This field guide to oral history in Latin America addresses methodological, ethical, and interpretive issues arising from the region's unique milieu. With careful consideration of the challenges of working in Latin America - including those of language, culture, performance, translation, and political instability - David Carey Jr. provides guidance for those conducting oral history research in the postcolonial world. In regions such as Latin America, where nations that have been subjected to violent colonial and neocolonial forces continue to strive for just and peaceful societies, decolonizing research and analysis is imperative. Carey deploys case studies and examples in ways that will resonate with anyone who is interested in oral history.

Drawing on years of research among the Maya, David Carey documents the role of women in modern Mayan Communities. The text presents the fascinating oral histories of women as told in their native language, Kaqchikel, covering their views on education, labour, work in the home, female leadership, and globalization. Significant events in Mayan history are explored, focusing on their importance to women and how the inherent gender differences in Mayan society impact on their historical perspectives approaches to recording history. This intimate view of modern Mayan history reveals the extent to which women's diligence and creativity has provided them with increased autonomy in their society, bolstered their earnings, and helped them to assert their indispensable roles within communities. One of the first books to present the history of Mayan women in their own voices, this text will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, history and gender studies.

This field guide to oral history in Latin America addresses methodological, ethical, and interpretive issues arising from the region's unique milieu. With careful consideration of the challenges of working in Latin America - including those of language, culture, performance, translation, and political instability - David Carey Jr. provides guidance for those conducting oral history research in the postcolonial world. In regions such as Latin America, where nations that have been subjected to violent colonial and neocolonial forces continue to strive for just and peaceful societies, decolonizing research and analysis is imperative. Carey deploys case studies and examples in ways that will resonate with anyone who is interested in oral history.

Sugar, coffee, corn, and chocolate have long dominated the study of Central American commerce, and researchers tend to overlook one other equally significant commodity: alcohol. Often illicitly produced and consumed, aguardiente (distilled sugar cane spirits or rum) was central to Guatemalan daily life, though scholars have often neglected its fundamental role in the country's development. Throughout world history, alcohol has helped build family livelihoods, boost local economies, and forge nations. The alcohol economy also helped shape Guatemala's turbulent categories of ethnicity, race, class, and gender, as these essays demonstrate. Established and emerging Guatemalan historians investigate aguardiente's role from the colonial era to the twentieth century, drawing from archival documents, oral histories, and ethnographic sources. Topics include women in the alcohol trade, taverns as places of social unrest, and tension between Maya and State authority. By tracing Guatemala's past, people, and national development through the channel of an alcoholic beverage, Distilling the Influence of Alcohol opens new directions for Central American historical and anthropological research.

This exceptional collection revisits the aftermath of the 1954 coup that ousted the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. Contributors frame the impact of 1954 not only in terms of the liberal reforms and coffee revolutions of the nineteenth century, but also in terms of post-1954 U.S. foreign policy and the genocide of the 1970s and 1980s. This volume is of particular interest in the current era of the United States' re-emerging foreign policy based on preemptive strikes and a presumed clash of civilizations. Recent research and the release of newly declassified U.S. government documents underscore the importance of reading Guatemala's current history through the lens of 1954. Scholars and researchers who have worked in Guatemala from the 1940s to the present articulate how the coup fits into ethnographic representations of Guatemala. Highlighting the voices of individuals with whom they have lived and worked, the contributors also offer an unmatched understanding of how the events preceding and following the coup played out on the ground. Contributors are Abigail E. Adams, Richard N. Adams, David Carey Jr., Christa Little-Siebold, Judith M. Maxwell, Victor D. Montejo, June C. Nash, and Timothy J. Smith.

Drawing on years of research among the Maya, David Carey documents the role of women in modern Mayan Communities. The text presents the fascinating oral histories of women as told in their native language, Kaqchikel, covering their views on education, labour, work in the home, female leadership, and globalization. Significant events in Mayan history are explored, focusing on their importance to women and how the inherent gender differences in Mayan society impact on their historical perspectives approaches to recording history. This intimate view of modern Mayan history reveals the extent to which women's diligence and creativity has provided them with increased autonomy in their society, bolstered their earnings, and helped them to assert their indispensable roles within communities. One of the first books to present the history of Mayan women in their own voices, this text will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, history and gender studies.