<div>Pedro de Alvarado is best known as the right-hand man of Hernando Cortés in the conquest of Mexico (1519-21) and the ruthless conqueror of Guatemala some years later. Far less known is his intent to intrude in the conquest of Peru and lay claim to Quito, a wealthy domain in the far north of the Inca Empire. To this end, Alvarado constructed a massive fleet, which sailed south from Central America to what is now Ecuador, making landfall on 25 February 1534. Engaging both the European and Indigenous contexts in which Alvarado operated, George Lovell illuminates this gap in the record, narrating a dramatic story of greed and hubris. Upon reaching Ecuador, Alvarado's formidable entourage - some five hundred Spanish combatants and two thousand Indigenous conscripts - marched from the Pacific coast to the Andean sierra. Though Quito was his intended destination, he never made it. During a treacherous transit across the mountains, Alvarado's party was engulfed by heavy snowfall and numbing cold, which proved the expedition's undoing. Those who survived the ordeal discovered that other Spaniards - Diego de Almagro and Sebastián de BeLalcázar, acting in allegiance with Francisco Pizarro - had reached Quito before them, thereby claiming first right of conquest. Believing he had no option, if strife between rival sides was to be avoided, Alvarado sold his costly machinery of war - men, horses, weaponry, and ships - to those who had beaten him to the prize. All but ruined, he returned humiliated to Central America. Death in the Snow brings to light the delusions of one headstrong conquistador and mourns the loss of untold Indigenous lives, casualties of Alvarado's lust for fame and fortune.</div>

Death in the Snow: Pedro de Alvarado and the Illusive Conquest of Peru (Volume 5) (McGill-Queen's Iberian and Latin American Cultures Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Lovell, W. George

Community & Culture

McGill-Queen's University Press

Though a 1996 peace accord brought a formal end to a conflict that had lasted for thirty-six years, Guatemala's violent past continues to scar its troubled present and seems destined to haunt its uncertain future. George Lovell brings to this revised and expanded edition of A Beauty That Hurts decades of fieldwork throughout Guatemala, as well as archival research. He locates the roots of conflict in geographies of inequality that arose during colonial times and were exacerbated by the drive to develop Guatemala's resources in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lines of confrontation were entrenched after a decade of socioeconomic reform between 1944 and 1954 saw modernizing initiatives undone by a military coup backed by U.S. interests and the CIA. A United Nations Truth Commission has established that civil war in Guatemala claimed the lives of more that 200,000 people, the vast majority of them indigenous Mayas.
Lovell weaves documentation about what happened to Mayas in particular during the war years with accounts of their difficult personal situations. Meanwhile, an intransigent elite and a powerful military continue to benefit from the inequalities that triggered armed insurrection in the first place. Weak and corrupt civilian governments fail to impose the rule of law, thus ensuring that Guatemala remains an embattled country where postwar violence and drug-related crime undermine any semblance of orderly, peaceful life.

A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala, Second Revised Edition (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-columbian Studies)

History

Americas

University of Texas Press

When A Beauty That Hurts was published in 1995, Guatemala was still one of the world's most flagrant violators of human rights. Now that a measure of "peace" has come to the country, George Lovell revisits "the land that I fell in love with" to reassess and revise his classic account of the evil that was perpetrated by Guatemala's military-dominated state on its Maya peoples.
One newly contentious issue to which Lovell devotes particular attention is the testimony of Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú, which was challenged by David Stoll in his book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Lovell argues that culture clash is the most obvious reason for this controversy. North Americans demand individual testimony that can withstand challenge by other individuals, while Menchú has always stated that her testimony was on behalf of her community.
Lovell brings years of insight to A Beauty That Hurts. He documents what has taken place in Guatemala by examining political events and exploring the personal drama of its citizens, especially the Maya. His new epilogue, based on a recent visit to Guatemala, brings the story up to the present.

A Beauty that Hurts : Life and Death in Guatemala

Demography And Empire: A Guide To The Population History Of Spanish Central America, 1500-1821

Research on the Central American colonial experience―long overshadowed by the scholarly focus on Mexico and Peru―has begun to blossom, greatly expanding our knowledge of land and life in the region under Spanish rule. The first bibliography of its kind, Demography and Empire offers a comprehensive survey of recent literature in Spanish and i

Routledge

The first bibliography of its kind, Demography and Empire offers a comprehensive survey of recent literature in Spanish and in English pertaining to the population history of colonial Central America.

Conquest and survival in colonial Guatemala: A historical geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821

Business & Money

Economics

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala examines the impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule on the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, a frontier region of Guatemala adjoining the country’s northwestern border with Mexico. While Spaniards penetrated and left an enduring mark on the region, the vibrant Maya culture they encountered was not obliterated and, though subjected to considerable duress from the sixteenth century on, endures to this day. This fourth edition of George Lovell’s classic work incorporates new data and recent research findings and emphasizes native resistance and strategic adaptation to Spanish intrusion. Drawing on four decades of archival foraging, Lovell focuses attention on issues of land, labour, settlement, and population to unveil colonial experiences that continue to affect how Guatemala operates as a troubled modern nation. Acclaimed by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala remains a seminal account of the impact of Spanish colonialism in the Americas and a landmark contribution to Mesoamerican studies.

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821, Fourth Edition

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala examines the impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule on the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, a frontier region of Guatemala adjoining the country?s northwestern border with Mexico. While Spaniards penetrated and left an enduring mark on the region, the vibrant Maya culture they encountered was not obliterated and, though subjected to considerable duress from the sixteenth century on, endures to this day. This fourth edition of George Lovell?s classic work incorporates new data and recent research findings and emphasizes native resistance and strategic adaptation to Spanish intrusion. Drawing on four decades of archival foraging, Lovell focuses attention on issues of land, labour, settlement, and population to unveil colonial experiences that continue to affect how Guatemala operates as a troubled modern nation. Acclaimed by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala remains a seminal account of the impact of Spanish colonialism in the Americas and a landmark contribution to Mesoamerican studies.

In the wake of European expansion, disease outbreaks in the New World caused the greatest loss of life known to history. Post-contact Native American inhabitants succumbed in staggering numbers to maladies such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus, against which they had no immunity. A collection of case studies by historians, geographers, and anthropologists, "Secret Judgments of God" discusses how diseases with Old World origins devastated vulnerable native populations throughout Spanish America. In their preface to the paperback edition, the editors discuss the ongoing, often heated debate about contact population history.

Secret Judgments of God: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Cook, Noble David

University of Oklahoma Press

Guatemala emerged from the clash between Spanish invaders and Maya cultures that began five centuries ago. The conquest of these “rich and strange lands,” as Hernán Cortés called them, and their “many different peoples” was brutal and prolonged. “Strange Lands and Different Peoples” examines the myriad ramifications of Spanish intrusion, especially Maya resistance to it and the changes that took place in native life because of it. The studies assembled here, focusing on the first century of colonial rule (1524–1624), discuss issues of conquest and resistance, settlement and colonization, labor and tribute, and Maya survival in the wake of Spanish invasion. The authors reappraise the complex relationship between Spaniards and Indians, which was marked from the outset by mutual feelings of resentment and mistrust. While acknowledging the pivotal role of native agency, the authors also document the excesses of Spanish exploitation and the devastating impact of epidemic disease. Drawing on research findings in Spanish and Guatemalan archives, they offer fresh insight into the Kaqchikel Maya uprising of 1524, showing that despite strategic resistance, colonization imposed a burden on the indigenous population more onerous than previously thought. Guatemala remains a deeply divided and unjust society, a country whose current condition can be understood only in light of the colonial experiences that forged it. Affording readers a critical perspective on how Guatemala came to be, “Strange Lands and Different Peoples” shows the events of the past to have enduring contemporary relevance.

“Strange Lands and Different Peoples”: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala (Volume 271) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Lutz, Christopher H.

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

Books by Lovell, W. George

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

Death in the Snow: Pedro de Alvarado and the Illusive Conquest of Peru (Volume 5) (McGill-Queen's Iberian and Latin American Cultures Series)

A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala, Second Revised Edition (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-columbian Studies)

A Beauty that Hurts : Life and Death in Guatemala

Demography And Empire: A Guide To The Population History Of Spanish Central America, 1500-1821

Demography And Empire: A Guide To The Population History Of Spanish Central America, 1500-1821

Conquest and survival in colonial Guatemala: A historical geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821, Fourth Edition

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821

Secret Judgments of God: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

“Strange Lands and Different Peoples”: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala (Volume 271) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)