Challenging the views of human rights activists, Stoll argues that the Ixils who supported Guatemalan rebels in the early 1980's did so because they were caught in the crossfire between the guerillas and the army, not because revolutionary violence expressed community aspirations.

Protestants are making phenomenal gains in Latin America. This is the first general account of the evangelical challenge to Catholic predominance, with special attention to the collision with liberation theology in Central America. David Stoll reinterprets the "invasion of the sects" as an evangelical awakening, part of a wider religious reformation which could redefine the basis of Latin American politics.

The diverse case studies in this volume explore facets of the Protestant movement in Central and South America, such as the role of women, the connection with Catholic mysticism, the politics of supposedly conservative evangelical misssionaries, and the implications for existing patterns of authority.

Rigoberta Menchu is a living legend, a young woman who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was -the story of all poor Guatemalans.- By turning herself into an everywoman, she became a powerful symbol for 500 years of indigenous resistance to colonialism. Her testimony, I, Rigoberta Menchu, denounced atrocities by the Guatemalan army and propelled her to the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. But her story was not the eyewitness account that she claimed. In this hotly debated book, key points of which have been corroborated by the New York Times, David...