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Archives in the Guatemalan Western Highlands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2022
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The region most often associated with Guatemalan history and culture is the western highlands, known locally as Los Altos. Only thirty miles from the hot Pacific coast, the highlands are located where the sierra rises rapidly to an altitude of three thousand meters, an area of painful beauty captured in Jean-Marie Simon's telling phrase, “eternal spring, eternal tyranny.” Amidst volcanoes, lakes, and cloud-covered mountains, Guatemalans struggle to rebuild civil society in the wake of what may have been the worst repression in the hemisphere, eking out a living by farming exhausted corn plots. The majority of Guatemala's twenty-three ethnic groups reside in these western highlands, where anthropologists have catalogued and attempted to interpret Mayan culture. Here also historians of nineteenth-century Guatemala have constructed a national history outlining the commercialization of land and coercion of labor that accompanied the growth of the Guatemalan coffee industry.
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- Copyright © 1996 by the University of Texas Press
Footnotes
∗
The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support of their respective funding agencies for the research on which this research note is based. Greg Grandin was assisted by an International Pre-Dissertation Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation. René Reeves was aided by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant, with funds from the U.S. Department of Education.
References
1. Jean-Marie Simon, Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987).
2. See David McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); Jim Handy, The Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 1984); and Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988, edited by Carol Smith (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
3. Notable exceptions can be cited: Jean Piel, Sacabaja: Muerte y resurrección de un pueblo de Guatemala, 1500–1970 (Guatemala City: Seminario de Integración Social, 1989); Robert M. Hill and John Monaghan, Continuities in Highland Social Organization: Ethnohistory in Sacapulas, Guatemala (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987); and Robert Carmack's forthcoming study of Momostenango.
4. The term ladino in the Guatemalan context connotes nonindigenous culture and society. Unlike the term mestizo, ladino does not refer to a biological category. Children of indigenous parents as well as those of recent European immigrants may be considered ladinos.
5. The region is beginning to attract scholarly attention. See Jorge González, “A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conflict and National Integration, 1750–1885,” Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994.
6. The second volume, which covers the years 1814 to 1821, is missing.
7. When used in the context of post-independence Guatemala, the term corregidor is nearly synonymous with jefe político, being simply the name given to departmental chiefs from about 1840 to 1871, when Rafael Carrera or his conservative allies ruled Guatemala.
8. Anyone wishing to aid this project may get in touch with either of the authors at our respective universities.
9. In 1994 the governor kindly wrote a letter asking his successors to grant access to the collection to future researchers. A copy of the letter is on file at the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA), in Antigua, Guatemala. Interested scholars may either request a copy of the letter at the CIRMA offices prior to beginning investigations or contact one of us.
10. For a summary of a partial survey of the parish archives around Quezaltenango conducted by a team of Spanish social scientists, see María F. Carbajo Isla, “Interés demográfico de los Archivos Eclesiásticos de la Diócesis de Quezaltenango,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 15 (1984):131–46. The survey was halted in 1980 after the Guatemalan Army firebombed the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City. Carbajo Isla's summary mentions a number of books related to church and cofradía activity that we did not have the opportunity to view.
11. The authors thank Krista Little-Siebold and Todd Little-Siebold for their help in arranging the volumes.
12. See El Curato de San Juan Ostuncalco, vol. 1, Visitas pastorales (1684–1930), compiled by Rainer Hostnig (Quetzaltenango: Centro de Capacitación e Investigación Campesina [CCIC], Diócesis de Quetzaltenango, 1994), 1:10. According to Oscar H. Horst, records for San Antonio, Bobós, and Santa Cruz Cabricán and even some records for Santa Cruz Cajolá are found in the parish offices of San Carlos Sija. See Horst, “La utilización de archivos eclesiásticos en la reconstrucción de la historia demográfica de San Juan Ostuncalco,” Meso-américa, no. 22 (Dec. 1991):212–14.
13. Those desiring a more detailed breakdown and description of the records found in Ostuncalco's parish archive should consult Hostnig's compilation.
14. Robert M. Carmack, Historia social de los quichés (Guatemala City: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1979); and Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya, rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992).
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