A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala
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...
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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.
Pt. 1 Struggle and Survival 11 Q'Anjob'Al Canadian 32 Nobel K'Iche 173 Jakaltek American 264 Dona Magdalena 325 Through a Lens, Darkly 396 Devils and Angels 42Pt. 2 Blood and Ink 477 The Delivery Man 498 Into the Fire 509 Peace of the Dead 5710 Futility at the Polls 6611 Civilian Rule 7112 A Militarized Society 7513 The Daily News 8014 The Fiction of Democracy 9015 Searching for Peace 9416 Scarred by War 9817 How Was Guatemala? 104Pt. 3 Spaniards, Ladinos, and the Enduring Maya 10518 The Colonial Experience 10719 The Century After Independence 12020 Arbenz and the Fruit Company 13221 The T-Shirt Parade 13822 Natives in the Backcountry 144Epilogue 149A Guatemalan Gallery Follows Page 180 180Sources and Commentary 181Index 203
