New Fiction and Non-Fiction Titles in April: Topic: Central America
Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala
Paperback University of California Press; 1 edition (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0520267672 ISBN-13: 978-0520267671
Drawing on revealing, in-depth interviews, Cecilia Menjívar investigates the role that violence plays in the lives of Ladina women in eastern Guatemala, a little-visited and little-studied region.
While much has been written on the subject of political violence in Guatemala, Menjívar turns to a different form of suffering -- the violence embedded in institutions and in everyday life so familiar and routine that it is often not recognized as such.
Rather than painting Guatemala (or even Latin America) as having a cultural propensity for normalizing and accepting violence, Menjívar aims to develop an approach to examining structures of violence -- profound inequality, exploitation and poverty, and gender ideologies that position women in vulnerable situations -- grounded in women's experiences.
In this way, her study provides a glimpse into the root causes of the increasing wave of feminicide in Guatemala, as well as in other Latin American countries, and offers observations relevant for understanding violence against women around the world today.
Global Maya: Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala Paperback University of Arizona Press (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0816529876 ISBN-13: 978-0816529872
Liliana R. Goldín
In the central highland Maya communities of Guatemala, the demands ofthe global economy have become a way of life.
This book explores how ruralpeoples experience economic and cultural change as their country joins theglobal market, focusing on their thoughts about work and sustenance as a way oflearning about Guatemala's changing economy.
For more than a decade, Liliana Goldín observed in highland towns boththe intensification of various forms of production and their growing links towider markets.
In this first book to compare economic ideology across a rangeof production systems, she examines how people make a living and how theythink about their options, practices, and constraints.
Drawing on interviews andsurveys--even retellings of traditional narratives--she reveals how contemporaryMaya respond to the increasingly globalized yet locally circumscribed conditionsin which they work.
Goldín presents four case studies: cottage industries devoted to garmentproduction, vegetable growing for internal and border markets reached throughdirect commerce, crops grown for export, and wage labor in garment assemblyfactories.
By comparing generational and gendered differences among workers,she reveals not only complexities of change but also how these complexities arereflected in changing attitudes, understandings, and aspirations that characterizepeople's economic ideology.
Further, she shows that as rural people take ondiverse economic activities, they also reinterpret their views on such mattersas accumulation, cooperation, competition, division of labor, and communitysolidarity.
Global Maya explores global processes in local terms, revealing the interplayof traditional values, household economics, and the inescapable conditions ofdemographic growth, a shrinking land base, and a global economy always lookingfor cheap labor. It offers a wealth of new insights not only for Maya scholarsbut also for anyone concerned with the effects of globalization on the Third World.
Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey through Adoption Hardcover University of Nebraska Press (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 9780803233621 ISBN-13: 978-0803233621
Mr. Jacob R. Wheeler (Author), Kevin Kreutner (Foreword)
“An adoption professional once told me, ‘At its best, there is no adoption system as good as Guatemala’s. At its worst, there is none worse.’”—from the foreword by Kevin Kreutner
In Between Light and Shadow, veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nation’s poorest children.
Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’s abandonment, her adoption and Americanization, her search for her birth mother, and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala, where she finds her teenage brothers — unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders.
Following Ellie’s journey, Wheeler peels back the layers of an adoption economy that some view as an unscrupulous baby-selling industry that manipulates impoverished indigenous Guatemalan women, and others herald as the only chance for poor children to have a better life. Through Ellie, Wheeler allows us to see what all this means in personal and practical terms — and to understand how well-intentioned and sometimes humanitarian first-world wealth can collide with the extreme poverty, despair, misogyny, racism, and violent history of Guatemala.
Social Accountability in Guatemala: Towards an End of Impunity? Paperback VDM Verlag Dr. Müller (April 6, 2011)
ISBN-10: 3639342321 ISBN-13: 978-3639342321
Katrin Ulrich
On May 10, 2009, Rodrigo Rosenberg was assassinated on a street in Guatemala City.
It seemed to be just another of ca. 6,000 homicides per year, however, the next day a video appeared on YouTube?, a testimony in which he accused the Guatemalan president of his murder.
Shortly after, protests dominated the country and the Guatemalan government was facing an existential crisis. Next to demanding the president's resignation, many protesters called for an end of impunity. Sadly to say, more than ten years after the civil war (1960-1996), Guatemala is still dominated by violence, corruption and impunity, and the tensions between citizens and the state has increased.
Social accountability has won importance during the last years. In Latin American countries, both vertical and horizontal mechanisms of accountability are weak, alternative mechanisms of social accountability however intend to counter these deficits. Hence, they appear to be more successful and bear promising outcomes.
This analysis of the Guatemalan case builds on the theoretical framework of Social Accountability by Smulovitz and Peruzzotti and will be aimed to contribute to the ongoing discourse.
The Crossroads of Religion and Development: Guatemala's Ixil Region, Evangelical Religion, and General Ríos Montt Paperback LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing (April 7, 2011)
ISBN-10: 3844314970 ISBN-13: 978-3844314977
Blake C. Scott
This book explores how a group of evangelical Christians aided the Guatemalan army's counterinsurgency campaign logistically, financially, and theologically in the highlands of Guatemala in 1982 and 1983.
It explains how the military government of General José Efraín Ríos Montt turned to evangelical Christianity to buttress anti-communist and neoliberal development programs in one particular highland area, the Ixil Region.
The book also sheds light on why U.S and Guatemalan evangelical missionaries willfully supported a right-wing dictatorship, embracing their role as "spiritual soldiers" and legitimizing the Guatemalan army through theological teachings and relief work.
The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town (revised) Paperback University of Texas Press; Revised edition (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0292723989 ISBN-13: 978-0292723986
Robert S. Carlsen (Author), Davíd Carrasco (Foreword), Martín Prechtel (Contributor)
This compelling ethnography explores the issue of cultural continuity and change as it has unfolded in the representative Guatemala Mayan town Santiago Atitlán.
Drawing on multiple sources, Robert S. Carlsen argues that local Mayan culture survived the Spanish Conquest remarkably intact and continued to play a defining role for much of the following five centuries.
He also shows how the twentieth-century consolidation of the Guatemalan state steadily eroded the capacity of the local Mayas to adapt to change and ultimately caused some factions to reject -- even demonize -- their own history and culture.
At the same time, he explains how, after a decade of military occupation known as la violencia, Santiago Atitlán stood up in unity to the Guatemalan Army in 1990 and forced it to leave town.
This new edition looks at how Santiago Atitlán has fared since the expulsion of the army. Carlsen explains that, initially, there was hope that the renewed unity that had served the town so well would continue. He argues that such hopes have been undermined by multiple sources, often with bizarre outcomes.
Among the factors he examines are the impact of transnational crime, particularly gangs with ties to Los Angeles; the rise of vigilantism and its relation to renewed religious factionalism; the related brutal murders of followers of the traditional Mayan religion; and the apocalyptic fervor underlying these events.
Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town (Child Development in Cultural Context Series)
Hardcover Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (April 6, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0195319907 ISBN-13: 978-0195319903
Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Pérez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years.
At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades.
In Developing Destinies, Barbara Rogoff illuminates how individuals worldwide build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the same time create new ways of living.
Throughout Chona's lifetime, her Guatemalan town has continued to use longstanding Mayan cultural practices, such as including children in a range of community activities and encouraging them to learn by observing and contributing. But the town has also transformed dramatically since the days of Chona's own childhood. For instance, although Chona's upbringing included no formal schooling, some of her grandchildren have gone on to attend university and earn scholarly degrees.
The lives of Chona and her town provide extraordinary examples of how cultural practices are preserved even as they are adapted and modified.
Developing Destinies is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human development.
With extensive photographs and accounts of Mayan family life, medical practices, birth, child development, and learning, Rogoff adeptly shows that we can better understand the role of culture in our lives by examining how people participate in cultural practices. This landmark book brings theory alive with fascinating ethnographic findings that advance our understanding of childhood, culture, and change.
The macahuitl and the sword: Historical novel (Volume 1) Paperback CreateSpace (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1461019079 ISBN-13: 978-1461019077
Mr Juan Carlos Morales
This historical novel intertwines the conquest of Guatemala with the romance that blossomed between the princess Tecuelhuatzín and Pedro de Alvarado. In the midst of the bloody battles between K'iches and Spaniards, emerge the real heroes.
La ciencia de los mayas: conocimiento y cultura (Colección clásicos espirituales y teológicos) (Spanish Edition) Kindle Edition
File Size: 591 KB Debrus Producciones (April 13, 2011) ASIN: B004WKWJ76
Mario Roso de Luna (Author), Debrus Producciones (Editor)
Este estudio es uno de los más valiosos que se han realizado, además de uno de los primeros, sobre el legado del conocimiento maya, más precisamente de los conocidos “Códices Anáhuac”.
Escrito a principios del siglo pasado por Mario Roso de Luna, este análisis arqueológico y lingüístico de los famosos códices, arroja muchas revelaciones sobre le magnificencia de la gran cultura de lo que ahora es México y Guatemala.
Junto con el Popol Vuh, otra obra que es parte de esta colección en libro electrónico, este otro estudio son quizás dos de las grandes piezas de estudio inicial de esta gran cultura.
Lo que usted descubrirá en estas páginas, sin duda, lo llenará de asombro, sobre todo al enterarse de que los mayas fueron una cultura de gran desarrollo científico y cultural; una gran nación de pueblos conocedores y estudiosos de su entorno, no unos bárbaros como equivocadamente los españoles dijeron.
Que esta contribución pueda también abrirle los ojos a usted sobre el gran legado maya, y no tanto sobre el fin del mundo – que se dice los mayas predijeron para diciembre del 2012 -- como del futuro de la Humanidad.
Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944-1966 Paperback University of Texas Press (April 6, 2011
ISBN-10: 0292729685 ISBN-13: 978-0292729681
Richard Newbold Adams (Author)
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.
Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas Paperback SAR Press (April 11, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1934691410 ISBN-13: 978-1934691410
Matthew Liebmann, Melissa S. Murphy (Authors, Editors)
Enduring Conquests presents new interpretations of Native American experiences under Spanish colonialism and challenges the reader to reexamine long-standing assumptions about the Spanish conquests of the Americas.
The contributors to this volume reject the grand narrative that views this era as a clash of civilizations a narrative produced centuries after the fact to construct more comprehensive and complex social histories of Native American life after 1492 by employing the perspective of archaeology and focusing explicitly on the native side of the colonial equation.
Overcoming the Persistence of Inequality and Poverty Hardcover Palgrave Macmillan (April 12, 2011)
ISBN-10: 9780230249707 ISBN-13: 978-0230249707
Valpy FitzGerald (Editor), Judith Heyer (Editor), Rosemary Thorp (Editor)
International experts evaluate new policy directions in economic development and poverty reduction, building on the ideas of a pioneer in the new discipline of Development Studies, Frances Stewart. Combing ideas and evidence on technological change, human development and conflict prevention to address the issue of the persistence of inequality
Concherías (Spanish Edition) Kindle Edition File Size: 243 KB
Editorial Legado S.A.; 1 edition (April 13, 2011)
Language: Spanish ASIN: B004WKQ6RK
Aquileo Echeverría (Author)
“Costa Rica tiene un poeta. Tiene, en verdad, otros poetas, pero su poeta, el poeta nacional, el poeta familiar se llama Aquileo J. Echeverría”.
Con esas palabras, el ingenio mayor de la poesía hispanoamericana, Rubén Darío, dejó señalada — para siempre — la envergadura, la fuerza y la autenticidad de esos versos que, en Concherías, logró producir el más genuino poeta costarricense.
Al prologar la obra, Darío se amparó en Antonio Zambrana, Brenes Mesén y otros, para disimular un tris sus poliédricos afectos, pero los mayores elogios son propios y llega a decir, por ejemplo, que “aquel verso bien modulado, demuestra su descendencia clásica… fuente original de donde ha fluido el admirable y bien sonante romancero castellano… Su poesía me conmueve, me perfuma y melifica el humor, me brinda el impagable regalo de la risa, de la honradez literaria”.
Lo que el virtuoso leonés percibió en aquellos profundos cantos de alma campesina y sabor a jocote, la tradición secular lo confirmó: convertidos en dominio público, los épicos octosílabos —síntesis del ser costarricense— se recitan de memoria en cualquier tertulia intelectual y son chascarrillo frecuente en la conversación cotidiana.
Signo claro de su graciosa originalidad inmortal. La presente edición los rescata de su fuente más prístina: la que se publicó, bajo firma del autor, en Barcelona, en 1909, y supera cambios y “correcciones” que se acumularon en un siglo de travesías.
Aquileo Echeverría Zeledón nació en San José el 22 de mayo de 1866 y murió en Barcelona el 11 de marzo de 1909. Tenía apenas 43 años. Su vida alegre y fogosa, aunque pobre, lo derivó a ser militar en la lucha centroamericana contra Rufino Barrios; ayudante de campo del Presidente Cárdenas, en Nicaragua; periodista en Costa Rica, El Salvador y Guatemala; diplomático improvisado en París y Washington; pulpero en Heredia; bohemio en todas partes y máximo poeta del alma nacional por los siglos de los siglos.
Nicaragua 1984: Reagan's Forgotten War Paperback CreateSpace (April 25, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1460936760 ISBN-13: 978-1460936764
Rachael L. Lehmberg (Author)
Getting Old: Eden Pastora and the Sandinista Revolution
Kindle Edition File Size: 126 KB
ASIN: B004X71L1I
John Enders (Author)
9,900 word book about the Sandinista Revolution of Nicaragua after 30 years. Focuses on Eden Pastora, "Comandante Zero," one of the most controversial figures of the Sandinista Revolution and the "Contra" war of the 1980s, as well as President Daniel Ortega and the internal contradictions facing the Sandinista government.
State Violence and Genocide in Latin America Paperback Routledge; 1 edition (April 11, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0415664578 ISBN-13: 978-0415664578
Marcia Esparza (Editor)
This edited volume explores political violence and genocide in Latin America during the Cold War, examining this in light of the United States' hegemonic position on the continent.
Using case studies based on the regimes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay, this book shows how U.S foreign policy -- far from promoting long term political stability and democratic institutions -- has actually undermined them.
The first part of the book is an inquiry into the larger historical context in which the development of an unequal power relationship between the United States and Latin American and Caribbean nations evolved after the proliferation of the Monroe Doctrine.
The region came to be seen as a contested terrain in the East-West conflict of the Cold War, and a new US-inspired ideology, the 'National Security Doctrine', was used to justify military operations and the hunting down of individuals and groups labelled as 'communists'.
Following on from this historical context, the book then provides an analysis of the mechanisms of state and genocidal violence is offered, demonstrating how in order to get to know the internal enemy, national armies relied on US intelligence training and economic aid to carry out their surveillance campaigns.
This book will be of interest to students of Latin American politics, US foreign policy, human rights and terrorism and political violence in general.
Economics and Politics of South and Central America Hardcover Nova Science Pub Inc (April 2011)
ISBN-10: 1612097804 ISBN-13: 978-1612097800
Jane A. Nicholls (Editor)
This book presents and discusses current research in the study of the economics and politics of South and Central America.
Topics discussed include urban history and cultural studies in Latin America; China's foreign aid activities in Latin America; terrorism issues; Latin America and the Caribbean; and, Merida Initiative for Mexico and Central America and the Fifth Summit of the Americas.
The Maya World of Communicating Objects: Quadripartite Crosses, Trees, and Stones Hardcover University of New Mexico Press (April 15, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0826347630 ISBN-13: 978-0826347633
Miguel Angel Astor-Aguilera
Although anthropologists have been observing and analyzing the religious practices of Mayan people for about a hundred years, this perceptive study suggests that anthropological interpretation of those practices and of Maya cosmology has never escaped the epistemological influence of Christianity.
Whereas sacred objects used in Christian rituals are treated with deifying awe, objects such as Mayan crosses can be recycled, bartered with, communicated with, manipulated, disregarded, or destroyed the apparent equivalent of extorting or defacing a holy image of Christ or the Virgin Mary.
Astor-Aguilera holds that we cannot fully understand these indigenous practices by fitting them to our European Cartesian mindset but must instead recognize and try to understand native Mayan epistemology.
The binary based western concept of religion, he suggests, is not the best framework for understanding experiential Mayan cosmology or practice. Using ethnographic, archaeological, and glyphic evidence, he traces modern Mayan attitudes toward ritually charged objects and imagery back to the Classic Maya.
No scholar of Mesoamerican religion, archaeology, or history can afford to overlook this long overdue approach to a widely misunderstood subject.
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