I have read a few random Chilean novels that typically cast a seminomadic introverted misanthropic Japanese somewhere in their bizarre tales of marginal life on the Andes foothills. I do remember most vividly when I was in Paraguay for the ’99 Copa America meeting a random Korean in the stands who happened to go to high school a few miles up the road from my college, Davidson, in NC. He told me all about Reverend Moon and his large religious group that the goverment had to pass a law against because they were buying so much forest on the Paraguayan-Brasil border that both countries thought they might set up an autonomous evangelical Korean state. The young man I met said that when Koreans speak Spanish they sound just like Paraguayans (they carry the same Guaraní accent), and that’s why so many settled there.

Anyway, the Copa America was amazing that year and yielded me lots of stories, including waking up on bench outside the airport in Asunción and seeing the entire Colombian national team in matching warm-ups gathered around me. I asked René Higuita if he was really René Higuita and he took my hat and signed it René Higuita and smiled without saying anything—as if there was another member of the Colombian national team with hair like his! Well, that was a fun digression.

Keep up the good work, John.