Of Inca descent, the author describes his childhood in the Amazon jungle and his yearning to come to the United States. Through adversity, with tenacity, the young Peruvian immigrant becomes a doctor of medicine. He lives the American way of life, but his past haunts him.
In his medical missions to desolate areas of his youth, the author reflects on the lives and culture of indians whose condition is worse than it was five hundred years ago.
From the Publisher
The author, a South American of Inca descent, tries to come to the essence of the opression of ancient and present-day native american: South, Central and North American Indians. His is the journey of a humble mestizo who comes to North America in Adolescence and through tenacity and perseverance becomes a doctor of medicine. But although grateful for the bounty of his adoptive country, he cannot shake his past. Having witnessed the hopelessness of his people throughout his life, with the renewed spirit of an American he courageously testifies to the holocaust of the original American inhabitants and exposes their present predicament in all the Americas, to raise public awareness of this bypassed cultures.
The author hopes that his heartfelt effort will give impetus to just-minded people everywhere these forgotten holocaust more openly and more vigorously -- to make the world aware of the injustices of the Indians' past and to seek remedies of the injustices of the present. The answer lies partly in the Indians themselves; for history has shown that the oppressed must break their own chains, because the weight of them is on their souls. Only they can shatter the links and free their spirits.
this testimonial narrative sets out to portray the feelings of most indian descendants and mestizos. Unlike all other well-intentioned medical missionaries who can relish their medical feats, the author cannot boast of medical miracles; on his medical missions he asks, rather, why, why! What happened here? The author focuses on the pathetic medical picture and misery of Indians, mestizos, and blacks, primarily to raise conciousness so that some day such aberrations are erased from the face of the earth and that medical missions such as his become a thing of the past, for it truly harms the spirit to see the desolation of one's own kind.
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