Isabel Allende, who wrote such mystical/romantic novels as In the House of Spirits and Of Love and Shadows began her interview by saying "The wonderful quality of human beings is that we can overcome even absolute terror, and we do." This is most likely in reference to her own life and family, as she went into exile after her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was assassinated by the CIA assisted coup in 1973.

Being in Spanish, I was excited to not only read about her, but also to find that I share some of her opinions about this country as well as the ideology and culture of Latin American societies. She said:

"One of the advantages of the North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state of a city or a country, and move West, most of the time is West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again,, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind you and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible. We carry with us the sense that we belong to a group, a clan, a tribe, and extended family, especially a country. For us, we have the burden of this sort of fate, of destiny, that you [Americans] don't......However, [here] there is the disadvantage of loneliness, of individuality carried to an extreme, where you think itÍs a great disadvantage-a moral and spiritual ethical disadvantage.....I am optimistic because I think that the strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures....I live in Marin county where a part of the community is fighting against the Latin American immigrants. People are terrified because they see these dark men standing in groups waiting for someone to offer a job. That is very threatening..."

What moved me most about what Isabel Allende had to say was that our government killed her uncle; she is a very prolific and successful woman, has suffered many deaths in her family, (her daughter recently died, as well as her brother) yet she is not angry or pointing the finger at anyone, although it seems it would be very easy for her to. She lives in a racist area, a place that, when I used to live there, provided a categorical generalization when you met someone new: if they noticed you had an accent or a vowel at the end of your last name, their eyebrow went up and they looked over their shoulder to see if anyone had seen them associating with someone like you. I for one did not experience this, but I saw it happen to my mother and cousins. I have a bitter tone when I speak of it, and found it remarkable that Isabel Allende, being as talented as she is, overlooks it and says that she is optimistic about this country. The woman that was interviewing her also seemed to notice this quality, and asked very good questions. It was a new experience for me to find such a specific, intimate interview in the native tongue of Latin American participants, and I believe that his website will have more interviews as interesting for me in the future, with other authors, artists.

I then went on to visit information about Gustavo Adolfo Béquer, a Spanish poet, as well as Federico García Lorca, my favorite Spanish poet. All that was there were copies of poems, dates of birth and brief life histories. I believe, however, this is because not many interviews existed about these poets while they were alive. I found, among the sixty pages of poetry, one short poem by Gustavo Béquer that I thought I would include (translated by myself, so I did the best that I could):

I also found a poem that is my absolute favorite poem by Lorca, which I at one time had the copy of, then lost in an old journal that I left on a train. I am so thrilled that I found it, I am going to include it. It is somewhat long, and hope I do it justice in the translation:

I am going to continue to visit this website, as it has so much of what I like in it. I am not sure if or how often they update it, but I am very content that I found it. There were also some pictures of Lorca included, which I looked at, and also some remarks of how devastated Neruda, my other favorite poet, was when Lorca died, and the situation of the Spanish government that took him into the street and shot him, a moment that changed the style of Neruda's works forever.