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Land of the Mayas
The Mayas dominate the history of Guatemala. Western Honduras and southern Mexico were also home to branches of Mayan civilization, but the lowland forests and misty highlands of Guatemala were its principal setting. The sprawling and still mostly unexcavated city of Tikal, in the Guatemalan north, was the largest and most imposing Mayan settlement ever. Large, fully sedentary Mayan populations attracted the Spanish conquerors from Mexico soon after the destruction of the Aztecs, but Guatemala did not have Mexico's wealth in silver, so it remained a second-tier colony within the Spanish Empire. The Kingdom of Guatemala, as it was known during the colonial period, included all of Central America down to Costa Rica, but the territory of present-day Guatemala was always the most populous part by far, and the capital, Guatemala City, was always the most important urban center in Central America, site of the University of San Carlos, founded in 1676.
The wealth of Guatemala lay not in precious metals but in the Mayans themselves. Vestiges of colonial labor drafts existed in Guatemala until the dawn of the twentieth century. Especially in the western highlands around Quetzaltengo, a city of Mayan origin (as Guatemala City is not), indigenous people composed not only a rural peasantry, but more complex ethnic communities, including a prosperous and partly urban upper class that aspired to modernize while remaining Mayan. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, social revolutionaries have struggled to transform the Guatemalan countryside, with some success, despite determined and ruthless opposition. To escape the conflict, Guatemalan refugees have poured out of the country, many immigrating to the United States.
Topics:
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- What power structures governed Mayan society in its most vibrant period, long before the arrival of Spaniards? How did these structures compare with those of Aztec society?
- How do the Mayas fit into the idea of what it meant to be "Guatemalan?"
- What are the high points, or perhaps low points, of Guatemala's turbulent Cold War history?
Country Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
Barry, Tom. Inside Guatemala. Albuquerque, NM: The Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource
Center, 1992.
An expanded version of Barry's Guatemala: A Country Guide, this book is best described as a guide to events shaping recent political history in Guatemala, specifically from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Notes, statistical figures, a short bibliography, and a chronology are included. No index.
Bethell, Leslie, ed. Central America since Independence. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
The first three chapters deal with Central America as a whole. Chapter 4 deals specifically with Guatemala since 1930. A few maps are included, and an index and a bibliographical essay for each chapter follow the text.
** Calvert, Peter. Guatemala: A Nation in Turmoil. Westview Profiles, Nations of
Contemporary Latin America. Boulder: Westview Press, 1985.
Though a bit dated, this historical overview is one of the most complete written in English, and the prose is reader friendly. Maps, illustrations, notes, a bibliography, and an index are included.
Foster, Lynn V. A Brief History of Central America. New York: Facts On File, 2000.
An accessible historical overview of Central America as a whole from the Pre-Columbian era to the dawn of the present century. The book includes illustrations, tables and maps, a bibliography and index, a list of suggested readings, and appendices with basic facts for each country (including Panama and Belize) and a chronology.
** Handy, Jim. Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala. Boston: South End Press, 1984.
This book connects the political violence of the late twentieth century to the country's colonial origins. A couple of maps, notes, and an index are included.
Jonas, Susanne. The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power. With a
forward by Edelberto Torres Rivas. Latin American Perspectives Series. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1991.
A detailed exploration of Guatemala in the Cold War. Useful and clearly organized, but somewhat challenging for undergraduate readers. Illustrations, a chronology, a dense bibliography, and an index follow the narrative.
**Pérez-Brignoli, Héctor. A Brief History of Central America. Translated by Ricardo B.
Sawrey A. and Susana Stettri de Sawrey. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989.
This slightly older book presents an overview of the region's history, beginning with the land and the people and ending with the political and social crises faced by many Central American nations at the end of the 1980s. Maps, a chronology, notes, a bibliography, and an index are included.
** Woodward, Ralph Lee, Jr. Central America: A Nation Divided, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
A solid and well-told overview with an extensive guide to further reading, a set of charts and tables with statistical information, and a political chronology.
Maps:
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