The revered Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano wrote these words a few months after the events he alludes to: On May 10, 2013, 30 years after the crimes were committed, former dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil population and sentenced to 80 years is prison.

“We need to understand their place in history," says writer M. Evelina Galang. "We need to make sure it never happens again."

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes could not imagine how correct he was when he said that the challenge a Latin American writer faced was to produce fiction that was more extraordinary than reality itself.

Uruguayan democracy will be incomplete and at odds with fundamental and non-derogable international human rights law until Uruguay confronts its past honestly, openly, and without repression.