Telltale Stories from Central America (Book Review)

Telltale Stories from Central America: Cultural Heritage, Political Systems, and Resistance in Developing Countries. By Samuel Z. Stone. #0826322972, University of New Mexico Press, 2001, 262 pages.

The author's goal is to identify and depict a verbal legacy of cultural dissent in Central America, via legends told by indigenous peoples (his use of "indigenous" includes both Mestizos and Indians). He believes that, due to the treatment of Central Americans by the Spanish and other later colonizers, the myths, legends, and stories told to children and adults will exhibit and emphasize the cultural loss with a focus on the oppression, deception, discrimination, resentment, dissent, distrust, etc., they have experienced at the hands of those who forced their lives. The point of the book is to locate and present these stories, arranged by country ("telltales" in the classic sense - the telling of tales, handed down generation to generation, in the oral tradition).

The book includes tales, by country, within broadly-stated categories. Because the stories tend to be incredibly short in their purest form (though many are offered as extracts or synopses), the contents of the book go on for a half-dozen pages or more. These are the stories pertaining to Nicaragua, per the book sections - here offered all in caps:

ENDURING RESENTMENT: "The Campesions Follow the Roads (Extract I)" ; "The Dog" ; "Books without a Doctor" ; "An Undefinable Skeleton", "In the Rain" ; "River of the Truth".

TALES WRITTEN FOR CHILDREN: "The King of the Dead Leaves" ; "Tio Conejo, Tia Zorra, and Tio Zope" ; "The Wolf's Point of View" ; "The Rock of Cuapa" ; "The Black Ship".

FORCES IN PLAY - RELIGION: "An Ingenious Complaint" ; "A Tale That Sounds Like a Story" ; "Mischief in the Vestry" ; "Claudio Rojas, Father of Sebastian Rojas (Extract I)" ; "Father Saltarino".

FORCES IN PLAY - DESTINY: "The Campesions Follow the Roads (Extract II)" ; "When the Time Comes" ; "August Mines" ; "Broken Horizons" ; "Claudio Rojas, Father of Sebastian Rojas (Extract II)" ; "Saturno".

FORCES IN PLAY - POLITICS: "El Gatillo" ; "The New Regime" ; "Orders" ; "The Center Fielder (a Synopsis)" ; "The Swede (a Synopsis)".

In more than one way the book is disappointing. The author attempts to spell out the uniqueness of the respective countries, but at times uses stories from one country as if they apply equally to other countries, and also doesn't acknowledge that particular stories are known regionally, not simply nationally. At times, he uses stories written for adults as if they were specifically intended for children. He also attempts to use the stories to emphasize the conflict between white and native peoples, but then resorts to specific stories which do not depict nor demonstrate the alleged distinction nor animosity in any obvious way.

While the author has located and arranged the stories, as offered in this book they are rendered as basic and primitive as possible. While this is probably what serious folklorist researchers want, it is, for the lack of a better word, uninteresting. Many of the stories, as found here, are remarkably short, with a few sentences or a single paragraph accounting for the vast majority of them. The extractions and synopses may or may not have been the result of careful selection and editing, but many of these versions are not always enough for one to gather the importance of the tale.

In the end, the author traced the tales back so far, and offers them in a form with so little flare and in such brief fashion, that they are perhaps of interest only to certain cultural anthropologists or folklorists. Not at all for the average reader. Many of the "telltales" are offered in longer story form as children's books, or appear in greatly embellished form in general literature accounts, though this is almost always in Spanish, and in books not readily available outside (or even inside) Central America.