Taking Their Word

Taking Their Word

Author: Arturo Arias

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published:

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1452913161

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Central Americans are one of the largest Latino population groups in the United States. Yet, Arturo Arias argues, the cultural production of Central Americans remains little known to North Americans. In Taking Their Word, Arias complicates notions of the cultural production of Central America, from Mexico in the North to Panama in the South. He charts the literature of Central America’s liberation struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, its transformation after peace treaties were signed, the emergence of a new Maya literature that decenters Latin American literature written in Spanish, and the rise and fall of testimonio. Arias demonstrates that Central America and its literature are marked by an indigenousness that has never before been fully theorized or critically grasped. Never one to avoid controversy, Arias proffers his views of how the immigration of Central Americans to North America has changed the cultural topography of both zones. With this groundbreaking work, Arias establishes the importance of Central American literature and provides a frame for future studies of the region’s culture. Arturo Arias is director of Latin American studies at the University of Redlands. He is the author of six novels in Spanish and editor of The Rigoberta Mench Controversy (Minnesota, 2001).


The Fourth Invasion

The Fourth Invasion

Author: Giovanni Batz

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0520401735

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research, The Fourth Invasion examines an Ixil Maya community's movement against the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. The arrival of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant (built by the Italian corporation Enel Green Power) to the municipality of Cotzal highlighted the ongoing violence inflicted on Ixils by outsiders and the Guatemalan state. Locals referred to the building of the hydroelectric plant as the "new invasion" or "fourth invasion" for its similarity to preceding invasions: Spanish colonization, the creation of the plantation economy, and the state-led genocide during the Guatemalan armed conflict. Through a historical account of cyclical waves of invasions and resistance in Cotzal during the four invasions, Giovanni Batz argues that extractivist industries are a continuation of a colonial logic of extraction based on the displacement and destruction of Indigenous Peoples' territories and values that has existed since the arrival of the Spanish in 1524. The current movements in Cotzal, rooted in a long history of resistance, counter dominant narratives of Indigenous Peoples that often portray them as "conquered."


Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context

Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context

Author: Gloria Elizabeth Chacón

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2022-06-15

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1603295895

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Central America has a long history as a site of cultural and political exchange, from Mayan and Nahua trade networks to the effects of Spanish imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. In Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, instructors will find practical, interdisciplinary, and innovative pedagogical approaches to the cultures of Central America that are adaptable to various fields of study. The essays map out classroom lessons that encourage students to relate writings and films to their own experience of global interconnectedness and to read critically the history that binds Central America to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In the context of debates about immigration and a growing Central American presence in the United States, this book provides vital resources about the region's cultural production and covers trends in Central American literary studies including Mayan and other Indigenous literatures, modernismo, Jewish and Afro-descendant literatures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and contemporary texts and films. This volume contains discussion of the following authors, filmmakers, and public figures: Humberto Ak'abal, María José Álvarez and Martha Clarissa Hernández, Dennis Ávila, Abner Benaim, Jayro Bustamante, Berta Cáceres, Isaac Esau Carrillo Can, Jennifer Cárcamo, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Quince Duncan, Jacinta Escudos, Regina José Galindo, Francisco Gavidia, Francisco Goldman, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Gaspar Pedro González, Carlos "Cubena" Guillermo Wilson, Eduardo Halfon, Tatiana Huezo, Florence Jaugey, Hernán Jimenez, Óscar Martínez, Victor Montejo, Marisol Ceh Moo, Victor Perera, Archbishop Óscar Romero, José Coronel Urtecho, and Marcela Zamora.


Practicing Memory in Central American Literature

Practicing Memory in Central American Literature

Author: N. Caso

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-03-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0230106250

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Through penetrating analysis of twentieth-century historical fiction from Central America this book asks: why do so many literary texts in the region address historical issues? What kinds of stories are told about the past when authors choose the fictional realm to represent history? Why access memory through fiction and poetry? Nicole Caso traces the active interplay between language, space, and memory in the continuous process of defining local identities through literature. Ultimately, this book looks to the dynamic between form and content to identify potential maps that are suggested in each of these texts in order to imagine possibilities of action in the future.


Recovering Lost Footprints, Volume 1

Recovering Lost Footprints, Volume 1

Author: Arturo Arias

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2017-09-14

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1438467419

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Recovering Lost Footprints is the first full-length critical study to analyze Latin American Indigenous literary narratives in a systematic manner. In the book, Arturo Arias looks at Maya narratives in Guatemala. The study of these works is intended to spark changes so that constitutions recognize these cultures, their rights, their languages, their centers of worship, and their cosmologies. Through this study, Arias problematizes the partial or full omission of Latin America's original inhabitants from recognized citizenry. This book analyzes these elements of exclusion in the novelistic output of three salient figures, Luis de Lión, Gaspar Pedro González, and Víctor Montejo. The works by these writers offer evidence that most native people have entered modernity without renouncing their respective cultures or the specifics of their singular identities. The philosophical ethics elaborated in the texts, such as respect for nature and recognition of the holistic value of natural beings, enable non-Indigenous readers to both understand and relate to these values.


Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures

Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures

Author: Juan G. Ramos

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-21

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1349933589

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Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures engages and problematizes concepts such as “decolonial” and “coloniality” to question methodologies in literary and cultural scholarship. While the eleven contributions produce diverse approaches to literary and cultural texts ranging from Pre-Columbian to contemporary works, there is a collective questioning of the very idea of “Latin America,” what “Latin American” contains or leaves out, and the various practices and locations constituting Latinamericanism. This transdisciplinary study aims to open an evolving corpus of decolonial scholarship, providing a unique entry point into the literature and material culture produced from precolonial to contemporary times.


Latin America

Latin America

Author: Juan Manuel Pérez

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13:

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This is a general bibliography on Latin America, covering a wide variety of subjects, from pre-Columbian civilizations, to Columbus, to Castro, to the foreign debt, to pollution, ect. This work will not only be of use to the general, casual reader on Latin America, but also to the more specialized researcher. The book contains over 800 topics, with over 8,000 titles identified.