THE MISFORTUNE AND PAIN OF MY CHILDHOOD, LOPEZ VALDIZON

INTRODUCTION TO BROKEN LIFE: GUISELA LOPEZ

                                          
                                         Life is renewed by the turning of a blade;

Light is the disintegration of what dies;

Tomorrow emerges from the ashes of the past.

JOSE MARIA LOPEZ VALDIZON

To make contact with a work of art is to make contact with the artist's creative vision, facing its beauty through the trajectory of the author and their context. Broken Life enables us to gain entrance to a literary pursuit that is not limited to aesthetic values, which openly recognizes literature is not neutral and renounces the proverbial expression, "art for art's sake." The exercise of creation assumes a political identity and an ethical position and works toward a goal of creating a fictional narrative that seeks truth. Jose Maria Lopez Valdizon conceives of literature as a possibility of transforming reality and making a commitment. A commitment consigned in a life of art. A commitment that illuminates lost sleep, encompasses exile, brings words to life and relief to its characters.

His literary exertions were forged in the democratic dawnings of the October Revolution--and as one of the youth of Saker Ti--he becomes a political actor in a moment of enormous historical stakes filled with profound social transformations and great political expectations.

He is conducted toward collective aspirations, responding to revolutionary principles generating new spaces of expression for youth, and attempting to give voice to and participate among the largest majority traditionally excluded from political discussion and aesthetic enjoyment.

In the dedication to Sudor y protesta, his first short story collection, he writes, "For those of the city and the countryside who bear the weight of exploitation and suffer the vile degradation of an unjust social system...To the Indigenous, the miserable and all the beings who shared in the misfortune and pain of my childhood."

This commitment provokes him to take up the reality of his broken nation, structured on the complete dismissal of ruralities, isolated by economic precariousness, ritualized in ethnic discrimination and established through disaffection, yet also enlivened by love and faith in life.

From the point of view of his writing, and with a focal point 
that crosses multiple dimensions, thematic progression is inscribed within his preoccupation for the recreation of contexts and circumstances ordering the lives of persons from the most marginalized populations of Guatemala, principally the Indigenous and campesino sectors. The discursive style of his work is strengthened by a simple, direct, and quotidian language enriched with vernacular idioms and popular verbal expressions.  In the depiction of his characters, he develops archetypes so real as to equate with the "reality" they wish to share with us, from their deepest sorrows and through their very dreams.