We Are Not Made of Sugar: A Childhood Memoir from Colombia - Paperback

by Andrei Gómez Suárez (Author)

We Are Not Made of Sugar is a tale about growing up in the eighties and nineties during Colombia's civil war. The narrator's parents are young university lecturers and political activists working for equality and peace in Pasto, a small city in the southern province of Nariño bordering Ecuador, overlooked by the Galeras Volcano, which today is one of the most violent regions in a country bitterly divided by six decades of war.

The boy becomes increasingly aware how unusual his parents are, who are trying to bring up their children true to their communist ideals, amid the constant fear of violence, as one by one their friends and leaders, members of the leftist Patriotic Union Party, are assassinated. Yet meanwhile, the boy's days play out between school, friendships and girlfriends, and he learns about the growing divisions in the country reflected in divisions between his parents' families: on one side upwardly mobile shopkeepers in Bogotá, on the other, rural campesinos who breed guinea pigs, the traditional cuisine of Pasto.

As violence advances through Colombia, the boy is torn between believing in the communist cause his parents champion, and rejecting all things political, as he becomes a teenager and tries to work out who he and what he hopes for, in this country of constant danger and uncertainty.