Suchergebnisse

The eruption and spread of COVID-19 affords us the opportunity to look back and reflect on the role disease has played in shaping Indigenous destinies in the Americas. Discussion illuminates problems of data, chronology, impact, and identification in distinct settings — Hispaniola, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil — and situates regional findings, historically, in hemispheric and global context.

Jacaltenango is a forlorn, unkempt-looking town lying in the tierra templada toward the western edge of the Cuchumatán highlands of Guatemala. It is perhaps best known to the academic world as a stop on the route taken by Frans Blom and Oliver La Farge (1926, 1927) in their pioneering reconnaissance of Mesoamerica earlier this century, a place to which the latter returned with Douglas Byers to document an intriguing array of Maya cultural survivals (La Farge and Byers 1931). More recently, one of its native sons has given local lore and storytelling eloquent written form, as well as documenting the town's painful experience during counterinsurgency operations in the early 1980s (Montejo 1984, 1987).

Little by little heavy shadows and black night enveloped our fathers and grandfathers and us also, oh, my sons …!All of us were thus. We were born to die!The Annals of the Cakchiquels (ca. 1550–1600)The Maya of Guatemala are today, as they have been in the past, a dominated and beleaguered group. Few have expressed this enduring reality more poignantly than the late Oliver La Farge. Commenting forty years ago on why Kanjobal Indians take to drink, La Farge observed that "while these people undoubtedly suffer from drunkenness, one would hesitate to remove the bottle from them until the entire pattern of their lives is changed. They are an introverted people, consumed by internal fires which they cannot or dare not express, eternally chafing under the yoke of conquest, and never for a moment forgetting that they are a conquered people."

Research on the Central American colonial experience-long overshadowed by the scholarly focus on Mexico and Peru-has begun to blossom, greatly expanding our knowledge of land and life in the region under Spanish rule.

Intro -- Contents -- List of Tables -- List of Maps -- List of Figures -- Foreword -- Native American Populations in 1492: Recent Research and a Revised Hemispheric Estimate -- Supplementary Bibliography -- Preface to the First Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Part I: Estimating the Unknown -- Introduction -- 1. The Historical Demography of Aboriginal and Colonial America:An Attempt at Perspective -- Part II: The Caribbean, Central America, and Yucatán -- Introduction -- 2. The Population of Hispaniola at the Time of Columbus -- 3. The Indian Slave Trade and Population of Nicaragua during the Sixteenth Century -- Part III: Mexico -- Introduction -- 4. The Population of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region, the Basin of Mexico, and the Teotihuacin Valley in the Sixteenth Century -- Part IV: South America -- Introduction -- 5. A Defense of Small Population Estimates for the Central Andes in 1520 -- 6. A Reexamination of Aboriginal Population Estimates for Argentina -- 7. The Aboriginal Population of Amazonia -- Part V: North America -- Introduction -- 8. The Sources and Methodology for Mooney's Estimates of North American Indian Populations -- Epilogue -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

José Martí, venerado como la gran figura que inspiró la lucha por la independencia cubana, vivió en el exilio la mayor parte de su corta pero extraordinaria vida. Partió de la isla con diecisiete años, empleando las dos siguientes décadas en formular las ideas sobre la libertad de Cuba, lo mismo viajando que residiendo en varias ciudades y escribiendo sobre otros países que se habían liberado del yugo imperial. Mientras que México y los Estados Unidos han sido reconocidos en su importante papel en el desarrollo intelectual de Martí, poca atención se ha prestado a Guatemala, donde se dedicó a la enseñanza, integrándose en los círculos de la élite guatemalteca en 1877 y 1878. Este ensayo examina la experiencia de Martí en Guatemala, y discute cómo en estos años, en el contexto del liberalismo del general Justo Rufino Barrios, conoció un ejemplo concreto de la construcción de una nación. Martí no sólo le demostró admiración, sino que lo tomó como modelo.