Paradise in ashes : a Guatemalan journey of courage, terror, and hope /

Manz (ethnic studies, Univ. of California, Berkeley) tells the remarkable history of Santa Maria Tzeja, the only community whose Maya and non-Maya villagers reunited after suffering one of the 600-plus massacres committed during Guatemala's civil war. Using three decades of research, Manz recounts the community's 1970s founding by a Spanish priest and land-starved peasants; its 1982 destruction and reorganization as a military strategic hamlet; and the 1994 reunification of the scattered settlers (refugees in Mexico and the strategic hamlet inmates) after extensive negotiations. She meticulously documents how people decided (some impetuously, others deliberately) whether to support the guerrillas or the military, and how people changed their positions, and sometimes memories, over time. Manz argues that the community's considerable achievements and reconciliation are based on a "consciousness of community" fostered by cooperatives and liberation theology. Unfortunately, as she and others demonstrate, the reunification was a costly one-time deal with an uncertain future. Her material is strongest on the first settlers and strategic hamlet families, thinner on the Mexican refugees and the problematic settlers who took displaced peoples' lands. Nevertheless, this is an unflinching and ultimately fair account of Guatemala's civil war in the complex lowland settlements. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/collections. A. E. Adams Central Connecticut State University

Studies of genocide, military repression and the victimization of Latin American peasants tend to be ordeals for all but the most dedicated reader, full of stultifying statistics and harrowing violent incidents. But this account of the settlement, destruction and rebuilding of a single Guatemalan village, Santa Maria Tzeja, is as emotionally enveloping as an Isabel Allende novel. Manz, a Chilean anthropologist, did over two decades of field work in the Mayan highlands and rain forests, and her deep familiarity with her subjects allows them to emerge as characters with individual hopes, dreams and sophisticated political goals. Santa Maria Tzeja was founded as a farming cooperative in the 1970s by intrepid Mayan and Ladino peasants seeking to escape the crushing debt peonage of the lowland plantations, but precisely because of its remote highland location, it was caught in the crossfire of the Guatemalan civil war. In 1982, after several years of escalating violence and intimidation, the village was brutally destroyed in an army raid retaliating against villagers' involvement with the guerrillas. From then on, the community was split, and Manz was often the only link among former inhabitants; some had fled to a refugee camp across the border in Mexico, while a remnant submitted to authoritarian "reorganization" by the military. Through interviews (and 23 b&w photos), villagers like Edwin Canil, a young boy who lost his entire family in the 1982 raid, or Rose, whose husband was "disappeared" by the army, reveal their struggles to uphold and return to their ideals of community, honor and independence through land ownership. Manz, a vivid and capable writer, is thoughtful about the contradictions inherent in her chosen discipline of "political anthropology," which turns out to include activism and advocacy as well as the humanization of those who too often suffer anonymously. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved