Author: Kenneth J. Grieb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

View

Book Description

Author: Kenneth J. Grieb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

View

Book Description

Author: Hugh M. Hamill
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806124285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

View

Book Description
In this major revision of the Borzoi Book Dictatorship in Spanish America, editor Hugh Hamill has presented conflicting interpretations of caudillismo in twenty-seven essays written by an international group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, journalists, and caudillos themselves. The selections represent revisionists, apologists, enemies, and even a victim of caudillos. The personalities discussed include the Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo, the Argentinian gaucho Facundo Quiroga, the Guatemalan Rafael Carrera, the Colombian Rafael Núñez, Mexico’s Porfirio Díaz, the Somoza family of Nicaragua, the Dominican "Benefactor" Rafael Trujillo, the Argentinians Juan Perón and his wife Evita, Paraguay’s Alfredo Stroessner - called "The Tyrannosaur," Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Author: Georges A. Fauriol
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412824873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

View

Book Description
Guatemala is one of the least studied and most volatile nations in Central America. Fauriol and Loser chronicle Guatemala's modern political development as a prelude to an analysis of the nation's current environment. This is not a conventional history, but a social, political, and economic cross-section based on the latest secondary information and research available, supplemented by a firsthand set of observations. The authors proceed from three major premises: (1) the armed forces, far from being the cause of instability, have provided the only real models of governance; (2) far from suffering from a banana republic inferiority complex, the culture has a rich nationalist heritage, bordering on outright chauvinism; and (3) the political experiences of the nation have been adjudicated in the main by the armed forces. The authors note that Guatemala's break with its authoritarian past started in 1985. How this transfer of power has occurred, who the new rulers are, and what new political civilian forces have been set in motion, become the fulcrum for this study. The political experience of Guatemala is taken seriously and reviewed in detail. The role of foreign power is neither ignored nor minimized, but essentially this is a study of national elites. The volume covers areas ranging from human rights abuses by past administrations to current problems forced on the regime by a never-ending battle against terrorism and insurgency. It concludes with a fine bibliographical essay and an excellent set of reference tools for the specialist. In short, whether a person seeks a quick overview, or the scholar aims for precise data and theory, this is the state of the art book on Guatemala for the late 1980s going into the electoral period of the early 1990s.

Author: Patricia Harms
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826361463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

View

Book Description
In this groundbreaking new study on ladinas in Guatemala City, Patricia Harms contests the virtual erasure of women from the country’s national memory and its historical consciousness. Harms focuses on Spanish-speaking women during the “revolutionary decade” and the “liberalism” periods, revealing a complex, significant, and palpable feminist movement that emerged in Guatemala during the 1870s and remained until 1954. During this era ladina social activists not only struggled to imagine a place for themselves within the political and social constructs of modern Guatemala, but they also wrestled with ways in which to critique and identify Guatemala’s gendered structures within the context of repressive dictatorial political regimes and entrenched patriarchy. Harms’s study of these women and their struggles fills a sizeable gap in the growing body of literature on women’s suffrage, social movements, and political culture in modern Latin America. It is a valuable addition to students and scholars studying the rich history of the region.

Author: Knut Walter
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
To many observers, Anastasio Somoza, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956, personified the worst features of a dictator. While not dismissing these characteristics, Knut Walter argues that the regime was in fact more notable for its achievement of stability, economic growth, and state building than for its personalistic and dictatorial features. Using a wide range of sources in Nicaraguan archives, Walter focuses on institutional and structural developments to explain how Somoza gained and consolidated power. According to Walter, Somoza preferred to resolve conflicts by political means rather than by outright coercion. Specifically, he built his government on agreements negotiated with the country's principal political actors, labor groups, and business organizations. Nicaragua's two traditional parties, one conservative and the other liberal, were included in elections, thus giving the appearance of political pluralism. Partly as a result, the opposition was forced to become increasingly radical, says Walter; eventually, in 1979, Nicaragua produced the only successful revolution in Central America and the first in all of Latin America since Cuba's.

Author: Richard H. Immerman
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292788673
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 392

View

Book Description
A history and analysis of the United States’ involvement in the deposition of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and the consequences. Using documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, recently opened archival collections, and interviews with the actual participants, Immerman provides us with a definitive, powerfully written, and tension-packed account of the United States’ clandestine operations in Guatemala and their consequences in Latin America today. “A valuable study of what Immerman correctly portrays as a seminal event, not just in the annals of the Cold War, but in U.S.–Latin American relations.” —Washington Monthly “A damning indictment of American interference abroad.” —Pittsburgh Press “A masterpiece of analysis.” —Reviews in American History

Author: James Mahoney
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801876427
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

View

Book Description
Winner of the Barrington Moore Jr. Prize for the Best Book in Comparative and Historical Sociology from the American Sociological AssociationWinner of the Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization Section from the American Political Science Association Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of "path dependence," Mahoney shows how choices made at crucial turning points in Central American history established certain directions of change and foreclosed others to shape long-term development. By the middle of the twentieth century, three types of political regimes characterized the five nations considered in this study: military-authoritarian (Guatemala, El Salvador), liberal democratic (Costa Rica), and traditional dictatorial (Honduras, Nicaragua). As Mahoney shows, each type is the end point of choices regarding state and agrarian development made by these countries early in the nineteenth century. Applying his conclusions to present-day attempts at market creation in a neoliberal era, Mahoney warns that overzealous pursuit of market creation can have severely negative long-term political consequences. The Legacies of Liberalism presents new insight into the role of leadership in political development, the place of domestic politics in the analysis of foreign intervention, and the role of the state in the creation of early capitalism. The book offers a general theoretical framework that will be of broad interest to scholars of comparative politics and political development, and its overall argument will stir debate among historians of particular Central American countries.

Author: Julie Gibbings
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477320873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

View

Book Description
Guatemala’s “Ten Years of Spring” (1944–1954) began when citizens overthrew a military dictatorship and ushered in a remarkable period of social reform. This decade of progressive policies ended abruptly when a coup d’état, backed by the United States at the urging of the United Fruit Company, deposed a democratically elected president and set the stage for a period of systematic human rights abuses that endured for generations. Presenting the research of diverse anthropologists and historians, Out of the Shadow offers a new examination of this pivotal chapter in Latin American history. Marshaling information on regions that have been neglected by other scholars, such as coastlines dominated by people of African descent, the contributors describe an era when Guatemalan peasants, Maya and non-Maya alike, embraced change, became landowners themselves, diversified agricultural production, and fully engaged in electoral democracy. Yet this volume also sheds light on the period’s atrocities, such as the US Public Health Service’s medical experimentation on Guatemalans between 1946 and 1948. Rethinking institutional memories of the Cold War, the book concludes by considering the process of translating memory into possibility among present-day urban activists.

Author: Frank M. Afflitto
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292784457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

View

Book Description
The last three decades of the twentieth century brought relentless waves of death squads, political kidnappings, and other traumas to the people of Guatemala. Many people fled the country to escape the violence. Yet, at the same moment, a popular movement for justice brought together unlikely bands of behind-the-scenes heroes, blurring ethnic, geographic, and even class lines. The Quiet Revolutionaries is drawn from interviews conducted by Frank Afflitto in the early 1990s with more than eighty survivors of the state-sanctioned violence. Gathered under frequently life-threatening circumstances, the observations and recollections of these inspiring men and women form a unique perspective on collective efforts to produce change in politics, law, and public consciousness. Examined from a variety of perspectives, from sociological to historical, their stories form a rich ethnography. While it is still too soon to tell whether stable, long-term democracy will prevail in Guatemala, the successes of these fascinating individuals provide a unique understanding of revolutionary resistance.