ocumo

Güelcom to Ocumo, a city like any other on this side of the New World, somewhere, anywhere (everywhere!?) between Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego.

This town has more liquor stores than pharmacies. Corruption, power outages and hyperinflation don’t surprise anyone anymore. But Mayor Sonia Elena Ortega says things will change if she wins the coming presidential election. People have heard the same promises before. Still, they’ll dare hope for a savior once more. She can’t be much worse than the incumbent presidente, a snob nicknamed EMLU who runs the country as his own private hacienda.

Sonia Elena’s campaign is a longshot and for a chance to win she needs all the support she can get, from the media, the C.I.A. and, of course, a miracle.

Ocumo: A Latin American Novel gives a take on the region’s complexities through the perspectives of a diverse group of characters, including a Black live-in maid, an anti-establishment entrepreneur and an ex-prostitute turned news reporter.

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"For readers who enjoy political satire that works through voice and street-level texture rather than authorial commentary - readers of the Latin American 'dictator novel' tradition looking for something contemporary, media-literate, and unafraid of vulgarity and humour in the same sentence as tragedy - Ocumo has a lot to offer. It’s a debut with a real ear for how people actually talk politics: in bodegas, in bars, in the back of a TV studio, half in jest and half in earnest, which is, Páez seems to suggest, exactly how a country like his gets the leaders it gets."

- The Madrid Review