Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - Central America

"The time of freedom" was the name that plantation workers campesinos gave to Guatemala s national revolution of 1944 1954. Cindy Forster reveals the critical role played by the poor in organizing and sustaining this period of reform.
Through court records, labor and agrarian ministry archives, and oral histories, Forster demonstrates how labor conflict on the plantations prepared the ground for national reforms that are usually credited to urban politicians. She focuses on two plantation zones that generated exceptional momentum: the coffee belt in the highlands around San Marcos and...

Honduras has suffered both political trauma and natural disasters throughout its history. In 1969, Honduras' political tensions with El Salvador during a soccer series preliminary to the World Cup led to the four-day-long "Football War." In 1998, Hurricane Mitch caused billions of dollars of damage to Honduras; ten years later, half of the country's roadways were ruined, often beyond repair, by substantial flooding. Most recently, many countries have frowned upon the Honduran government's shift of power from the president to the head of Congress.

"The History of Honduras" provides a...

After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. Since the triumph of Castro, politicians and historians have accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing communist totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. Through unprecedented archival research and gripping personal testimonies, Greg Grandin powerfully challenges these views in this classic work. In doing so, he uncovers the hidden history of the Latin American Cold War: of hidebound reactionaries holding on to their power and...

"Quite the contrary of old generals, nations do not fade away; they have to be killed."

Richard Adams' view of the nation as a basic social unit is central to this pioneering study in social anthropology. The result of many years of research in Guatemala, this volume utilizes the author's fieldwork as well as that of his colleagues and students to construct a set of concepts explaining how Guatemala reached the difficult circumstances in which it found itself in the 1960s--and still finds itself today.

With the breakup of the great colonial empires after the Second World War,...

From the time when archaeologists first began to discover the civilization's spectacular ruins, Mexico's Mayan past has been a boundless source of inspiration, ideas, and iconography for the modernist imagination. This study examines the ways artists, architects, filmmakers, photographers, and other producers of visual culture in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and beyond have mined Mayan history and imagery.

Beginning his study in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first mechanically reproduced and mass distributed images of the Mayan ruins, and ending with recent works that...

In Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity: Panama's Assembly, 1984-2009, Carlos Guevara Mann systematically examines the behavior of the members of Panama's Legislative Assembly between 1984 and 2009, an arena previously unexplored in studies of Panamanian politics. He challenges fundamental aspects of scholarly literature on democratic legislatures, with important consequences for understanding democratic politics in Latin America and other parts of the world. The current literature on legislatures assumes that legislators single-mindedly seek reelection or the...

"The History of Costa Rica" provides a thorough, straightforward narrative of a Central American country that has become increasingly more visible since the end of the 20th century. Written for students and the general reader, this book covers the nation from its pre-Colombian origins to the present day.

This chronologically organized volume documents the area's earliest inhabitants, then moves on through the colonial period, the process of nation-state formation in the 19th century, the volatile period of liberal reform, and the era of civil war and its aftermath. More recent times are...

During the 1980s war in El Salvador, Radio Venceremos was the main news outlet for the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), the guerrilla organization that challenged the government. The broadcast provided a vital link between combatants in the mountains and the outside world, as well as an alternative to mainstream media reporting. In this first-person account, "Santiago," the legend behind Radio Venceremos, tells the story of the early years of that conflict, a rebellion of poor peasants against the Salvadoran government and its benefactor, the United...

Ambitious and comprehensive. It presents the results of two decades of research in a Maya lowland region that has seen more activity than most. Its chapters are synthetic, contributing to both archaeological theory and to culture history. . . . Will be a boon to students and professional archaeologists. Journal of Field Archaeology

Brings together recent findings and interpretations by many of the archaeologists active in and around the Belize Valley, one of the most intensively studied regions of the Maya lowlands. . . . A substantial contribution to Maya archaeology...

Ranging from the end of the Ice Age to the flourishing of Mayan culture in the first millennium to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, "The Ancient Maya" takes a fresh look at a culture that has long held the public's imagination. Originally thought to be peaceful and spiritual, the Mayans are now also known to have been worldly, bureaucratic, and violent. Debates and unanswered questions linger.

Mayan expert Heather McKillop shows our current understanding of the Maya, explaining how interpretations of "dirt archaeology," hieroglyphic inscriptions, and pictorial pottery are used...

Luis, his mother, his wife, his in-laws, his children, and some neighbors recall in a simple and often eloquent manner their experiences of...