This dissertation, explores the institutional and cultural revival of Guatemalan Catholicism during the twentieth century. First, it examines the changing character of Church-state relations in Guatemala in the 1920s and 1930s. The gradual decline of anticlericalism and emergence of a modus vivendi between the Guatemalan Liberal state and the Catholic Church proved fundamental for the reemergence of the Church as a social and political actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, this work analyzes the Catholic Action movement as a window to study this resurgence. Although it started as a socially conservative movement dedicated to implanting Catholic orthodoxy and curbing the advance of communism among Guatemala’s popular sectors, Catholic Action in the 1950s nevertheless evolved into an instrument of economic and social change. In applying the Gospel to social reality and bringing the Church into closer contact with rural Maya communities and urban workers, this movement became a precursor of Liberation Theology. Catholic Action served as a meeting point from which subaltern groups – namely lay indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, and priests and nuns from the United States and Europe – strove to transform Guatemalan society through the promotion of literacy programs, health-related projects and agricultural cooperatives. In this sense, religious change proved a catalyst of socioeconomic transformations. / text

Local actors in the coastal side of Chimaltenango, Guatemala regularly characterize fincas (plantations) as “private property” to explain that they function as independent social spaces, with its inner-functions considered matters between owners and workers, not of concern to society. I argue that locally employed explanations of fincas as private areas support a common sense finca ideology that has placed the basic human and social needs of workers and their families at the discretion of landowners who stand to benefit directly from their marginalization. My major finding is that a finca ideology has privatized the social suffering of resident families who are forced to respond as individuals to constant pressures to their survival. Their agency to respond and possibilities for actions rooted in social solidarity have been restricted within the finca. I conclude that this ideology needs to be delegitimized so that the social and human needs of families are not dependent on the decision of landowners and so that they are empowered take action as individuals and as part of a community to redress the conditions that cause their suffering. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [213]-245).

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of California, Santa Cruz, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-310) Also available online. Restricted to UC campuses.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Comparative Literature." Includes bibliographical references (p. 260-287).

No description available.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

No description available.