Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (The Library of Anthropology)

Summary from dust jacket: "Revolt Against the Dead is a study of the social and economic modernization of a Mayan Indian community in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala. It shows how relations between different local Indian groups and between Indians and the Spanish-speaking Ladinos have been transformed by major changes in the local economy, in national policy, and by the activities of missionaries and devlopment agents. Indian groups that were divided against each other and were firmly subordinate to the Ladinos have succeeded in establishing cooperative links with each other and in breaking the grip of the Ladino domination. While the Indian identity has been preserved and even strengthened by modernization, an implicit class division between rich and poor Indians is receiving increasingly concrete expression in local institutional life. This book distinguishes itself from other community studies of the Mayan region by its emphasis on both synchronic and diachronic data, its integration of both the qualitative and quantitative analysis and its concern with the impact of national economic and politcal realities on the form of local life."