The invasions of Guatemala -- Pedro de Alvarado's letters to Hernando Cortes, 1524 -- Other Spanish accounts -- Nahua accounts -- Maya accounts

In Conquered Conquistadors, Florine Asselbergs reveals that a large pictorial map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, long thought to represent a series of battles in central Mexico, was actually painted in the 1530s by Quauhquecholteca warriors to document their invasion of Guatemala alongside the Spanish and to proclaim themselves as conquistadors. This painting is the oldest known map of Guatemala and a rare document of the experiences of indigenous conquistadors. The people of the Nahua community of Quauhquechollan (present-day San Martín Huaquechula), in central Mexico, allied with Cortés during the Spanish-Aztec War and were assigned to the Spanish conquistador Jorge de Alvarado. De Alvarado and his allies, including the Quauhquecholteca and thousands of other indigenous warriors, set off for Guatemala in 1527 to start a campaign against the Maya. The few Quauhquecholteca who lived to tell the story recorded their travels and eventual victory on the huge cloth map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Conquered Conquistadors, published in a European edition in 2004, overturned conventional views of the European conquest of indigenous cultures. American historians and anthropologists will relish this new edition and Asselbergs's astute analysis, which includes context, interpretation, and comparison with other pictographic accounts of the "Spanish" conquest. This heavily illustrated edition includes an insert reproduction of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan.

DIVAn interdisciplinary anthology on the largest, most populous nation in Central America, covering Guatemalan history, culture, literature and politics and containing many primary sources not previously published in English./div

In early April 1536, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led a military expedition from the coastal city of Santa Marta deep into the interior of what is today modern Colombia. With roughly eight hundred Spaniards and numerous native carriers and black slaves, the Jiménez expedition was larger than the combined forces under Hernando Cortés and Francisco Pizarro. Over the course of the one-year campaign, nearly three-quarters of Jiménez’s men perished, most from illness and hunger. Yet, for the 179 survivors, the expedition proved to be one of the most profitable campaigns of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, the history of the Spanish conquest of Colombia remains virtually unknown. Through a series of firsthand primary accounts, translated into English for the first time, Invading Colombia reconstructs the compelling tale of the Jiménez expedition, the early stages of the Spanish conquest of Muisca territory, and the foundation of the city of Santa Fé de Bogotá. We follow the expedition from the Canary Islands to Santa Marta, up the Magdalena River, and finally into Colombia’s eastern highlands. These highly engaging accounts not only challenge many current assumptions about the nature of Spanish conquests in the New World, but they also reveal a richly entertaining, yet tragic, tale that rivals the great conquest narratives of Mexico and Peru.

Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.

This twentieth-century history of Guatemala begins with an analysis of the Grand Tikal Futura, a postmodern shopping mall with a faux-Mayan facade that is surrounded by a landscape of gated subdivisions, evangelical churches, motels, Kaqchikel-speaking villages, and some of the most poverty-stricken ghettos in the hemisphere.

Rafael Carrera (1814-1865) ruled Guatemala from about 1839 until his death. Among Central America’s many political strongmen, he is unrivaled in the length of his domination and the depth of his popularity. This “life and times” biography explains the political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances that preceded and then facilitated Carrera’s ascendancy and shows how Carrera in turn fomented changes that persisted long after his death and far beyond the borders of Guatemala.

Through a Glass Darkly tells the story of Ron Hennessey, an Iowa farmer who returned from the Korean War to discover that farming no longer held much allure. Hennessey joined a Catholic missionary society and after nine years of study was ordained a priest and sent to Guatemala. The book describes Hennessey's conversion from being an unapologetic patriot from America's heartland to a staunch opponent of Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America - policies that occasionally threatened Hennessey's life. Hennessey's story has a subtext: America's ideals of freedom, democracy, and progress-with-justice have been violated abroad by one U.S. president after another.