Download or read book I Rigoberta Mench written by Rigoberta Menchú and published by Verso. This book was released on 1984 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Her story reflects the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America today. Rigoberta suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechist work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. The anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, herself a Latin American woman, conducted a series of interviews with Rigoberta Menchu. The result is a book unique in contemporary literature which records the detail of everyday Indian life. Rigoberta’s gift for striking expression vividly conveys both the religious and superstitious beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas. Above all, these pages are illuminated by the enduring courage and passionate sense of justice of an extraordinary woman.
Download or read book Guatemalan Indians and the State written by Carol A. Smith and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence in Central America, especially when directed against Indian populations, is not a new phenomenon. Yet few studies of the region have focused specifi cally on the relationship between Indians and the state, a relationship that may hold the key to understanding these conflicts. In this volume, noted historians and anthropologists pool their considerable expertise to analyze the situation in Guatemala, working from the premise that the Indian/state relationship is the single most important determinant of Guatemala’s distinctive history and social order. In chapters by such respected scholars as Robert Cormack, Ralph Lee Woodward, Christopher Lutz, Richard Adams, and Arturo Arias, the history of Indian activism in Guatemala unfolds. The authors reveal that the insistence of Guatemalan Indians on maintaining their distinctive cultural practices and traditions in the face of state attempts to eradicate them appears to have fostered the development of an increasingly oppressive state. This historical insight into the forces that shaped modern Guatemala provides a context for understanding the extraordinary level of violence that enveloped the Indians of the western highlands in the 1980s, the continued massive assault on traditional religious and secular culture, the movement from a militarized state to a militarized civil society, and the major transformations taking place in Guatemala’s traditional export-oriented economy. In this sense, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 provides a revisionist social history of Guatemala.
Download or read book Campesino written by Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán and published by Tucson, Ariz. : University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Centered upon contemporary daily life in a small village on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, Campesino illustrates the complex interrelationships among local, national, and international events. Written in a simple and readable style, the diary will be valuable not only for anthropology students, but for anyone interested in contemporary Guatemala and Central America."--Choice "One of the most interesting books written about the Maya Indians of Guatemala, this fascinating work is unique in the sense that it is written in the form of a biography and presents the views of how all these conflicts affects those at the bottom. . . . This is a book that anyone interested in ethnic studies and in humanity in general should read."--Explorations in Sights and Sounds "This volume is an instant classic."--Latin America in Books "Prof. Sexton is to be highly recommended of another excellent work which will be very useful to scholars and lay readers truly interested in the life and struggles of the Indian peoples."--Latin American Indian Literatures Journal
Download or read book Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity written by Brigittine M. French and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged context of contemporary Guatemala. Beginning with an examination of the Ònationalist projectÓ that has been ongoing since the end of the colonial period, French interrogates the ÒGuatemalan/indigenous binary.Ó In Guatemala, ÒLadinoÓ refers to the Spanish-speaking minority of the population, who are of mixed European, usually Spanish, and indigenous ancestry; ÒIndianÓ is understood to mean the majority of GuatemalaÕs population, who speak one of the twenty-one languages in the Maya linguistic groups of the country, although levels of bilingualism are very high among most Maya communities. As French shows, the Guatemalan state has actively promoted a racialized, essentialized notion of ÒIndiansÓ as an undifferentiated, inherently inferior group that has stood stubbornly in the way of national progress, unity, and developmentÑwhich are, implicitly, the goals of Òtrue GuatemalansÓ (that is, Ladinos). French shows, with useful examples, how constructions of language and collective identity are in fact strategies undertaken to serve the goals of institutions (including the government, the military, the educational system, and the church) and social actors (including linguists, scholars, and activists). But by incorporating in-depth fieldwork with groups that speak Kaqchikel and KÕicheÕ along with analyses of Spanish-language discourses, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity also shows how some individuals in urban, bilingual Indian communities have disrupted the essentializing projects of multiculturalism. And by focusing on ideologies of language, the author is able to explicitly link linguistic forms and functions with larger issues of consciousness, gender politics, social positions, and the forging of hegemonic power relations.
Download or read book Guatemalan Journey written by Stephen Connely Benz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala draws some half million tourists each year, whose brief visits to the ruins of ancient Maya cities and contemporary highland Maya villages may give them only a partial and folkloric understanding of Guatemalan society. In this vividly written travel narrative, Stephen Connely Benz explores the Guatemala that casual travelers miss, using his encounters with ordinary Guatemalans at the mall, on the streets, at soccer games, and even at the funeral of massacre victims to illuminate the social reality of Guatemala today. The book opens with an extended section on the capital, Guatemala City, and then moves out to the more remote parts of the country where the Guatemalan Indians predominate. Benz offers us a series of intelligent and sometimes humorous perspectives on Guatemala's political history and the role of the military, the country's environmental degradation, the influence of foreign missionaries, and especially the impact of the United States on Guatemala, from governmental programs to fast food franchises.
Download or read book Harvest of Violence written by Robert M. Carmack and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the effects of the ongoing civil war in Guatemala.
Download or read book Handbook of Middle American Indians Volumes 2 and 3 written by Gordon R. Willey and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1965-01-01 with total page 1099 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica comprises the second and third volumes in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, published in cooperation with the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University under the general editorship of Robert Wauchope (1909–1979). The volume editor is Gordon R. Willey (1913–2002), Bowditch Professor of Mexican and Central American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Volumes Two and Three, with more than 700 illustrations, contain archaeological syntheses, followed by special articles on settlement patterns, architecture, funerary practices, ceramics, artifacts, sculpture, painting, figurines, jades, textiles, minor arts, calendars, hieroglyphic writing, and native societies at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Guatemala highlands, the southern Maya lowlands, the Pacific coast of Guatemala, Chiapas, the upper Grijalva basin, southern Veracruz, Tabasco, and Oaxaca. The Handbook of Middle American Indians was assembled and edited at the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University with the assistance of grants from the National Science Foundation and under the sponsorship of the National Research Council Committee on Latin American Anthropology.
Download or read book Men of Maize written by Miguel Ángel Asturias and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel whose time has come: the Nobel Prize–winning author of Mr. President’s visionary epic of ecological devastation, capitalist exploitation, and Indigenous wisdom, now available again for its 75th anniversary with a new introduction and with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar A Penguin Classic Deep in the mountain forests of Guatemala, a community of Indigenous Mayans—the "men of maize"—serves as stewards to sacred corn crops. When profiteering outsiders encroach on their territory and threaten to abuse the fertile land, they enter a bloody struggle to protect their way of life. Blurring the lines between history and mythology, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias's lush, dream-like work offers a prescient warning against the loss of ancestral wisdom and the environmental destruction set in motion by colonial oppression and capitalist greed. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book Strange Lands and Different Peoples written by W. George Lovell and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala emerged from the clash between Spanish invaders and Maya cultures that began five centuries ago. The conquest of these “rich and strange lands,” as Hernán Cortés called them, and their “many different peoples” was brutal and prolonged. “Strange Lands and Different Peoples” examines the myriad ramifications of Spanish intrusion, especially Maya resistance to it and the changes that took place in native life because of it. The studies assembled here, focusing on the first century of colonial rule (1524–1624), discuss issues of conquest and resistance, settlement and colonization, labor and tribute, and Maya survival in the wake of Spanish invasion. The authors reappraise the complex relationship between Spaniards and Indians, which was marked from the outset by mutual feelings of resentment and mistrust. While acknowledging the pivotal role of native agency, the authors also document the excesses of Spanish exploitation and the devastating impact of epidemic disease. Drawing on research findings in Spanish and Guatemalan archives, they offer fresh insight into the Kaqchikel Maya uprising of 1524, showing that despite strategic resistance, colonization imposed a burden on the indigenous population more onerous than previously thought. Guatemala remains a deeply divided and unjust society, a country whose current condition can be understood only in light of the colonial experiences that forged it. Affording readers a critical perspective on how Guatemala came to be, “Strange Lands and Different Peoples” shows the events of the past to have enduring contemporary relevance.
Download or read book Invading Guatemala written by Matthew Restall and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invasions of Guatemala -- Pedro de Alvarado's letters to Hernando Cortes, 1524 -- Other Spanish accounts -- Nahua accounts -- Maya accounts
Download or read book The Blood of Guatemala written by Greg Grandin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.
Download or read book I Rigoberta Menchu written by Rigoberta Menchu and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Nobel Peace Prize winner reflects on poverty, injustice, and the struggles of Mayan communities in Guatemala, offering “a fascinating and moving description of the culture of an entire people” (The Times) Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. Menchú vividly conveys the traditional beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas. Above all, these pages are illuminated by the enduring courage and passionate sense of justice of an extraordinary woman.
Download or read book Mayas in Postwar Guatemala written by Walter E. Little and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2009-05-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like the original Harvest of Violence, published in 1988, this volume reveals how the contemporary Mayas contend with crime, political violence, internal community power struggles, and the broader impact of transnational economic and political policies in Guatemala. However, this work, informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mayan communities and commitment to conducting research in Mayan languages, places current anthropological analyses in relation to Mayan political activism and key Mayan intellectuals’ research and criticism. Illustrating specifically how Mayas in this post-war period conceive of their social and political place in Guatemala, Mayas working in factories, fields, and markets, and participating in local, community-level politics provide critiques of the government, the Maya movement, and the general state of insecurity and social and political violence that they continue to face on a daily basis. Their critical assessments and efforts to improve political, social, and economic conditions illustrate their resiliency and positive, nonviolent solutions to Guatemala’s ongoing problems that deserve serious consideration by Guatemalan and US policy makers, international non-government organizations, peace activists, and even academics studying politics, social agency, and the survival of indigenous people. CONTRIBUTORS Abigail E. Adams / José Oscar Barrera Nuñez / Peter Benson / Barbara Bocek / Jennifer L. Burrell / Robert M. Carmack / Monica DeHart / Edward F. Fischer / Liliana Goldín / Walter E. Little / Judith M. Maxwell / J. Jailey Philpot-Munson / Brenda Rosenbaum / Timothy J. Smith / David Stoll
Download or read book Ignacio written by Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The news says that guerillas captured two members of a patrol during the night. . . . [B]ut they didn't kill them. They only punished them by cutting off both of their ears. When they were found the following day, they were taken to the hospital. They are living now, but they don't hear because they don't have ears to collect the sounds of words. It is strange but true that in this town there are two men without ears." This is the story of Ignacio Bizarro Ujpan, a Maya Indian who resides on the shores of beautiful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The story describes Ignacio's life, town, and country from 1983 to 1987, a period during which there had been declining civil instability (but increased military surveillance) and a return to civilian governance both locally and nationally. James D. Sexton provides a background to Ignacio's story and an epilogue summarizing local and national events from the end of the diary to 1991. This is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Son of Tecun Uman, which documented Ignacio's life from his birth in 1941 until 1977, and Campesino, which covered the years from 1977 to 1983. This final volume completes the story that covers three periods in Ignacio's life as well as three eras of dynamic social history in Guatemala. Nothing else in the literature is comparable in cultural richness, depth, and scope. Viewing Central America from the eyes of a peasant illuminates the complex problems of the region: the nature of the social, personal, economic, medical, and religious matters as well as the political issues related to the great masses of Latin America's poor. Ignacio's perspective, "from the bottom up," from a person occupying a position in two worlds - indigenous and Ladino - makes him uniquely qualified to describe life in rural Guatemala. The episodes in this volume include information not found in the first two volumes, such as Tzutuhil Maya customs and beliefs, the spirit world, shamanism, dreams and their interpretation, curing, destiny, celebrations, proverbs, and local and national conflict resolution. New dominant themes also emerge in Ignacio: the threat to religious beliefs and practices posed by outside interests, such as reformed Catholicism and Protestantism; the impact of a new secondary school; intercultural and intracultural conflict in the form of rivalry between the people of San Jose and San Martin; an attempt to return to democratization at both the local and national levels after three decades of military presidents and five years of mayors appointed by military governors; the problems associated with the civil defense patrols and military control of the countryside; and the attempts to hold accountable offenders against human rights. Ignacio: The Diary of a Maya Indian of Guatemala will be of particular value to students and scholars in anthropology and Latin American studies, and to all readers interested in Central America.
Download or read book Health Care in Maya Guatemala written by John Palmer Hawkins and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines medical systems and institutions in three K'iche' Maya communities to reveal the conflicts between indigenous medical care and the Guatemalan biomedical system. It shows the necessity of cultural understanding if poor people are to have access to medicine that combines the best of both local tradition and international biomedicine.
Download or read book PENNY CAPITALISM written by SOL. TAX and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Maya Diaspora written by James Loucky and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2000-10 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Maya refugees found new lives in strange lands.
