The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Latin America Otherwise)

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.

History

Greg Grandin

Americas

Duke University Press Books

Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman

Recorded Books, Inc. and Blackstone Publishing

Empire Of Necessity

Oneworld Publications

Who Is Rigoberta Menchu?

Verso Books

In 1927, Henry Ford, the founder of the famous motor company and the richest man in the world, bought a 5,000 square mile-tract of land in the Brazilian Amazon. There he was going to build a rubber plantation. To the unkempt rainforest he would bring the principles of mass production - order, efficiency and productivity. He would harness the river itself in order to transplant capitalist civilisation to the dark heart of the jungle. But Ford wanted more than just rubber. Across the United States, small-town America was giving way to growing cities, consumerism and crass, brash new society. Ford wanted to create in the Amazon an America in his own image - Fordlandia, full of neat houses, straight roads and restrained Puritanism. By 1945 it was abandoned in ruins. Fordlandia is the powerful, never-before-told fable of the pride and arrogance of the man who thought he alone could tame the Amazon.

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Icon Books

In 1927, Henry Ford, then the richest man in the world, bought a 5,000 square mile-tract of land in the Brazilian Amazon. There he was going to build a rubber plantation. But Ford wanted more than just rubber. To the unkempt rainforest he would bring order, efficiency and productivity - the principles of mass production. And across the United States, small-town America was giving way to consumerism and crass, brash new society. Ford wanted to create an America in his own image - Fordlandia, full of neat houses, straight roads and restrained Puritanism. But Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. By 1945 it was abandoned in ruins. Greg Grandin tells the powerful fable of the pride and arrogance of the man who thought he alone could tame the Amazon. It is the battle between industrialised capitalism and the raw power of nature; it is the struggle too within Ford hi

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

FREE Icon Books eBook Sampler

TOMMY BYRNE

Mark Hughes

JIM BAGGOTT

James Hannam

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greg Grandin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Greg Grandin