Contraband Corridor

Contraband Corridor
Author: Rebecca B. Galemba
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804799133

The Mexico-Guatemala border has emerged as a geopolitical hotspot of illicit flows of both goods and people. Contraband Corridor seeks to understand the border from the perspective of its long-term inhabitants, including petty smugglers of corn, clothing, and coffee. Challenging assumptions regarding security, trade, and illegality, Rebecca Berke Galemba details how these residents engage in and justify extralegal practices in the context of heightened border security, restricted economic opportunities, and exclusionary trade policies. Rather than assuming that extralegal activities necessarily threaten the state and formal economy, Galemba's ethnography illustrates the complex ways that the formal, informal, legal, and illegal economies intertwine. Smuggling basic commodities across the border provides a means for borderland peasants to make a living while neoliberal economic policies decimate agricultural livelihoods. Yet smuggling also exacerbates prevailing inequalities, obstructs the possibility of more substantive political and economic change, and provides low-risk economic benefits to businesses, state agents, and other illicit actors, often at the expense of border residents. Galemba argues that securitized neoliberalism values certain economic activities and actors while excluding and criminalizing others, even when the informal and illicit economy is increasingly one of the poor's only remaining options. Contraband Corridor contends that security, neoliberalism, and illegality are interdependent in complex ways, yet how they unfold depends on negotiations between diverse border actors.

Orchids of Mexico and Guatemala

Orchids of Mexico and Guatemala
Author: James Bateman
Publisher: John Denson
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2008-11-29
Genre: Gardening
ISBN: 0557659833

The Orchids of Mexico and Guatemala is a lavishly illustrated orchid classic from the mid-19th century. This book describes an orchid expedition and the adventures that collectors experienced in the New World. Forty orchids are featured with beautiful full color illustrations. This book is a revised and expanded edition of the original 1843 edition. Originally, only royalty and the wealthiest men in Europe could purchase this book. Now it is available to every orchid enthusiast.

Traveler's Guide to Mexican Camping

Traveler's Guide to Mexican Camping
Author: Mike Church
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001-09
Genre: Belize
ISBN: 9780965296861

Mexico is the most attractive and exciting winter destination there is for American and Canadian RVers. With today's huge and costly RVs, drivers need to know what is around the next bend in the road. Updated to include new campgrounds and maps of the entire country, this invaluable guide provides addresses, telephone numbers, open dates, facilities for every safe campground in Mexico, and detailed directions on finding them. It also includes information on preparing an RV for an extended trip, what equipment to take, how to cross the border, and the communities surrounding the campsites. Information on Belize (on Mexico's south-eastern border) has also been included.

Time Among the Maya

Time Among the Maya
Author: Ronald Wright
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802137289

The Maya created one of the world's most brilliant civilizations, famous for its art, astronomy, and deep fascination with the mystery of time. Despite collapse in the ninth century, Spanish invasion in the sixteenth, and civil war in the twentieth, eight million people in Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico speak Mayan languages and maintain their resilient culture to this day. Traveling through Central America's jungles and mountains, Ronald Wright explores the ancient roots of the Maya, their recent troubles, and prospects for survival. Embracing history, anthropology, politics, and literature, Time Among the Maya is a riveting journey through past magnificence and the study of an enduring civilization with much to teach the present. "Wright's unpretentious narrative blends anthropology, archaeology, history, and politics with his own entertaining excursions and encounters." -- The New Yorker; "Time Among the Maya shows Wright to be far more than a mere storyteller or descriptive writer. He is an historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures." -- Jan Morris, The Independent (London).

Mesoamerican Voices

Mesoamerican Voices
Author: Matthew Restall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2005-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316224295

Mesoamerican Voices, first published in 2006, presents a collection of indigenous-language writings from the colonial period, translated into English. The texts were written from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries by Nahuas from central Mexico, Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Maya from Yucatan, and other groups from Mexico and Guatemala. The volume gives college teachers and students access to important new sources for the history of Latin America and Native Americans. It is the first collection to present the translated writings of so many native groups and to address such a variety of topics, including conquest, government, land, household, society, gender, religion, writing, law, crime, and morality.

Seasons of Ceremonies: Rites and Rituals in Guatemala and Mexico

Seasons of Ceremonies: Rites and Rituals in Guatemala and Mexico
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-11
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9780890136683

This book is a captivating visual record of the rich, still-alive traditions in Mexico and Guatemala conveyed through striking duotone photographs of community events in the region that take place within an annual cycle that refers to its pre-Columbian past, agricultural seasons, and Catholic traditions. The seasons of life are represented by colorful celebrations and rituals commemorating Mesoamerican history, culture, and religion. Beginning with the early December celebrations of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico's Yucatán, Bill Frej photographed thirteen celebrations including feast days of patron saints in Chiapas, Mexico, and Rabinal, Guatemala; the Carnival celebrations before Lent; Holy Week before Easter; and finally, the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico. Three of the celebrations are distinct and unlike the others--the Masked Dance of Abraham and Isaac in Yucatán, Mexico; the Puáaxku jitsé in Santa Teresa, Nayarit, Mexico; and the Achí masked drama in Rabinal in Guatemala's highlands. The photographs capture the traditional clothing, dances, and elaborate processions and behind-the-scenes preparations--women cook and decorate churches, children gather flowers and pine boughs, men and boys paint their faces and bodies, and everyone prepares for the days ahead. An introduction by Anne Frej and essays by Frine Castillo Badillo, Nicolasa Chávez, Philip E. Coyle, and Gary H. Gossen provide details on the celebrations and further illuminate the subjects, providing historical and cultural context on these enduring folk celebrations.

Travel, Research and Teaching in Guatemala and Mexico

Travel, Research and Teaching in Guatemala and Mexico
Author: MARK CURRAN
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466992484

This book is entitled Travel, Research, and Teaching in Guatemala and Mexico: In Search of the Pre-Columbian Heritage (volume I, Guatemala). This book in its totality of two volumes has various facets: it is comprised of anecdotes and thoughts on travel, research, and teaching in Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico from 1962 to 2000; it is a reflection on important topics and concepts of pre-Columbian culture, and finally, it is a summary of classroom guidelines and Professor Currans notes on a major work on the civilizations of pre-Columbian Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico and important documentary films on the same. Volume I treats Guatemala and Honduras. Again, volume I on Guatemala treats modern urban cities and rural towns near the pre-Columbian sites: Guatemala City, Antigua, Lake Atitln, Chichicastenango, and towns of the Verapaces in Guatemala. The well-known pre-Columbian sites in volume I are Copn in Honduras and Tikal in Guatemala. In addition, an overview of the latter is seen in a textual and pictorial summary of the holdings of the Museo de Antropologa e Historia in Mexico City, the best of its kind. The book is richly illustrated with black-and-white travel photos by Curran.