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Homeland Rife With Discord  By Marjorie Agosin, Marjorie Agosin,
associate professor of Spanish at Wellesley College in
Wellesley, Mass., is a poet, author, and editor of `Secret
Weavers: Stories of the Fantastic by Women of Argentina and
Chile' (White Pine Press). / July 24, 1992  THE North American
public envisions Guatemala as a land of striking physical beauty
and of perpetual political strife, besieged by countless
dictatorships and terrorized by human-rights violations.  Skip
to next paragraph  Guatemalan writers also share in their
collective literary imagination a vision of a troubled land - a
nation divided between rich and poor, Indians and Mestizos,
military and civilians. And the political turmoil within
Guatemala has become a pervasive theme in Guatemalan literature.
Miguel Angel Asturias led the way with his classic "El Senor
Presidente," and a series of Guatemalan novels that depict the
violence of authoritarian regimes in the country