At the beginning of March, I went to the beautiful city of Antigua, Guatemala to present a paper at the VIII International Congress of Central American Literature. Antigua is a city surrounded by volcanoes, and under the constant threat of earthquakes. It is also a city where the Spaniards established one of the oldest universities of the New World, the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Antigua exemplifies the constant struggle between man and nature. Here man has built and rebuilt churches, monasteries, colonial palaces and cathedrals only to see them crumble time after time. It seems as if Mother Earth does not want to hold them up.

From Antigua we flew to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, where I was able to touch the sculpture of Chac Mool, the God of Rain, and the inspiration for Carlos Fuentes' well known short story. The visit reminded me, once more, of how little we know about the pre colonial cultures of the Americas. I rediscovered during this visit that their level of sophistication is comparable to that of classical western cultures.

After the Conference, I was invited, by a group of Central American writers, to visit Lake Atitlan. On the way to the lake, a member of the group suggested that we stop at a small Mayan archeological sight. As we were exploring the sight, I noticed smoke coming from the top of the hill. We walked to the spot where a group of indigenous people were gathered by a tree, on their knees, with flowers and candles by them. I tried to speak to them, but they did not understand Spanish. Someone told me that it was a sacred place, and that the tree was their altar. I asked if I could touch the tree, and they allowed me. As I touched the altar, I was overcome by emotion; I could not stop crying. They surrounded me, held my hands, and began to say words that I could not understand, but made me feel at peace. I cannot explain why I felt as I did, but I know that I participated in a very special ceremony that day, and that I was in a very special place.

Two weeks later I went to San Antonio, Texas, for the LDEEU Conference. At this conference I chaired a session, and read a paper entitled "A Mythic Place Called Tenerife in the Poetry of Ana María Fagundo." This poet from the Canary Islands is considered to be one of the most important female voices in Spain today. Much has been written about her works, and when I started my research, I did not think that I would be able to add anything new to the already rich criticism about her. My paper, which will be published in the Conference Proceedings, explores how Fagundo's poetry is a search for the human essence and human origin. Through her verse, the poet attempts to comprehend the universe. As a "standing island", she presents an individual's determination to claim his own space in the eternity of time. Fagundo's place is her native island, Tenerife, with the Teide as her cosmic mountain, the center of her universe.

In June, I attended the XXXIII Congress of the International Institute of Iberian-American Literature, at the University of Salamanca, Spain. The paper which I presented here, "Meeting of Characters to Challenge Their Destiny" studies a novel by one of the greatest Mexican writers, Elena Garro, which will be published by Revista Iberoamericana (if I ever decide on the right conclusion). The highlight of the conference was not my paper, but really seeing, for the first time, the university where the conference was held. During one of my breaks I walked to the Aula where Fray Luis de Leon used to lecture almost five hundred years ago. I sat in that aula to think, to meditate, hoping that I would be able to create at least one verse that could contain the beauty of his poetry. When I attended a lecture given in the same room where Miguel de Unamuno used to teach, my mind wandered, trying to comprehend the man that had such a tragic sense of life.

In July I attended the Fiftieth International Congress of Americanistas in Warsaw, Poland. This is one of the largest conferences in Latin American Studies in the world. I was the coordinator for Central America, and read a paper entitled, "The Thematic Diversity in the Works of Central American Woman Writers".

The Congress in Poland was very revealing to me. I did not know how important Latin American Studies are all over the world. There were researchers from the four corners of the planet, from Australia to Israel, from Argentina to Canada, from South Africa to the Scandinavian countries. For an entire week, Warsaw became the stage for a Latin Fiesta. Each day there were performances from different countries in the central square, the restaurants offered Spanish specialties, and I even heard a girl singing "Cielito Lindo" in Polish.

As I said at the beginning, this was a very special year, a year of revelations. Even in Warsaw I saw human duality as I explored the city. A few blocks from the Fiesta, where people where dancing the cumbia and the merengue, there was a monument in honor of those that took the trains to the gas chambers during World War II.

After visiting the Jewish Cemetery, where the tombs meet the horizon, we went back to the hotel, changed, and went to continue with our fiesta. For some reason, I feel like I made a full circle, and this moment in Poland took me back to the beginning, to the Mayan altar in Guatemala.

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