Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture.

Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie that will have drastic consequences for the entire region: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration, determined to protect American commercial interests in Central America, that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. HARSH TIMES is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, echoes of which still reverberate today.