Manz, B: Papradise in Ashes - A Guatemalan Journey of Courag: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope Volume 8 (California Series in Public Anthropology, Band 8)

"Manz captures one of the most tragic periods of Guatemalan history with truly extraordinary insight, intimacy and brilliance. Myrna Mack, her friend and colleague, was murdered by the military, but ultimately the epic story of these isolated areas could not be extinguished. This outstanding, courageous and committed anthropologist has given us a precious gift in these pages--a masterpiece that is sure to become a classic of this troubled time."--Helen Mack Chang, President of the Myrna Mack Foundation and recipient of the 1992 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.""Much more than the ethnography of a beleaguered village in Guatemala, "Paradise in Ashes is about how international politics, in this case, the Cold War, played itself out within a culture that is every bit as 'foreign' as that of Iraq or Afghanistan. Combining a lifetime of uncommonly solid scholarship with a lively, accessible style, Manz has produced a genuine landmark, blending the local with the global into a compelling new approach to problems that continue to bedevil our world."--Lars Schoultz, author of "Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America"Manz reads the larger political, national, and international contexts into the gripping and nail-biting horror stories she tells about the life, death, and rebirth of Santa Maria Tzeja, a tough little village in Guatemala to which she is emotionally and politically bound for life. More than any anthropologist of her generation Manz is both ethnographer and companera."--Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of "Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil""Paradise in Ashes is a masterpiece. Writtenwith a lucid and sensitive anthropological eye it is a work of scholarly and literary excellence. There is no happy ending to this remarkable, revealing story. Nonetheless, the strength, courage and hope of the Mayans, poignantly revealed by Beatriz Manz, makes this, after al