This bilingual edition of Popocatepetl's Reverie: The Paradox of War is a provocative allegorical tale written for English and Spanish readers, masterfully illustrated by Jose Luis Pescador, one of Mexico's outstanding visual artists and interpreters of Aztec culture, and skillfully translated by Rodrigo Alvarez Hernandez, who provides readers a useful glossary of key Mesoamerican terms. This attractive bilingual edition has been innovatively designed by Salvador Martinez. In this tale, we are transported into a pre-Hispanic world defined by war and militarism. The mythic Popocatepetl is portrayed as a young, elite, jaguar warrior mandated to postpone his intended marriage to Iztaccihuatl by the governing priesthood of the Mexicas. Courageous and dutiful, he complies and leads a military expedition to the Oaxacan provinces in order to suppress the rebellious Zapotecs and capture their warriors as customary for human sacrifices intended to appease Tlaloc, the God of Rain.

Popocatepetl will never fully abandon his suspicion of the belligerent strategies of the autocratic priests. Indeed, the Mexicas's best laid plans go awry when the obstinate rebels do not comply with their accepted rules of war, stubbornly refusing to be captured. The Zapotec rebels valiantly fight to their death, and Popocatepetl's expected victory on the battlefield is finally reduced to an inglorious slaughter. An unexpected rainfall follows the travesty on the battlefield, and Popocatepetl's Reverie becomes a tragic story of cosmic irony.

The great military strategist Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, who experienced first hand the Napoleonic Wars, would have readily understood how Popocatepetl's Reverie illustrates more broadly the paradoxical futility of war, which can easily be steered off its course when subverted by the unexpected or by the chance event. One never knows what will actually happen when one goes to war, however powerful or calculating one is. Thus, there is no predictable endgame to war.

Interested readers, if they have not already, might familiarize themselves with the Nahua origin myth personifying Mexico's twin volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, which exists in several popular versions. This fantastic and touching love story explains how the twin volcanoes, which are today visible from atop the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico City, came to be.

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En esta cuenta alegorica dirigida a un publico hispanoparlante y angloparlante, El Ensueno de Popocatepetl, la pluma de Ruben Quintero se esgrime desde la ficcion, y nos transporta al Mexico prehispanico para explorar los fenomenos de la guerra y el militarismo a traves de la historia de Popocatepetl. El cuento sigue a este joven guerrero de elite, cuyo matrimonio se ve pospuesto por su obligacion de emprender una expedicion militar a territorios zapotecos pero jamas termina de fiarse del todo de las intenciones belicosas de los sacerdotes aztecas. Es una narrativa que es a la vez estetica y potente, el autor nos refleja la dura experiencia de vida de los sobrevivientes de guerra, esa que es universal a todas las epocas y culturas donde se han desatado estos tragicos fenomenos.