Description
Book SynopsisOver the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. This title 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.
Trade Review“Anyone interested in Latin American history will enjoy this myth-and-stereotype-shattering study of Mayan cultural and national identity as it has evolved over centuries in one region of Guatemala, ‘Los Altos.’ Thick with novelistic detail and anecdote, brilliantly and imaginatively researched, totally engrossing in its melding of convincing analysis and strong narrative sweep, Grandin takes us to a ‘high placee’ and guides us back over the tangled, treacherous paths that led there.”—Francisco Goldman
“Bold, fascinating, and important,
The Blood of Guatemala is a model of careful, yet highly innovative and original scholarship. Grandin has gone well beyond fine research to create a powerful narrative of two important centuries’ worth of Guatemalan history. Its many different dimensions—political, economic, social, demographic—form a histore totale.”—John Demos, Yale University
“Brilliant, bold, and beautifully written from the first page to the last,
The Blood of Guatemala convincingly challenges previous interpretations of the histories of ethnicity, commmunity, state, nation, and nationalism in Guatemala. Greg Grandin has skillfully united the disciplines of history and anthropology; he is part of a new generation of committed, sophisticated, and clearheaded intellectuals.”—Deborah Levenson, Boston College
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Searching for the Living among the Dead 1
Prelude: A World Put Right, 31 March 1840 20
1. The Greatest Indian City in the World: Caste, Gender, and Politics, 1750-1821 25
2. Defending the Pueblo: Popular Protests and Elite Politics, 1786-1826 54
3. A Pestilent Nationalism: The 1837 Cholera Epidemic Reconsidered 82
4. A House with Two Masters: Carrera and the Restored Republic of Indians 99
5. Principales to Patrones, macehuales to Mozos: Land, Labor, and the Commodification of Community 110
6. Regenerating the Race: Race, Class, and the Nationalization of Ethnicity 130
7. Time and Space among the Maya: Mayan Modernism and the Transformation of the City 159
8. The Blood of Guatemalans: Class Struggle and the Death of K'iche' Nationalism 198
Conclusions: The Limits of Nation, 1954-1999 220
Epilogue: The Living among the Dead 234
Appendix 1 Names and Places 237
Appendix 2 Glossary 241
Notes 243
Works Cited 315
Index 337
