| 1994 The University of North Carolina Press |
| Manufactured in the United States of America |
| Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data |
Handy, Jim, 1952
Revolution in the countryside : rural conflict and agrarian reform
in Guatemala, 1944-1954 / by Jim Handy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8078-2127-6 (alk. paper).ISBN 0-8078-4438-I (pbk.: alk. paper)
I. GuatemalaPolitics and government 1945- 1985. 2. Social conflict
GuatemalaHistory. 3. PeasantryGuatemalaHistory.
4. Government, Resistance toGuatemalaHistory. 5. Land reform
Guatemala History. 6. GuatemalaRural conditions. I. Title. |
Jim Handy, professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan,
is author of Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala. |
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. |
| | | | | | | 2. The October Revolution |
| | | 3. "A Sea of Indians": Rural Organization and Ethnic Conflict |
| | | 4. Agrarian Reform: "The Most Precious Fruit of the Revolution" |
| | | 5. Class, Ethnicity, Politics, and the Agrarian Reform |
| | | 6. Community and Revolution |
| | | 7. Communism and the Military |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| | 1. Population by Department, 1950 |
| | | | | 3. Expropriations under Decree 900 by Department |
| | | 4. Large Estates and Percentage of Country's Total Rural Population by Department |
| |
| | 1. General Political Divisions |
| | | | | 3. Major Crops in the 1940s |
| |
| Historians are taught to express certainty. We are trained to avoid "maybe" and "perhaps" as our stories unfold, no matter how perilous the leaps from "fact" to "fact'' we employ in constructing our tales. I have followed that custom in this study. |
| This seems an opportune place, however, to admit to uncertainty. This study is the result of years of research. I have attempted to draw a picture of the revolution in specific Guatemalan villages and in that fashion piece together a broader image of the revolution in the countryside. I believe some insights have resulted, but huge gaps remain. I will never truly understand what the revolution meant to any single community. I will never know exactly how social relations changed, how political change affected perceptions of power and authority, or why some Guatemalans chose to use revolutionary institutions to better their economic circumstances and others did not. |
| Perhaps the area in which my research and the sources have failed me most is in trying to understand how the revolution affected women and gender relations. The sources do provide glimpses: in the few women who won positions in municipal governments, in the antigovernment protests led by market women in Guatemala City and Antigua, in the cases brought by female teachers against school supervisors for sexual harassment, in the active involvement of women teachers in peasant organizations, and in the attempts by the Alianza Femenina to create a credit fund for campesinas. But these glimpses are so rare and scattered that, for the most part, the questions they suggest have not been addressed. They await a different kind of study. |
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