DC Public Library System

Paraíso en cenizas, una odisea de valentía, terror y esperanza en Guatemala, Beatriz Manz ; prefacio Aryeh Neier ; [traducción Mario Zamudio]

spa

Includes bibliographical references and index

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Paraíso en cenizas

bibliography

794004469

Beatriz Manz ; prefacio Aryeh Neier ; [traducción Mario Zamudio]

"Paradise in Ashes is a moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. Beatriz Manz, an anthropologist who spent more than two decades studying the Mayan highlands and rain forests of Guatemala, tells the story of the remote village of Santa Maria Tzeja, near the Mexican border. Manz shows how the story of this village - its birth, destruction, and rebirth - embodies the forces and conflicts that define Guatemala today. She places the saga of Santa Maria Tzeja in a broad framework that encompasses Guatemala's tortured history, the conflicts of the cold war, and the tensions of contemporary globalization. Her chronicle demonstrates that it is in villages such as this that the difficult struggle for survival is unfolding." "Drawing on her interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and members of the paramilitary forces, Manz creates a detailed political portrait of Santa Maria Tzeja, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. She describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country in the 1980s. After the village was viciously sacked in 1982, some desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa Maria Tzeja, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives."--Jacket

una odisea de valentía, terror y esperanza en Guatemala

Highland homeland -- Settling in the promised land -- The war finds paradise -- Ashes, exodus and faded dreams -- A militarized village -- Reunification -- Treading between fear and hope