Political ornithology

Press, 30 April 1988, Page 24

Political ornithology

Bird of Lite Bird of Death. A Central American Journey. By Jonathan Evan Maslow. Penguin, 1987. 197 pp. $14.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by John \Wilson)

Ornithology took Jonathan Evan Maslow to Guatemala, but he came away from the country’) with much more to report than a sighting of the rare, elusive bird he went to see. “Bird of Life Bird of Death” is an “essay in political ornithology,” as he puckishly calls it and is, indeed, a travelogue quite unlike any other I have read. Maslow is a naturalist who is sensitive to the history of the country into which he ventures for a naturalist’s purposes, and disturbed by its social and political condition. His travelling around a | country’ of intriguing geography and history in search of an extraordinary’ bird has given rise to a matter-of-fact, but intensely interesting and disturbing book. j | I The book is constructed ' round a dichotomy that is frightening, but also illuminating about ) Guatemala; between the zopilotes (a) vulture) that congregate round slaughter houses or wherever there is rottihg flesh, and the quetzal, a symbol of liberty, sacred to the Maya, found on hr in cloud

orest, a habitat which is rapidly being destroyed. Maslow eventualy finds the quetzal, jut throughout the book he exploits, with careful control, the irony that the rational symbol of Guatemala is a rird which represents liberty, for Guatemala is, by Maslow’s reckoning, me of the most repressive nations on earth and doing nothing to save the bird from almost inevitable extinction.. The book is perceptively written — the horror of life in Guatemala today is described, but not belaboured; and the strain of bitter humour that helps make the horror endurable ) is captured accurately. The book is often amusing to read, even while [the subject is the impending extinction of a beautiful bird and the dark travail of a lost society. But the humour evaporates entirely with a chilling last image of vultures in a brooding grey sky. The vultures will certainly live on while the quetzal, almost as certainly, will soon be extinct, but the "coming storm" presents a prospect as bleak for the country which adopted the bird as its symbol. The way in which, throughout the book, Maslow weaves the fate of the quetzal in with the fate of human society in Guatemala makes this a book of extraordinary