Earl Shorris is the editor, with Miguel León-Portilla, of In the
Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican
Literature–Pre-Columbian to the Present (Norton). He has received the
National Humanities Medal and the Condecoración de la Orden del
Aguila Azteca.
If many strangers die all at once, as in the tragedy of the tsunami or the Rwanda massacre or a war like the one in Iraq, it is a moral problem, to be dealt with through politics or philosophy.