Reseña del libro "The Peace Corps: A Family's Response to JFK's Call (en Inglés)"
This book is a US Peace Corps, country director, family memoir of service in Peru and Uruguay in the midst of internal and external revolutions, and attempted coups, during the 1968-1972 world-wide "conflagration".The late 1960s were difficult times for freedom loving people of conscience in the United States and around the world. The nightly news brought us shocking images of a world on fire. Background theme music for the 1960s was Bob Dylan's inspirational, '60s protest song, "The Times They Are a-changing." As I look back to 50 years ago, this music best set the stage for our trek as Peace Corps country director in Peru and Uruguay during the three revolutions, definitely a life-changing, Yin and Yang saga. Those years encompassed some of the best years of our lives, at times scariest and yet, contrapuntal. There were equal moments of unimaginable beauty, pleasure, hilarity and soul enriching events and lessons.In 1972, near the end of my second and final stint in Peru, after our year and a half in Uruguay, I was seated at an outdoor cantina in Iquitos, Peru, 2600 miles up the Amazon, having a beer. It was after a late night spent listening to and watching Volunteers providing in-teacher training in "New Math" as requested by the Ministry of Education. I pondered questions such as: What, after all, is the Peace Corps doing here? Why is it worthwhile to Peru? What is it exactly (with specific references) that volunteers do? Why is it worthwhile to Peru and also for us in the USA?As a family we were positively drawn to the actions and words of President John F. Kennedy and his family. Many of us thought of President Kennedy's Peace Corps proposal. Friends had accepted the challenge: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!" In 1968 we accepted the challenge, perhaps our best lifetime decision. This book is the story of our Peace Corps years.
