Central American Book of the Dead

Author: Balam Rodrigo

Translator: Dan Bellm

Publisher: FlowerSong Press (2023)

Poet Balam Rodrigo's Central American Book of the Dead (Libro centroamericano de los muertos), winner of the 2018 Premio Aguascalientes, Mexico's highest poetry honor, is a sequence of poems in multiple voices, interwoven with the author's own narrative, about Central American migrants and refugees, living and dead, journeying through Mexico to the north. The book also interweaves altered passages from A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) by Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish colonist (later friar and bishop) who became the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World and the enslavement of indigenous people.