The San Salvador Earthquake - A Survivor's Narrative

Without a doubt a first for many, this story that the Colombian writer Porfirio Barba Jacob wrote as a result of his harrowing experience during the 1917 earthquake in the Salvadoran capital, is once again valid. The poet began it "when the terror still lasted," in his words, and, as a good interpreter of reality, he articulated the facets of the event in a moving report. Germán Arciniegas, in a note reproduced in this edition, affirms that the story "as a picture of its time is a masterpiece." And the Salvadoran writer David Escobar Galindo points out that the catastrophe has "no more eloquent mirror than the fiery prose of that brilliant vagabond." Now that earthquakes of unusual violence have devastated this country again, this edition is a tribute to the dignity and temple of its people and a concrete gesture of solidarity.