New book delivers ground-level perspectives on the Bolivarian Revolution—in candid, concise, and inspiring narratives.

From McSweeney’s Voice of Witness series, Underground America collects firsthand accounts from immigrants who have come in pursuit of a dream and found a complex, disturbing reality.

Belen is a barrio of Iquitos, Peru where the city spills out onto the surface of the Amazon River.

While writing Lost City Radio, Alarcón kept a map of Lima handy which he’d drawn over in marker, reinterpreting the city and renaming its districts.

Travel notes from Iquitos, Peru

The most disturbing aspect of Peru’s Museum of the Inquisition is that the crimes of the Catholic Church during the Inquisition served as a prototype for State terror practiced on a much more massive scale in our own time.

Travel notes from Lima, Peru

Travel notes from my stay in Barranco, a neighborhood in Lima, Peru

A letter to Nancy Pelosi about some issues in Peru that came to my attention when I was in Cuzco (reading, in bed, with altitude sickness).

Travel notes from Cuzco, Peru