Este libro narra la conmovedora historia de Patrocinia Polanco Rivas, una campesina salvadoreña que personifica la lucha por la dignidad en medio de la adversidad. A través de su testimonio y el análisis del autor Andrés McKinley, la obra recorre su vida, desde una infancia marcada por la pobreza extrema y la opresión de la oligarquía cafetalera, hasta su participación en la guerra civil como operadora de radio del FMLN tras el asesinato de su mentor, el padre Rutilio Grande. La guerra le arrebata a su padre, pero forja en ella una resistencia inquebrantable.
Tras los Acuerdos de Paz de 1992, la esperanza de una vida digna se desvanece ante la persistente pobreza y las políticas neoliberales que mantienen a las familias campesinas en la miseria. Para sobrevivir, Patrocinia trabaja incansablemente cortando caña de azúcar, mientras la falta de oportunidades lleva a su esposo y, posteriormente, a sus seis hijos a emprender el peligroso viaje migratorio hacia Estados Unidos. El libro documenta los horrores de este periplo: el abandono, la extorsión, el secuestro y la constante amenaza de la muerte.
Una vez en el norte, los hijos de Patrocinia se enfrentan a la dura realidad de la vida indocumentada y a la maquinaria represiva del ICE, especialmente bajo la administración de Donald Trump. La autora establece un poderoso paralelismo entre la violencia de los escuadrones de la muerte en El Salvador y la persecución sistemática de los migrantes.
El Precio de la Dignidad es un testimonio de la resiliencia humana, mostrando que la dignidad no reside en el éxito de la lucha, sino en la propia lucha, un legado que Patrocinia heredó de su padre. El libro se erige como un recordatorio urgente de las consecuencias humanas de la guerra, de la injusticia económica y de las políticas migratorias despiadadas.
USD $ 21.00
Andrés (Drew) McKinley was born in the United States but has worked for over 50 years in programs for sustainable development, environment and human rights in Africa, Latin America and the United States. He has worked for the past 48 years…
| Book Format | Print Book |
|---|
Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.
![Aufbruch in Jackson [German edition of Jackson Rising: Black self-management and solidarity economy]](https://darajapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/174_Akuno_Jackson_web-150x225.jpg)
How black activists are building liberation practically from below: Departure in Jackson documents the history of one of the most exciting revolutionary experiments in the USA Present.
Since the 1970s, black liberation movements in majority-black Mississippi have taken change into their own hands. The Deep South should become the center of their independence – “Free the Land!” In the 2010s, the election of Chokwe Lumumba as mayor in the capital Jackson took an important step towards implementing the vision of assembly democracy, solidarity economy and an end to racial inequality. Lumumba dies unexpectedly in 2014, but his son Antar and the Cooperation Jackson continue to move forward.
We learn about the pitfalls of radical local politics and struggles for housing and land, democratic economic models and ecology, internationalist solidarity and the parallels to the Rojava Revolution and the Zapatistas, about encouraging experiences in which different concerns go hand in hand.
Este panfleto aborda la pregunta: ¿cómo podemos pasar de A a B, del capitalismo al poscapitalismo? La revolución de Rinky-dink involucra acciones e inacciones que son fáciles, seguras, mundanas, sin glamour y factibles dentro de la vida de cada persona.
Howard Waitzkin presenta una intervención clara y directa para el cambio revolucionario en el sistema económico capitalista global. Cubre mucho terreno, con sofisticación, mientras mantiene la discusión en tierra. Su enfoque en las formas de facilitar un desafío al capital y construir una mayor transformación revolucionaria es crucial en esta coyuntura histórica. Esta discusión sobre construcciones creativas y destrucciones creativas es particularmente útil.
— Brett Clark, profesor de sociología de la Universidad de Utah y autor De El Robo De La Naturaleza: Capitalismo Y Grieta Ecológica, The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and Ecological Rift en inglés.
El fin del capitalismo es posible. Waitzkin nos lleva un paso más allá en el proceso creativo para esta transformación. A través de ejemplos específicos de grupos organizados dentro de los Estados Unidos y en el extranjero, este trabajo constituye una guía práctica para todos. Waitzkin alienta nuestra creatividad para actos organizados y seguros además de omisiones para trascender el capitalismo.
— Nylca J. Munoz Sosa, abogada, líder de salud pública y activista centrada en la justicia sanitaria y la descolonización en Puerto Rico.
Nikesha Breeze has taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, taken his words, and forced them to leave his colonized mind. She has made the words her own in poetic form. She illuminates the invisible Black voices inside, a radical, surgical, and unapologetic Black appropriation, at the same time as a careful birthing and spiritual road map. The resulting poems are sizzling purifications, violent restorations of integrity, pain, wound, bewilderment, rage, and, sometimes, luminous generosity. This is a work of Reclamation. The author, Nikesha Breeze, has slowly, page by page, reclaimed the text of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This racist turn-of-the-19th-century book was pivotal in the continued dehumanization of Black people and in particular of African people, as it painted an image of bestiality on the Congo people and the continent. It is laced with racist imagery and language. The author has reappropriated the book, page by page, making “BlackOut” poetry for each page, isolating methodically the words to create new poems of power and black voice within the text —stealing the language and reappropriating the power.
Rhymes of Blood and Jasmine is far more than a bilingual poetry collection; it is a poetic and cultural testimony that merges lyrical beauty with critical depth. Spanning over five decades of creative expression, Dr. Hilmi Zawati weaves verses charged with spiritual and romantic love, exile, memory, resistance, and identity. Symbols like jasmine, oranges, figs, and blood evoke a profound sense of homeland, sacrifice, and longing, forming an emotional tapestry firmly rooted in the Palestinian experience. This is poetry that does not simply describe a reality but embodies it, offering readers an intimate portal into a world shaped by history and sustained by hope.
What makes this collection truly singular is its self-translation—a rare act that unites author and translator into a single, cohesive poetic voice. Zawati transcends conventional translation by recreating the essence of his Arabic poems in English with unmatched emotional and stylistic fidelity. His bilingual artistry breathes life into both texts, allowing them to resonate authentically across languages and cultures, ensuring that the nuance and musicality of the original are never lost.
This work speaks to a broad audience of readers, scholars, poets, translators, and students of translation studies, comparative literature, Palestinian history, and Arab diaspora cultures. It asserts translation as a form of cultural sovereignty—rejecting distortion, simplification, and marginalisation—while affirming the enduring presence of Arab poetic tradition within global literature. Rhymes of Blood and Jasmine is not just to be read; it is to be lived. A poetic bridge between languages and worlds, it revives silenced memories and restores the voice of love and homeland with grace, dignity, and truth. This collection is an essential contribution to world literature, offering a poignant reminder of poetry’s power to heal, resist, and connect.
The current absence of any emancipatory vision for Africa lies at the heart of our political problems of racial capitalist and colonial oppression. Any attempt to rethink political emancipation on the African continent must be able to locate a universal conception of freedom within singular cultural experiences where people live. Irrespective of the specific manner in which such struggles for freedom were thought within different historical contexts, emancipatory politics always exhibited such a dialectic when it was based within popular traditions. Yet only some militant intellectual leaders understood the importance of this dialectic in thought.
The present volume outlines and discusses two particularly important views concerning the role and importance of popular culture in emancipatory politics in Africa. Each is the product of distinct forms of colonial capitalist exploitation: the former saw the light of day within a colonial context while the latter is directly confronted by the neocolonial state. All emancipatory politics are developed in confrontation with state power, and all begin with a process of discussion and debate whereby a collective subject begins to be formed. The formation of such a collective political subject has been fundamentally informed by popular cultures on the African continent.
The two authors whose essays are included here understood this and posit popular culture at the centre of their politics. The first, Amílcar Cabral, addresses the central role of popular culture in the independence struggle of Guinea Bissau in the 1970s; the second, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, addresses the centrality of African popular culture in an emancipatory politics for the current Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the distance in time that separates them, both Cabral and Wamba-dia-Wamba develop a dialectics at the core of their politics which activates the universals of culture in the present. It is this that makes their views of central importance to emancipatory thought today.
Faces of Horror is the searing, first-hand testimony of Njoud Salem, a Palestinian woman and mother documenting the near-total annihilation of life in Gaza. This diary chronicles the daily fight for survival against a relentless Israeli military campaign, capturing the genocide with an intimacy that no news report can convey.
The narrative begins on October 7, 2023, with the first thunder of rockets, and unfolds as Njoud, her husband, and their three young sons are violently uprooted from their home. They are thrust into a desperate odyssey for refuge, fleeing from hospitals turned into battlefields to the squalid tent cities of the south. The journal is a stark record of the “second Nakba”—a landscape of relentless bombing, starvation, and the systematic dehumanization of a people. Through her account, we witness the destruction of her cherished home and all her material possessions, yet she clings fiercely to her faith and the love for her family.
More than a war diary, Face of Horror is a profound meditation on human endurance and the indomitable will to bear witness. It serves as a critical, primary source document from a survivor of a Holocaust, a challenge to the world’s conscience, and a testament to the spirit of Gaza that refuses to be erased, even as it is buried under the rubble of a world that has turned its back.
Los agentes patógenos surgen una y otra vez de un sistema agroalimentario global arraigado en la desigualdad, la explotación laboral y el extractivismo sin límites por el que se despoja a las comunidades de sus recursos naturales y sociales. Un sistema económico propenso a la crisis que prioriza la producción para obtener beneficios por encima de la satisfacción de las necesidades humanas y la preservación ecológica se organiza en torno a una intensa producción monocultural que, por el camino, permite la aparición de las enfermedades más mortíferas.
La Investigación sobre la Pandemia para el Pueblo (PReP) se centra en cómo la agricultura podría ser reimaginada por el tipo de intervención a nivel de la comunidad que podría detener la aparición del coronavirus y otros patógenos en primer lugar. Abordamos cómo la ciencia convencional apoya los mismos sistemas políticos y económicos que ayudaron a producir la aparición del coronavirus y otros patógenos en primer lugar.
Introducimos la agroecología, un ecologismo de los campesinos, los pobres y los indígenas, que existe desde hace mucho tiempo, y que trata la agricultura como una parte de la ecología de la que la humanidad cultiva sus alimentos. La agroecología -una ciencia, un movimiento y práctica- combina la ciencia ecológica, los conocimientos indígenas y campesinos y los movimientos sociales por la soberanía alimentaria y territorial para lograr sistemas alimentarios ambientalmente justos.
Ghostlines is a graphic novel that describes the journey of the author and three Kenyan artists along the LAPSSET development corridor, a braid of roads, pipelines, and resort cities that promises to bring development to Kenya’s marginalized north. It mixes conceptual and empirical insights into the human geography of infrastructure with the narrative flexibility and depth afforded by the medium graphic novel – a geo-graphic novel.
They meet Peter, a retired pilot who had previously worked for a conservancy and can tell stories about the LAPSSET from high above and from the ground. He understands how everyone involved is seeking to benefit from the corridor in their own way, even if that means building uninhabited “ghost huts” that manifest the presence of pastoral communities and thus qualify them for compensation. Jane is an activist for a women’s and Indigenous rights organization. She’s been fighting invisible monsters her entire life: stalking hyenas (metaphorical and real), corrupt politicians, and the patriarchy itself. The spectre of the LAPSSET is only the last one of these hidden monsters. They meet Joseph, a herder, who hopes that the LAPSSET might connect him to far places but worries that it will instead cut him off of the grazing grounds that are essential for the survival of his family. What is the LAPSSET – a road or a fence? In Oldonyoro they meet Rashid, a poet, who writes about the long history of the corridor. In his mind, it reaches far back to colonial times. “My grandfather suffered greatly,” he writes, “Is it my turn to face the worst? I wonder, a tricky treasure”. In the last village on their journey, they meet a group of women who have come together to support each other. Their position on the LAPSSET is more optimistic. The real connections of solidarity they forged contrast with the imaginary ghostlines of the LAPSSET. The narrative structure of the geo-graphic novel draws connections between the narrators, that is, the team of researchers and artists and the interviewees. They seek to unravel the idea of the omniscient or unbiased narrator and to reveal how storytellers bring their own ghosts into stories. By connecting all of these narratives along their journey, they challenge the single, universalist story that planners tell about large-scale infrastructure projects. Instead, they invite the reader to embrace the often-contradictory multiplicity of infrastructural relations, to see the ostensibly solid lines on maps for what they are: a messy, ever-changing braiding of multitudes.
DarajaPress uses Accessibility Checker to monitor our website's accessibility.
Daraja Press
Este es un libro sobre la dignidad humana.
A través de las conmovedoras palabras de una mujer extraordinaria,Andrés McKinley teje una historia de los últimos cincuenta años enhonor a las personas del mundo que luchan cada día por sobrevivircon dignidad. Patrocinia Polanco Rivas es una mujer con una historiaque merece ser contada. Nacida en la pobreza y sufriendo bajo eldominio de las oligarquías cafetaleras y azucareras que gobernabanEl Salvador, Patrocinia sobrevive a la violencia de los abusos paramili-tares, a los horrores de una guerra civil alimentada por Estados Unidosque cobró la vida de 75,000 personas (ella fue operadora de radio delejército guerrillero), a la pobreza de una economía desigual, al dolor dever a sus hijos soportar el terror de migrar a Estados Unidos y al temorcotidiano de que sus hijos vivan bajo la maquinaria migratoria del ICEdurante la era Trump.
Al mismo tiempo, Patrocinia comparte las alegrías de una familiaamorosa, el despertar de las Comunidades Eclesiales de Base de ladécada de 1970, las esperanzas de los Acuerdos de Paz de 1992, eldolor y peligro de 20 años de cortando caña para poner comido sobrela mesa de sus 6 hijos, y la extraordinaria fortaleza y valentía que senecesitan para sobrevivir una vida de pobreza; una pobreza nacida depolíticas impuestas por los sectores más ricos de nuestra tierra.
Gran parte de este extraordinario libro está compuesta por las propiaspalabras de Patrocinia, pero Andrés McKinley entrelaza su historia conla historia de las comunidades cristianas de base, el papel de EstadosUnidos en el respaldo al terror de la guerra civil, el milagro y las decep-ciones de los Acuerdos de Paz, la violencia estructural de las políticasde Reagan y de sus aliados salvadoreños que empobrecieron a lamayoría de campesinos de El Salvador, el surgimiento de las pandi-llas y, posteriormente, los años de gobernación autóctona de NayibBukele, así como la dura realidad que enfrentan los salvadoreños enEstados Unidos bajo Trump.
Cada página arde con las palabras que Patrocinia recuerda de supadre en los días más oscuros de la guerra civil: “Nuestra dignidadno siempre se encuentra en el resultado de nuestras luchas; nuestradignidad reside en la lucha misma.”
– John Cavanagh, Instituto de Estudios Políticos (Institute for PolicyStudies), y coautor (junto con Robin Broad) de Los Defensores delAgua: Cómo la gente común salvó a un país de la codicia corporative
Este es un libro extraordinario que conmoverá a sus lectores tantoemocional como intelectualmente. Vincula la crisis actual de crueldadcontra los migrantes salvadoreños en Estados Unidos con la crisis decrueldad ejercida contra los pobres salvadoreños durante la guerrade la década de 1980. Combina la historia personal de Patrocinia,una campesina salvadoreña con una asombrosa trayectoria de sufri-miento, resistencia y resiliencia, con la forma en que Andrés McKinleysitúa su historia dentro de las acciones de los gobiernos de EstadosUnidos y de los poderosos y acaudalados salvadoreños, desde aquellaguerra hasta la actualidad. Esta es una lectura imprescindible paraquienes desean comprender lo que significa ser pobre y carecer depoder, y cómo los salvadoreños, a pesar de todo, han continuadobuscando todas las formas posibles de sobrevivir y vivir con dignidad.– Jenny Pearce, Profesora Visitante, Instituto de DesigualdadesInternacionales, London School of Economics
El Precio de la Dignidad es una lectura indispensable, especialmentepara quienes desean comprender el flujo migratorio hacia el norteprovocado por los conflictos en Centroamérica que fueron finan-ciados en gran medida por Estados Unidos. Está escrito con pasióny con frecuencia da la palabra a las voces elocuentes de campesinosy campesinas, cuyas vidas han sido moldeadas por el sufrimiento yla lucha. Ofrece una mirada actualizada sobre la vida en El Salvador ysobre las vidas valientes, aunque a menudo peligrosas, de las personasindocumentadas.
– Charlie Clements, MD, MPH, autor de Witness to War (Testigo de laGuerra) (Bantam, 1984; Daraja Press, 2025).