreams, aspirations and identities — in a word, “lifestyles” (think Apple, Gap, Nike, Starbucks, et al). They penetrate all aspects of life and dominate the airwaves, physical space and cyberspace. They exert “talismanic power,” over young people especially, even as they exploit workers young and old in the United States and abroad.

In the second half of the book Klein describes the growing activist backlash against corporate manipulation, a wave of resistance that takes many forms and is expressed in the arts, through the courts, in politics and, of course, on the streets. She sets this rebellion in detailed economic and cultural perspective and shows how activists turn the brand bullies’ weapons (technology, imagery, media) back against them — in the service of self-determination, community and genuine freedom.

No Logo is a dazzling exposé of corporate global rule and the forces opposing it.

Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, calls Mexico home, as do millions of impoverished citizens. From Spanish colonization to today’s state and corporate repression, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, by John Gibler, is written from the street barricades, against the Slims of the world, and alongside “the underdogs and rebels” of an unconquered country. The book offers a gripping account of the ongoing attempts to colonize Mexico, and the hopeful grassroots movements that have resisted this conquest.

Gibler, a Global Exchange Media Fellow, has been reporting from Mexico since 2006. These reports form the basis for much of the book. In the prologue, Gibler writes of Mexico Unconquered “Each chapter bleeds into all the others, they all share the same blood.” It’s true: the chapters flow together smoothly, bonded by Gibler’s steady class analysis and excellent storytelling skills.

Mexico Unconquered starts off with an engaging people’s history of Mexico. Gibler guides the reader through the country’s various presidencies and popular uprisings. From Oaxaca, Gibler offers a first-hand account of the incredible teachers’ revolt, with reports on police brutality and people’s solidarity. From Chiapas, Gibler provides a concise overview of the Zapatistas’ history, contextualized with background information on indigenous autonomy and reports on the Other Campaign. The book also tells stories from Mexico’s ghost towns, with numerous interviews with families that bear the burden of immigration to the U.S.

But the book is more than just an account of neoliberal nightmares and grassroots revolts. It cuts to the heart of the problems ravaging Mexico today, dissecting the roots of the country’s corruption, state repression, drug wars and poverty.

“I hope that the thoughts and stories presented herein will be of use to others reflecting on similar social conditions in other lands,” Gibler writes. Indeed, harrowing accounts of Mexican police using torture to spread fear and expand power – but not necessarily get information – recall the torture methods employed in the U.S.-led “War on Terror.” The book’s stories of how the drug war in Mexico is used as a pretext for police to murder and repress with impunity is shockingly similar to the drug war in the Andes. Numerous examples are also given in the book of how the law in Mexico – as in so many other countries – works only for those with political power and weapons.

Beyond its analysis, history, and reporting, this book is also a call to revolt. Readers around the world could learn much from the popular uprisings in Mexico. Just as the tactics of repressive states and exploitative corporations are similar around the world, the strategies of resistance could be also be connected and shared across international borders. Toward the end of the book, Gibler recalls the words of a friend, “If we are all complicit in the damage, then we all share responsibility in the solutions; that is, we are united, or can be united, in taking a stand, in revolt.”

Ernesto “Che” Guevara is well known to most of us as the great leftist revolutionary who helped Castro to overthrow Batista’s Cuban government in the late 1950s then fought in the Congo and organized guerrilla fighters throughout Central America in the 1960s until meeting his demise at the hands of the Bolivian Army in 1967. What is not well known is that Che Guevara spent the early 1950s traveling around South America on two wheels. In 1950 he made a 4000 mile tour around northern Argentina on a moped and in 1952 he and a friend set out to travel from Argentina to North America by motorcycle exploring much of South America along the way. This trip is the subject of The Motorcycle Diaries.

Guevara kept a diary as he, Alberto Granado and a Norton 500 named La Poderosa II (The Powerful One) made their way across South America. Later in life Guevara went back to the diary and rewrote it as a narrative leaving us (and himself) with a well written travelogue and fascinating look at the moral development of the young Che Guevara.

Only the first quarter of the journey is made by motorcycle which is fortunate for Guevara and Granado. If La Poderosa had lived past its fatal crash and final resting spot in Santiago, Chile Che Guevara may have not. Traveling with La Poderosa consists of as much time spent falling off a motorcycle as riding a motorcycle. Apparently the overloaded Norton was a bit hard to handle on the poor roads. Early in the book La Poderosa crashes six times in one day!

The trip is continued from Santiago by hitching rides, stowing away on boats, lots of walking and even a bit of flying. The two young doctors travel as bums but slip easily between the company of the proletariat and the well-to-do. Whoever will give them a meal and shelter is their friend.

The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating look at the culture of South America in the 1950s. Recommended.

Lonely Planet have just released the latest edition of Best in Travel. In it they name their top 10 countries to visit next year (2010). It is refreshing to see El Salvador and Suriname on the list but how they have chosen some of the other countries remains a mystery. It would have been nice to see some support for Mexico considering the huge drop in tourist numbers. And where are all the African countries? Surely South Africa should be a hot spot considering they are hosting the world cup next year. Anyway have a look at their list and make up your own mind.

The Shock Doctrine is the damning Truth Commission the powerful have sought to keep locked away in the Guantanamo prison of history. Naomi Klein has smashed the padlock of secrecy and revealed the violent contents within. She masterfully exposes the dark roots of the staples of today’s borderless bloody war: torture, economic terror, disaster profiteering and international conquest. Klein traces the doctrine of shock, applied across the globe from Latin America to the Soviet Union to Africa and the Arab world, through more than half a century of refining by evil geniuses who have used the poor of the world as their lab rats. The Shock Doctrine will change forever how you see the epic battle between the haves and the have nots. This is the defining, covert history of our era. This extraordinary expose is the work of a journalist embedded not with the militaries of the powerful, but with the poor, the tortured and those who fight for justice against all odds.

There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books.

Rejecting straightforward chronology, Eduardo Galeano traces Latin America’s exploitation and impoverishment through the history of its principal commodities. Over five centuries, he explores the minerals and crops which have made a rich region poor, while building the fortunes of US and European transnational’s. From the gold and silver sought by the Spanish conquistadores to the oil and copper extracted by present day foreign corporations, Galeano presents a disturbing and fascinating picture of economic injustice.

Blending historical fact with poetic imagery, Open Veins of Latin America (Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent) is both an impassioned critique of transnational exploitation and a tribute to the passions of a plundered and suffering people. Isabel Allende’s inspiring Foreword to this classic text testifies to Eduardo Galeano’s status as one of Latin America’s foremost writers.

Having time to read is one of the great pleasures of any trip abroad. But not if the books you’ve packed are a let-down. Each month we will post some of our favourites that won’t let you down.