Luisa In Realityland

Mass murder, overwhelming poverty, and great injustice. These are some of the terms one can imagine when thinking of a country torn by a civil war. In Claribel Alegría’s Luisa in Realityland, a story which describes Luisa’s life through recollections in a combination of vignettes and poems. Set in her mind, Luisa describes her reality in El Salvador, a country that conjures nostalgia and pain for her. Alegría’s character of Luisa brilliantly allows the reader to gain an inside perspective into a world that is often left unheard. Alegría’s collection of vignettes and poems titled Luisa in Realityland, told through the eyes of Luisa, describes the horrendous political climate of El Salvador, and the consequences that arise from these political injustices. Most importantly, Luisa describes a crucial element of the Salvadoran civil war—the United States involvement. The political climate in El Salvador is already tense from a civil war when the United States interferes in order to hinder the uprising lead by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation …show more content…
In “Because I want peace,” she describes a scene of battle: “my brothers peer out/ from their bunkers/ at three battalions/ trained in Carolina/ and Georgia” (106). This is a reference to the fact that the United States trained the military led government who fought against the FMLN. Further solidifying that the United States played the puppet master in the affairs of El Salvador, so much so that they were training the military in order to solidify the United State’s version of “democracy”. All of these allusions that describes the U.S. involvement depict a gruesome scene where the revolutionaries of these countries are systematically decimated by one force: the United States. Luisa tactfully describes these injustices as a way to enlighten the reader on the reality of the United State’s political