Suma Paz: La utopía de Mario Calderón y Elisa Alvarado

Sánchez-Blake's literary chronicle, Suma Paz, reconstructs a tragic event (the murder of environmentalists Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado) in addition to recovering a significant episode in the history of Colombian environmentalism: the creation of the Suma-Paz Natural Reserve in which both Mario and Elsa participated at the end of the last century. The collective associated with the Reserve articulated a seminal reflection on the relationship between nature, armed conflict, and “peace” that, decades later, would resonate within the context opened by the 2016 Peace Agreement in Colombia.

The chronicle can be read as a writing of memory, obliquely testimonial, that preserves a legacy of commitment—an inheritance offered to be reclaimed. Not merely in the sense of something passively transmitted but as an open call, a task yet to come, imposed by the weight of the legacy it carries.

— Alejandro Quin, (Revista Estudios al Patio)- Director of the Center of Latin American Studies, University of Utah.