Gabriela
grew up in a small Mayan canton in the high mountains of Guatemala surrounded by her
family and friends. The trees in the
forest outside her village were her refuge and solace. She loved climbing them
and spent so many hours in them that she acquired the nickname Tree Girl. This
ability would later save her life.
Gabi was
the only child in her family sent to school to learn to read and speak Spanish,
and more importantly, to learn to think. While she
was growing up, her community was mildly troubled by conflict between the
guerillas and government soldiers asking them to tell about the actions of the
other. They continued about their business hoping they would be ignored.
It was not to be.
Following her mother's death, Gabriela took on more responsibility for her family. After a
journey to the larger center to sell their produce, she returned to discover
that government soldiers had massacred her entire community. She found her
sister, Alicia, and injured brother, Antonio, hiding in the forest, and fled with
them. Antonio died shortly afterwards.
Desperate to find food for them, Gabriela entered a village just prior to the arrival of government soldiers. She
climbed into a tree in the middle of the square and hid while they brutally
humiliated and slaughtered the residents.
Afterwards, unable to find her sister, she set out on her own for Mexico,
always searching for them.
Eventually
she reached a refuge camp. Life in the refuge camp was not easy, but in it Gabriela
began to recover from the trauma she experienced and find the goodness in
herself again.
I finished
this book thinking of the recent hype around The Hunger Games. In The Hunger
Games, the heroine, Katniss, has to fight for survival in a dangerous,
futuristic, but fictional world. In Tree Girl, the heroine, Gabriela, has to
fight to survive in the very real world of Guatemala in the 1980's. It is not
for the faint of heart. The brutal, casual violence is far more horrific than
that in The Hunger Games, because the indifferent rape, torture and murder of
approximately 200,000 people is not fiction.
There are
two powerful themes that intertwine throughout this book. On the one hand
we see and experience vicariously the human capacity for evil. On the other we
see and experience the human capacity for hope and goodness.
Perhaps
these themes are also articulated in The Hunger Games, but the authenticity of
them in Tree Girl forces the reader into a profoundly different awareness of
what it means to be human. It also forces the reader into taking a closer look
at the real world that we all share. My first reaction after finishing this
book was to go in search of more information about the Guatemalan conflict. A simple google search revealed that the Indigenous
peoples’ struggle in Guatemala is far from over. I’m still pondering what
I will do about it. Doing nothing is not
an option.