Some of our suggestions for further reading: (To view this list in WORD format CLICK HERE)
PREPARATION FOR INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS
Foreign to Familiar: Understanding Hot and Cold Climate Cultures. By Sarah A. Lanier, 2000. (A brief and insightful look into cross-cultural communication and relationships by highlighting the differences between cultures in hot and cold climates.)
Survival Kit for Overseas Living, Fourth Edition: For Americans Planning to Live and Work Abroad. By L. Robert Kohls, 2001.
HISTORICAL
Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy. By Victor Perera, 1995, (Explores the current situation of the Mayan people and the long history preceding it.)
The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galleano, 1998 (update) (Analyzes the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America, presenting a clear and passionate account of almost 500 years of its history.)
Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the U.S. 1944-54 by Piero Gleijeses, 1992, (Analyzes the history and downfall of what arguably was Guatemala’s best government, the short-lived regime of Jacobo Arbenz overthrown in 1954 by a CIA-orchestrated coup.)
Beneath the United States by Lars Schoultz, 2003 (One of the foremost Latin America scholars shows how the U.S. has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor. He demonstrates that not until the U.S. perceives its southern neighbors as equals can we anticipate a constructive hemispheric alliance.)
Our Own Backyard: The U.S. in Central America, 1977-1992 by William M. Leogrande, 1998, (Shows the connection between the political struggles in Washington and the internal dynamics in Central American, and how the interplay shaped history.
Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala 1952-1954 by Nick Cullather, Piero Gleijeses, 2002
Guatemala : Memory of Silence, Report of the government’s Commission for Historical Clarification: Conclusions and Recommendations – easier to get in Guatemala
Guatemala : Never Again! REMHI – Recovery of Historical Memory Project, Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala – (Alternates graphic eyewitness testimony with conclusions about the origins, nature, and impact of the devastating violence from the 1970’s through the 1990’s.)
Our Culture is Our Resistance: Repression, Refuge, and Healing in Guatemala by Jonathan Moller, 2004 (With his photographs the author reminds the present generation of the extreme wave of brutality that engulfed the people of Guatemala over twenty years ago.)
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL – WAR RELATED
I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchu, 1987, (Nobel Prize winner’s story of a young Guatemalan peasant woman who suffered the murders of her father, mother and brother at the hands of the Guatemalan military.)
The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey From Torture to Truth by Sister Dianna Ortiz, 2002, (The story of the torture of a U.S. nun in Guatemala .)
Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village by Victor Montejo, 1987, (Personal testimony of a teacher, describing the arrival of the army in a small highland village, and the killing that followed.)
LABOR EXPLOITATION
Silence on the Mountain: The Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala by Daniel Wilkinson, 2004 ( The author’s investigation of the arson of a coffee plantation’s manor broaden into a complex mystery, requiring Wilkinson to dig up largely unwritten history of Guatemala’s recent war, following its roots back to the land reform movement.)
Shattered Hope: Guatemalan Workers and the Promise of Democracy by James A. Goldston
CULTURE
Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala by Kay B. Warren, 1998 (After ten years of war and state repression, the author depicts, through the examination of Mayanist antiracism activists and grassroots intellectuals, how the Maya movement has reemerged to press for the revitalization of Maya language and culture.)
RACISM
The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation by Greg Grandin, 2000, (Describes how the efforts of Mayan elites in Quetzaltenango to maintain authority over the indigenous population and to secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation.)
The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America and the Cold War by Greg Grandin, 2004
PEACE PROCESS
Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s Peace Process by Susanne Jonas, 2000 (Details the byzantine process by which Guatemala’s military-dominated regime reached the historic 1996 peace accords with its rebel opponents and broader civil society.)
HUMAN RIGHTS
The Hidden Powers in Post-Conflict Guatemala , WOLA, 2003, Book can be downloaded from WOLA website [below]. (Examines the nature and impact of present-day illegal armed groups in Guatemala , and the forces behind them.)
The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America by Edward L. Cleary, 1997 (Examines the origin, spread and results of human rights movements in Latin America .)
Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala by Virginia Sanford, 2003
ANTHROPOLOGY
Mayan Cosmogenesis 2012: The Meaning of the Mayan Calendar by John Major Jenkins
Time and the Highland Maya by Barbara Tedlock (A landmark in the ethnographic study of the Mayan account of ritual and cosmology among the Mayan people in Momostenango, Totonicapán.)
Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemala Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope by Beatriz Maanz (Anthropologist’s moving chronicle of Guatemalan villagers who experienced unspeakable injustice during the 1980’s.)
THEOLOGY/RELIGION
Popul Vuh – The Book of Ancient Maya – best translation is by Dennis Tedlock
Protestanism In Guatemala : Living in the New Jerusalem by Virginia Garrard-Burnett, 1998 (Focuses on the rise of Protestantism within the ethnic and political history of Guatemala .)
Hope for the World: Mission in a Global Context edited by Walter Bruggemann, 2001 (The older patterns of ministry cannot cope with the deeply rooted spiritual crisis that is manifested economically, politically, and militarily in the globalization of wealth. The international scholars in this volume have remarkable insights, as well as numerous critical questions that should be read so that churches can develop the resistances, critiques, and transformation of genuine hope.)
A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation by Gustavo Gutierrez, 1998 [update] (The first and probably the most crucial book on liberation theology to follow Vatican II and the Medellín conferences. Not an easy book to read, but for any student of modern theology, this book is well worth the time and effort.)
BOOKS ON HEALTH/POLITICS
Where There is No Doctor by David Werner, 2003 [update] (“Bible” of Third World rural health care, translated into over 80 languages.)
The Struggle for Health: Medicine and the Politics of Underdevelopment by David Sanders, 1991, (Argues for a radically different approach to health care in underdeveloped countries, in particular the active participation of communities in promoting their own health, rather than health care imported wholesale from the developed world.)
Sickness and Wealth: The Corporate Assault on Global Health, edited by Meredith Fort, et al (Reveals how plans implemented by the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and other first world interests drastically limit access to medical care and essentially sentence millions to disease and premature death.)
Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing and Chinese Medicine by Hernán Garcia, et al (This book was originally published in Spanish by Mexican physicians as a manual for health workers in Mayan areas to bridge the gulf between Western medical techniques and Mayan medical knowledge. In the process the doctors discovered that the similarities between Mayan medicine and traditional Chinese medicine were profound and helpful in their work.)
WEBSITES
Offer updated information, as well as opportunities for active involvement.
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), www.wola.org – Highly respected non-governmental organization based in Washington D.C. which since 1975 has been monitoring the impact of U.S. foreign policy on human rights, democracy, and equitable development in the region.
Latinamerica Press, www.lapress.org – Non-governmental organization in Peru specializing in the publication of information and analysis about events in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Click on country of choice.
Central America Report, www.inforpressca.com/CAR/ – Excellent weekly news and analysis of trends and events throughout Central America .
Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala – NISGUA, www.nisgua.org – activist organization, which sends out urgent action alerts during human rights emergencies.
Foundation for Human Rights in Guatemala , http://fhrg.org – An overview of the current situation, with detailed reports and analysis on human rights issues.
The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission/USA, www.ghrc-usa.org – Extensive monitoring of current Guatemalan human rights issues, with bi-monthly updates and analysis.
Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico , www.rtfcam.org – In-depth coverage of regional news and current U.S. policy. Seeks to articulate a spirit of solidarity, and to empower a prophetic witness within the church.
Envío, www.envio.org.ni/archivo.en/2008 (or whatever year) – monthly magazine with information and in-depth analysis on Central American issues, particularly Nicaragua. Published by the Jesuits – available in English and Spanish
People’s Health Movement, www.phmovement.org – The People’s Health Movement is an international coalition of individuals and grassroots organizations dedicated to challenging the prevailing systems of health care that are failing to serve most of the world’s poor.
