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Hispanic American Historical Review 83.2 (2003) 423-424



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The Time of Freedom: Campesino Workers in Guatemala's October Revolution. By CINDY FORSTER . Pitt Latin American Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 287 pp. Cloth, $34.95.

Cindy Forster's new book, The Time of Freedom, is a compelling and provocative contribution to the slowly expanding body of research on Guatemala's 1944-54 revolution. While most studies of the period focus on elite revolutionary activism, Forster argues that the true protagonists of the 1952 Agrarian Reform Law were rural workers who, imbued with a sense of campesino identity (as opposed to a proletarian one), laid the foundation for land reform through militant activism. Focusing on two distinct regions—the coffee-producing department of San Marcos and United Fruit's banana plantations at Tiquisate, Escuintla—Forster comparatively situates the revolution and its antecedents, highlighting what it meant for campesinos.

From a methodological standpoint, Forster offers a persuasive discussion on the use (and abuse) of "official" sources, versus oral history sources—particularly from among the underrepresented working classes. As a corrective to "elite distortions" in the historical record, she suggests a more balanced approach to historical exposition: the weighing of "conventional sources . . . against documents and testimonies that capture the voices of the poor" (p. 11). And impressively, Forster does just that—at least for her discussion of San Marcos.

Indeed, in the case of San Marcos she skillfully combines such testimonies with records from the Departamento Agrario Nacional, the Instituto General de Trabajo, and documents from San Marcos's Jefatura Política and Juzgado Penal. This multiplicity of sources allows her to paint a rich image of the region and campesino activism both prior to and during the revolution. Not so in the case of Tiquisate. There, Forster uncritically accepts the claims of unidentified oral sources (a practice akin to hearsay in most legal proceedings), drawing upon woefully few national or regional documents. Missing are the departmental, judicial, or company documents (nary a United Fruit source appears) that might fill in some of the blanks, many of which (United Fruit documents included) are accessible at the Archivo General de Centro América. What emerges instead is a virtually unsubstantiated [End Page 423] image of the evil United Fruit, a company that, according to Forster, had a "taste for violence" and planned "to undermine the national government" as early as 1944 (p. 118), promoted alcoholism as a means of social control (pp. 122 and 251, n. 24), and "deftly manipulated" racism among its workers, particularly those in its operations at Izabal—a region with which she seems completely unfamiliar (pp. 16-18). Ultimately, Forster offers only vague, one-sided, and questionable conclusions about campesinos and their relationship with the company. Such a lack of depth on Tiquisate is particularly glaring, given the fact that the region was Guatemala's single biggest recipient of redistributed land during the agrarian reform (25 percent of the national total).

The agrarian reform's magnitude and the revolution's tangible regional impact draw attention to a serious methodological problem. San Marcos was among the smallest recipients of land redistributed under the 1952 law, receiving a mere 1.6 percent of the national total (only 4.5 percent of the department's total land). One wonders why Forster so readily concludes that San Marcos was representative of campesino protagonism during the period. Undoubtedly, the agrarian reform changed some people's lives in San Marcos. However, to generalize San Marcos's comparatively minor campesino activism and minuscule agrarian reform benefits to other regions of Guatemala (such as Tiquisate) seems an overly inductive and romanticized leap. In the end, Forster's study is unbalanced. On one hand, she provides a thick description of life before and during the revolution in San Marcos. On the other hand, her discussion of Tiquisate is superficial, poorly substantiated, and questionable. Given the impact of the agrarian reform (or lack thereof) on these respective regions, one wonders why so much attention...

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