ABSTRACT
From his parish in Yoro in the coffee regions of Honduras, my uncle used to write me letters. Unfolded in the cramped upstairs library of my parents' home, they were usually short, colored with Spanish words, and filled with anecdotes of travelling by mule. There was only time for a glance at them between football practice and piano lessons, but they were later stamped in my head by a glossy photo of a man in circular-framed glasses, wearing a white cassock, with his hand on a wooden worktable. The letters belonged to the library and existed only there, filled as they were with burros, straw hats, and Carlo Dulce's sculpture of the head of Christ. What I took with me outside the library was the feel and smell of the rice paper coverings, with their faint imprints from a cheap typewriter, and I held them in my hands, not caring very much about Yoro, but wanting to know more about the woven-straw figurines of campesinos and the rough woodcuts of cactuses and vines that accompanied the letters as a reward for writing back.
