James Sexton met Ignacio Bizarro Ujpan in 1970, when Sexton traveled to Guatemala for the first time as a graduate student in anthropology. Ignacio became Sexton's research assistant and, as the men's friendship grew over the years of fieldwork that followed, Sexton asked Ignacio to keep a detailed journal. In his diaries, Bizarro chronicles more than a quarter century of the turbulent history of Guatemala, returning again and again to the themes of community solidarity, civil violence, alcohol abuse, resistance to repression, political turmoil, and the reinforcement of traditional and...