Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz--an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala--tells the story of the village of Santa Maria Tzeja, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village--its birth, destruction, and rebirth--embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today....

Political violence and military repression have displaced some two million people in Central America in the 1980s. While conflict elsewhere in Central America has received considerable attention, the war against an unarmed civilian population in Guatemala has largely been hidden from the outside world. The military have waged a particularly brutal and extensive counter-insurgency campaign, leaving thousands dead and prompting several hundred thousand to flee to neighboring countries.

In Refugees of a Hidden War, the author examines in detail three predominantly Indian regions in northern...