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Reviews from readers: "We had been sitting in the living room in front of a fire -- my spouse was in his reading chair and I was on the couch. I began to read Central America in My Heart. First one poem, then another. By the end of the second poem, he had come over to me with tears in his eyes and he lay down with me as I continued to read aloud this lovely 'sea music' written with such eloquence. We held each other and were swept away by the beauty, the sensuality, the soul of Oscar's words, his love for you and your children, and for life. We didn't read all of it. Such profound art cannot be absorbed, nor should it be, at one sitting. We were so moved by the honey of Oscar's words that all we could do was cry and hold each other and feel grateful for our love and for having been priviledged to be reading this lovely poetry. The sacredness of this experience for us both was simply inexpressible.

Where are most of the rural poor located in Central and Latin America and why are they there? This book argues that hillside regions account for a large proportion of the rural poor in Latin America. These populations have been displaced from productive farmlands by intensive agricultural development. Thus, projects that simply focus on agricultural development will not necessarily lead to poverty reduction, but may sometimes increase poverty if displaced rural populations are not taken into account. A wide array of policies, technologies and institutional arrangements are presented to provide solutions to the problem of rural poverty in Latin America.

A high percentage of lands in Latin America is characterized by problems of erosion, deforestation, sedimentation and loss of biodiversity. To face these problems, governments, NGOs and international agencies have traditionally recurred to the implementation of soil conservation practices, reforestation and the establishment of protected areas. Meanwhile, notable changes in land use and production practices which do not depend primarily on the implementation of any particular project have gone unnoticed, but have had a favorable and substantial impact over natural resources. If policies had concentrated on establishing the appropriate conditions to stimulate this type of spontaneous change, perhaps policies would have had more success than those which were actually implemented.

This book discusses the interactions of agricultural and economic growth in lieu of poverty reduction and environmental protection programs. There are tradeoffs when programs with different objectives are implemented and solutions must incorporate a balance between competing goals. To illustrate these development strategies, three cases of land use intensification are presented: horticultural production in the Guatemalan highlands, coffee production in Honduras, the “farmer to farmer” movement in Nicaragua. These case studies are compared to two cases of land use extensification: depopulation in the north and east of El Salvador as a result of the Civil War and the abandonment of pastures in Costa Rica to illustrate the interactions between policies and de facto actions by the local populations.

The title for this book “Loved in the Beloved Transformed” alludes to the mystical poetry “Dark Night of the Soul” by Saint John of the Cross. According to literary critic Manuel Duran, in this book “the poet achieves to beautifully communicate what is inexpressible, he moves towards distant horizons in mystical ships like Rimbaud, and arrives at eternal and unexplored sites, on secret shores where only mystery resides.  Poetry like an adventurous danger, poetry that pursues and reaches the unattainable, a poetry of vertigo that tries to communicate to us --and achieves-- what the poet pursues and reaches as a man, as an enamored man, as a man for whom love is not only a victory, but a passage towards the knowledge of the absolute, towards, “the incomprehensible sensation of eternity on my lips”.

Hurricane Mitch and the Livelihoods of the Rural Poor in Honduras. This paper assesses the extent to which Hurricane Mitch affected the rural poor in Honduras and whether national and international aid efforts succeeded in providing relief. One of every two surveyed households incurred medical, housing, or other costs due to Mitch. One in three suffered from a loss in crops. One in five lost assets. One in ten lost wages or business income. Relief was most often provided by churches and NGOs. It consisted mainly of food, clothing, and medicine, and it amounted to less than one tenth of the losses incurred by households.

In the area of international development, Oscar’s work focused on poverty alleviation programs to improve education, combat malnutrition, reduce infant mortality, and empower women in Africa, Latin America and Asia. These programs include the largest welfare program in Honduras, the social network program in Nicaragua and interventions in African countries to increase women's incomes and food security, intergenerational transfers, property rights, and land reform. He has also worked extensively in environmental research on projects aimed at providing resources for farmers who live in less favored lands such as hillsides prone to degradation, deforestation and desertification, to give rural populations the tools needed to encourage the sustainable use of natural resources. He is currently working on issues related to reconstruction in the Gulf Coast after hurricane Katrina.