Author Description

During the 1930s and 1940s, Central American countries underwent a series of communist-led insurrections that traumatized the respective populations and led to tyrannical repressions by military-led governments authorized by avaricious landowners and US importers of their tropical crops. Efforts at meaningful reform were stalled during World War II because of US concern that Japan and Germany would establish foot-holds in America’s “southern flank.” After the war, US military interest shifted toward curbing communist incursions in these small countries. This shift emboldened regional security forces to continue and even increase repressive practices against reform-minded progressives, whom they labeled communists. Caught in this juxtaposition was a group of reformists led by an enigmatic rebel who, while rejecting the communist manifesto of creating and sharing wealth, supported aggressive reforms to end the tyranny. The struggle to curb injustices and establish a strong middle class also attracted a charismatic young dentist, a member of an emerging bourgeois, who in his zeal to bring about progressive changes, puts himself and his family in mortal danger. Conflicted by the overwhelming challenges of protecting his family, he makes a dramatic and painful decision. He chooses exile and begins a twenty-five-year odyssey. The choice takes him and his family into post-war San Francisco, California where they encounter social and inner struggles while trying to acclimate and "blend" into mainstream America as a dental assistant to the infamous outlaw dentist, Painless Parker. This family’s story is a microcosm of the millions of Latin American immigrants now living in the United States and those who preceded them and asked: Why am I here? Why did my parents or grandparents feel the need to leave their frames of reference and become second-class citizens in another world? What was the emergency that justified their “seeking a better life?” As o