Download or read book Introduction to Guatemala written by Gilad James, PhD and published by Gilad James Mystery School. This book was released on with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala, a country located in Central America, is known for its lush rainforests, stunning beaches, and breathtaking Mayan ruins. It is bordered by Mexico to the north and west, Belize to the northeast, Honduras to the east, and El Salvador to the southeast. The countryâs capital is Guatemala City, which is also its largest city. With a population of over 18 million people, Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America. Guatemalaâs history is filled with a mix of Spanish colonialism, Mayan culture, and political unrest. It gained independence from Spain in 1821 and has gone through several periods of political upheaval, including a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Despite its struggles, Guatemala has a rich cultural heritage, which includes the ruins of ancient Mayan cities such as Tikal and Copán. It also has a vibrant indigenous culture, with over 20 languages spoken by various indigenous groups throughout the country.
Download or read book The Guatemala Reader written by Greg Grandin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVAn interdisciplinary anthology on the largest, most populous nation in Central America, covering Guatemalan history, culture, literature and politics and containing many primary sources not previously published in English./div
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 Guatemala Culture Smart written by Lisa Vaughn and published by Kuperard. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships. Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include * customs, values, and traditions * historical, religious, and political background * life at home * leisure, social, and cultural life * eating and drinking * do's, don'ts, and taboos * business practices * communication, spoken and unspoken
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 Secret History Second Edition written by Nick Cullather and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this book, published in 1999, was well-received, but interest in it has surged in recent years. It chronicles an early example of “regime change” that was based on a flawed interpretation of intelligence and proclaimed a success even as its mistakes were becoming clear. Since 1999, a number of documents relating to the CIA’s activities in Guatemala have been declassified, and a truth and reconciliation process has unearthed other reports, speeches, and writings that shed more light on the role of the United States. For this edition, the author has selected and annotated twenty-one documents for a new documentary Appendix, including President Clinton’s apology to the people of Guatemala.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Guatemala written by Michael F. Fry and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala holds a dual image. For more than a century, travel writers, explorers, and movie producers have painted the country as an exotic place, a land of tropical forests and the home of the ancient and living Maya. Archaeological ruins, abandoned a millennium ago, have enhanced their depictions with a wistful, dreamy aura of bygone days of pagan splendor, and the unique colorful textiles of rural Maya today connect nostalgically with that distant past. Inspired by that vision, fascinated tourists have flocked there for the past six decades. Most have not been disappointed; it is a genuine facet of a complex land. Guatemala is also portrayed as a poor, violent, repressive country ruled by greedy tyrants with the support of an entrenched elite—the archetypal banana republic. The media and scholarly studies consistently confirm that fair assessment of the social, political, and economic reality. The Historical Dictionary of Guatemala contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Guatemala.
Download or read book Culture and Customs of Guatemala written by Maureen E. Shea and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2001 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn about the people of Guatemala and their culture.
Download or read book Tecpan Guatemala written by Edward F Fischer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the indigenous people of Tecpan Guatemala, a predominantly Kaqchikel Maya town in the Guatemalan highlands. It seeks to build on the traditional strengths of ethnography while rejecting overly romantic and isolationist tendencies in the genre.
Download or read book Rural Guatemala 1760 1940 written by David McCreery and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive study of rural development in Guatemala first examines the nature of rural society in the late colonial period and early decades of independence, and then details the massive and enduring changes caused by the spread of large-scale coffee production after the mid-nineteenth century. In the process, it also contributes to a number of important debates in Latin American studies and the theoretical literature of development: the structure of land tenure, the effects of the shift to export agriculure, the exploitation of indigenous populations, the forms of peasant resistance, and the role of state institutions in the politics of development. The book is in two parts. Part I describes rural life and economy in Guatemala through the cochineal boom of the 1850's. Part II shows how coffee dramatically changed the economy of Guatemala.
Download or read book This City Belongs to You written by Heather Vrana and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1944 and 1996, Guatemala experienced a revolution, counterrevolution, and civil war. Playing a pivotal role within these national shifts were students from Guatemala’s only public university, the University of San Carlos (USAC). USAC students served in, advised, protested, and were later persecuted by the government, all while crafting a powerful student nationalism. In no other moment in Guatemalan history has the relationship between the university and the state been so mutable, yet so mutually formative. By showing how the very notion of the middle class in Guatemala emerged from these student movements, this book places an often-marginalized region and period at the center of histories of class, protest, and youth movements and provides an entirely new way to think about the role of universities and student bodies in the formation of liberal democracy throughout Latin America.
Download or read book Paper Cadavers written by Kirsten Weld and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Paper Cadavers, an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960–1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America. The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers, Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.
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.
Download or read book Guatemala s Claim to Belize written by Assad Shoman and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-03 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this timely book, Assad Shoman applies his forensic skills to explain the Guatemalan claim to Belize. Uncovering material long-forgotten or previously unknown, Shoman helps us understand the origins of the claim and why it has proven so difficult to resolve through negotiation. It is essential reading for anyone interested in this dispute and it will figure prominently in all discussions on this issue."Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Professor Emeritus of London University, former Director of Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)Guatemala has maintained a claim to the entire territory of Belize (formerly Britain's colony of British Honduras in Central America) since the 1940s, when it renounced an 1859 border treaty signed with Britain. All attempts to resolve the dispute by negotiations failed, and Belize became independent in 1981 with a British military force stationed there for its defence. Since independence, continuous incursions by Guatemalans have led to massive deforestation and loss of resources and has sometimes resulted in fatalities. More recently, attempts by the Guatemalan military to forcefully impose its territorial claims have heightened tensions and tested the resolve of an OAS Office stationed at the border since 2003. A referendum in Guatemala in April 2018 produced an overwhelming vote in favour of submitting the dispute to the International Court of Justice, and the referendum in Belize is due in April 2019. This book for the first time details the origins of the claim, the multiple attempts to reach a negotiated settlement from 1862 to 2007, and the effects the claim has had on both countries in the context of the Cold War and after. Throughout, the author examines the legal issues involved, making this an indispensable tool for a full understanding of one of the most intractable territorial claims in the region and for insights into how it might be resolved."Shoman's history of Guatemala's claim to Belize, which is thoroughly researched and clearly written, is suitable for a wide readership, general as well as academic. His analysis pays due attention to the global context of great power rivalries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and especially to the crucial period of the Cold War. The author, a protagonist who was involved for decades in the negotiations he analyzes, is scrupulously fair and his insights are unique. Indeed, nobody else could have written this book. I recommend it to everyone interested in this particular case and also to those who want to know how a small country can negotiate its way to its independence against formidable odds. This will remain the definitive study and it should be widely read in Belize and elsewhere."Dr. O. Nigel Bolland, Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, Colgate University, New York.
Download or read book Guatemala written by Peter Calvert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala has long been a field for struggle between other powers, and today, racked by civil war, it avoids the full glare of international attention only because most of the Central American region is beset by similar problems. Despite a continued belief in the reconstitution of a unified Central American state arid a long-running claim to Belize, Guatemala has played a passive rather than an active role in international politics. The influence of international economic interests explains to a large degree why Guatemala has not been more active in the international arena. In this book, Professor Calvert examines Guatemala's history and the principal aspects of the country's faction-tom society and seeks to explain the problems—and their consistently violent manifestations—that have attended the course of the country's social, economic, and political development.
Download or read book The History of Coffee in Guatemala written by Regina Wagner and published by Villegas Asociados. This book was released on 2001 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After it emerged as a market commodity in the 18th century, coffee was easily adapted to cultivation in the highlands of Central America. Guatemala in particular has relied on coffee cultivation as a part of its economic identity: it has been a premier export crop for over 300 years. The importance of coffee to the country lies in the large labour investment in each stage of production. The book covers agricultural, social, and cultural aspects of coffee culture in Guatemala in old photographs, charts, tables and maps. Wagner's work shows how Guatemala has met the economic complexity to which this product is subject, and why coffee remains the solid foundation crop of the country today.
Download or read book Our Culture is Our Resistance written by Francisco Goldman and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Culture Is Our Resistance: Repression, Refuge, and Healing in Guatemala is a stunning document of this tiny Central American country, revealing stories of life and death, of hope and despair, and of struggles for survival, respect, and truth. For the past ten years Jonathan Moller has photographed communities uprooted by war in Guatemala. The beauty and strength of Moller's one hundred forty-seven tritone portraits and the accompanying texts not only document and preserve the faces and events associated with this land and its history, but also display for the viewer the humanity and dignity of these largely Mayan indigenous peoples. Sponsors and official endorsers of the book include Amnesty International, the Soros Foundation, Global Exchange, The Nation Institute, the Photo Review, Witness for Peace, and Cultural Survival.
