Beyond the Silver River. South American Encounters

During the five years Jimmy Burns was based in Buenos Aires, which resulted in his award-winning study of the Falklands War and its aftermath, The Land That Lost Its Heroes, he also embarked on further-flung journeys in Argentina, in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. 'Each South American country is idiosyncratic - it brings out our individual fantasies and forces us to interpret anew,' writes Burns. Certainly to travel with him is to trace the footprints of history - conquest and subjugation, defiance and hope - yet to encounter at each turn a fresh observation, the unexpected. He conducts us by steam train up the Andes and down to the treacherous depths of a Bolivian tin mine. We find a hotbed of Argentine loyalties in Tierra del Fuego, beaches of bodies beautiful in Brazil and Peruvian streets where fanatical Sendero Luminoso guerrillas wage a permanent power struggle with the military. Burns introduces us to Sixto Vázquez, Indian intellectual with an unshakeable...