Margaret Hebblethwaite has lived in Santa Maria de Fe, Misiones, Paraguay since 2000, when she moved to this small rural town - initially for a year -- to deepen her knowledge of Latin American base communities, because of the work she was doing on liberation theology. Eighteen years on, she is still there, but has spent less time on writing than she anticipated, as her time has been consumed by a number of community projects. She founded and runs the charity Santa Maria Education Fund (www.santamariadefe.org); works with the sewing co-operative Taller de Hermandad to help them with their marketing (www.santamariadefe.com); and founded the Santa Maria Hotel, which is run as a community project with all profits going to the local people (www.santamariahotel.org). This is the first book she has written since her move to Paraguay, but with the recent employment of a local field officer for the charity, she anticipates being able to write more over the coming years.
