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Cultural Resources: Guatemala

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Cultural Resources: Guatemala CULTURAL RESOURCES: GUATEMALA Time Among the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico by Ronald Wright The Maya of Central America have been called the Greeks of the New World. In the first millennium A.D. they created the most intellectually and artistically advanced civilization of the Americas. In ensuing centuries, as neighboring empires fell in warfare and the Spanish Invasion, the Maya endured, shaken but never destroyed. Ronald Wright’s journey through time and space takes him not only to the lands of the ancient Maya but also among the five million people who speak Mayan languages and preserve a Mayan identity today. Embracing history, politics, anthropology, and literature, Time Among the Maya is both a fascinating travel memoir and the study of a civilization. (from the back cover, recommended by Laura Hofer’s husband) I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchu Tum I, Rigoberta Menchu is one of those books which seems to be overshadowed by controversy. A Quiche Mayan woman of Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchu told her story orally to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray in Paris in 1982. Burgos- Debray transcribed the story and published it in Spanish in 1983; Ann Wright's English translation appeared in 1984. The book, which both gave a voice to the Native American culture of Guatemala and exposed the brutality of Guatemala's civil war, became an international sensation. Menchu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Of special interest are her descriptions of the interactions among the diverse ethnic groups of Guatemala, her account of Quiche Mayan religious beliefs and practices, and her descriptions of such everyday activities as making tortillas. Particularly fascinating is her account of how Guatemalan revolutionaries interpreted parts of the Bible in order to aid their struggle; at the end of Chapter XVII she describes the Bible as the "main weapon" of her comrades. Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans by David Stoll In 1992, a Guatemalan peasant named Rigoberta Menchú received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in pressing the civil rights claims of her country's indigenous peoples. A decade earlier, her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchú, had appeared, and it was immediately welcomed in the nascent canon of multicultural literary and anthropological writings that has since become standard in the academy. In that memoir, Menchú gives a highly specific account of the then- ruling military government's war against tribal, rural people, making claims that she held a leadership role in the resistance, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. In a work certain to incite controversy, Middlebury College anthropologist David Stoll questions the veracity of those claims, interviewing many of the people who appeared in her memoir and offering contrary testimony. His findings, Stoll notes, do not discount the real violence visited by the Guatemalan government on its subjects. Sweet Waist of America by Anthony Daniels Sweet Waist is a very honest, yet loving portrayal (as much as I can tell after only 5 chapters) of Guatemala that holds up for examination some of the political and cultural touchstones there of the last century or so. The author wants to celebrate the beauty of the country that has been hidden amongst the bloodshed. As he puts it, "...if love of beauty is to be postponed until all is right with the world, then surely we shall create only hell on earth." It was written in the early 90's, before the peace accords became a reality, but it's a fascinating narrative of the country written by an American who traveled to Guatemala for a short visit and wound up staying 8 months and considers it a second home. (Recommended by an adoptive parent in process in Guatemala.) Web sites to learn more about Guatemala: http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/ http://www.quetzalnet.com/Tourism.html .
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