Conquest And Survival In Colonial Guatemala 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.

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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.

Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? Laura Matthew's study of Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala--the first study to focus on a single allied colony over the entire colonial period--places the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala and their descendants within a deeply Mesoamerican historical context. Drawing on archives, ethnography, and colonial Mesoamerican maps, Matthew argues that the conquest cannot be fully understood without considering how these Indian conquistadors first invaded and then, of their own accord and largely by their own rules, settled in Central America. Shaped by pre-Columbian patterns of empire, alliance, warfare, and migration, the members of this diverse indigenous community became unified as the Mexicanos--descendants of Indian conquistadors in their adopted homeland. Their identity and higher status in Guatemalan society derived from their continued pride in their heritage, says Matthew, but also depended on Spanish colonialism's willingness to honor them. Throughout Memories of Conquest, Matthew charts the power of colonialism to reshape and restrict Mesoamerican society--even for those most favored by colonial policy and despite powerful continuities in Mesoamerican culture.

Examines how horses shaped society, politics, and imperial control during the first century of conquest and colonization in Spanish America.

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.

This book examines the experiences of orphaned child survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year internal armed conflict and genocide who were raised in an in-country permanent residential home. Now adults, they have faced long-term consequences but also have become resilient, well-adapted adults with a strong sense of identity and belonging.

In 1996, the Guatemalan civil war ended with the signing of the Peace Accords, facilitated by the United Nations and promoted as a beacon of hope for a country with a history of conflict. Twenty years later, the new era of political protest in Guatemala is highly complex and contradictory: the persistence of colonialism, fraught indigenous-settler relations, political exclusion, corruption, criminal impunity, gendered violence, judicial procedures conducted under threat, entrenched inequality, as well as economic fragility. Human and Environmental Justice in Guatemala examines the complexities of the quest for justice in Guatemala, and the realities of both new forms of resistance and long-standing obstacles to the rule of law in the human and environmental realms. Written by prominent scholars and activists, this book explores high-profile trials, the activities of foreign mining companies, attempts to prosecute war crimes, and cultural responses to injustice in literature, feminist performance art and the media. The challenges to human and environmental capacities for justice are constrained, or facilitated, by factors that shape culture, politics, society, and the economy. The contributors to this volume include Guatemalans such as the human rights activist Helen Mack Chang, the environmental journalist Magal? Rey Rosa, former Guatemalan Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, as well as widely published Guatemala scholars.