Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - Central America

Maya hieroglyphic writing may seem impossibly opaque to beginning students, but scholar Scott A. J. Johnson presents it as a regular and comprehensible system in this engaging, easy-to-follow textbook. The only comprehensive introduction designed specifically for those new to the study, "Translating Maya Hieroglyphs" uses a hands-on approach to teach learners the current state of Maya epigraphy.

Johnson shows readers step by step how to translate ancient Maya glyphs. He begins by describing how to break down a Mayan text into individual glyphs in the correct reading order, and then...

Susanna Rankin Bohme tells an intriguing, multilayered history that spans...

Since the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the Maya population of Guatemala has been forced to adapt to extraordinary challenges. Under colonial rule, the Indians had to adapt enough to satisfy the Spanish while resisting those changes not necessary for survival, applying their understanding of the world to the realities they confronted daily. Despite the major changes wrought in their way of life by centuries of submission, the Maya have managed to regenerate, and thus maintain, their self-identity.

Among the major challenges they have faced has been the imposition...

"Washington is called the father of his country; the same may be said of Bol var and Hidalgo; but I am only a bandit, according to the yardstick by which the strong and the weak are measured."--Augusto C. Sandino.

For the first time in English, here are the impassioned words of the remarkable Nicaraguan hero and martyr Augusto C. Sandino, for whom the recent revolutionary regime was named. From 1927 until 1933 American Marines fought a bitter jungle war in Nicaragua, with Sandino as their guerrilla foe. This artisan and farmer turned soldier was an unexpectedly formidable military...

How humans adapt to life in an area prone to natural disasters is an intriguing study for the social sciences. In this volume, experts from several disciplines explore the adaptation process of prehistoric societies in the volcanic Arenal region of Costa Rica from about 2000 BC to the Spanish Conquest at about AD 1500.

The data in this volume come from a survey of the region conducted with the latest remote sensing technology. Sheets and his coauthors have compiled a detailed record of human settlements in the area, including dozens of archaeological sites and a network of...

Popular art is a masculine and working-class genre, associated with Panama's black population. Its practitioners are self-taught, commercial painters, whose high-toned designs, vibrant portraits, and landscapes appear in cantinas, barbershops, and restaurants. The red devil buses are popular art's most visible manifestation. The old school buses are imported from the United States and provide public transportation in Colon and Panama City. Their owners hire the artists to attract customers with eye-catching depictions of singers and actors, brassy phrases, and vivid representations of both...

The Costa Rican revolution of 1948 capped an extended period of social tension and political unrest. This book analyzes the circumstances of 1940-1948 that led to a successful armed uprising. A secondary and related theme is the role of Jose Figueres Ferrer in marshaling disparate groups into a movement sufficiently cohesive to seize and hold power.

In the 1940s the Communists, the Social Democrats (forerunners of the National Liberation Party), and the followers of Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia within the traditional National Republican party competed to lead the middle sector's...