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'etat, 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.

Postcolonial histories have long emphasized the darker side of narratives of historical progress, especially their role in underwriting global and racial hierarchies. Concepts like primitiveness, backwardness, and underdevelopment not only racialized and gendered peoples and regions, but also ranked them on a seemingly naturalized timeline - their 'present' is our 'past' - and reframed the politics of capitalist expansion and colonization as an orderly, natural process of evolution towards modernity. Our Time is Now reveals that modernity particularly appealed to those excluded from power, precisely because of its aspirational and future orientation. In the process, marginalized peoples creatively imagined diverse political futures that redefined the racialized and temporal terms of modernity. Employing a critical reading of a wide variety of previously untapped sources, Julie Gibbings demonstrates how the struggle between indigenous people and settlers to manage contested ideas of time and history as well as practices of modern politics, economics, and social norms were central to the rise of coffee capitalism in Guatemala and to twentieth century populist dictatorship and revolution.

Postcolonial histories have long emphasized the darker side of narratives of historical progress, especially their role in underwriting global and racial hierarchies. Concepts like primitiveness, backwardness, and underdevelopment not only racialized and gendered peoples and regions, but also ranked them on a seemingly naturalized timeline - their 'present' is our 'past' - and reframed the politics of capitalist expansion and colonization as an orderly, natural process of evolution towards modernity. Our Time is Now reveals that modernity particularly appealed to those excluded from power, precisely because of its aspirational and future orientation. In the process, marginalized peoples creatively imagined diverse political futures that redefined the racialized and temporal terms of modernity. Employing a critical reading of a wide variety of previously untapped sources, Julie Gibbings demonstrates how the struggle between indigenous people and settlers to manage contested ideas of time and history as well as practices of modern politics, economics, and social norms were central to the rise of coffee capitalism in Guatemala and to twentieth century populist dictatorship and revolution.

Negotiating Identities in Modern Latin America explores some of the ways in which people define their membership in groups and their collective identity, as well as some of the challenges to the definition and maintenance of that identity. This interdisciplinary collection of essays, addressing such diverse topics as the history of Brazilian football and the concept of masculinity in the Mexican army, provides new insights into questions of identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America. The essays cover a wide range of countries in the region, from Mexico to Argentina, and analyze a variety of identity-bearing groups, from small-scale communities to nations. Hendrik Kraay has gathered contributions from historians and anthropologists. Their individual methodological and theoretical approaches combine to paint a picture of Latin American society that is both complex and compelling. The chapters focus on the day-to-day construction of identity among ordinary people, from American nationals living in Peru to indigenous communities in Argentina. With Contributions By: Gregg Bocketti Maria Eugenia Brockmann Dannenmaier Denise Fay Brown Maria Cecilia Velasco e Cruz Julie Gibbings Louise Guenther Ronald Harpelle Hendrik Kraay Jennifer Manthei Stephen Neufeld Marjorie M. Snipes