Invencion criolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indigena: Los Altos de Guatemala: de region a Estado, 1740-1871 (review)

This new edition differs from the first edition (1997) primarily in the change of terminal date of the study from 1850 to 1871. It is an important revision, for the beginning of liberal reform in Guatemala, and the subsequent takeover of the Guatemalan national government by elite families from the Los Altos region, is a more appropriate terminal date for this valuable study. The new edition is also a more impressive production, offering the reader larger type, higher paper quality, stronger binding, and better display of the numerous charts and graphs that enhance the work. Unfortunately, it still lacks a bibliography. This work will have usefulness for many years.

Scholars of Guatemala in several disciplines have, in recent years, begun to question the rationale of the Guatemalan nation or central state, and this has inevitably encouraged more regional studies that focus on areas that have a clearer natural affinity and identity. Certainly, the Guatemalan altiplano is one such area, as recent works by Greg Grandin and Jorge González have illustrated. Taracena's meticulously researched and logically organized work transcends the independence struggles as it traces the formation of the Los Altos state from roots in the Bourbon reform period through the establishment of Los Altos as the sixth state in the United Provinces of Central America and its reincorporation into the Republic of Guatemala. The author provides enormous detail on developments in this region as well as the rise of a creole-ladino elite that came to dominate it. He explains why, as in other Central American states beyond Guatemala, provincial ladinos identified with the Liberal faction against the Conservative elite resident in the capital, a conflict that would ally Los Altos with El Salvador against Guatemala within the Central American federation and that would emerge even more strongly during and following the 1871 revolution. Taracena, himself a descendant of a leading Liberal leader in nineteenth-century Quetzaltenango, has given us the most detailed description of the state's formation and its political evolution. While he perhaps assumes too much knowledge on the part of some readers regarding the political issues and personages of Guatemala and Central America, the work nevertheless adds greatly to earlier published accounts of this region.

Taracena documents, with meticulous genealogical and statistical research, the formation of the creole-ladino elite of Quetzaltenango and the growth of their power through land acquisition and political authority. Migration of some key families from Santiago de Guatemala (Antigua Guatemala) following the catastrophic earthquakes of 1773 was one element of the growth of the Quetzaltenango elite, which by the beginning of the national period was already struggling for autonomy against the creole elite in the capital (Nueva Guatemala). Their struggle for autonomy became intertwined with the liberal-conservative and federalist-centralist debates that wracked the Central American federation during the first three decades of national independence. It ultimately led to the secession of Los Altos from Guatemala to form the sixth state of the United Provinces of Central America. Like its ally, El Salvador, which also had come into being by its separation from the province of Guatemala, Los Altos became a Liberal stronghold against the dominance of the Conservative families of Guatemala, led by the Aycinena clan. This chapter of Central American history came to end with the conquest of Los Altos by General Rafael Carrera early in 1840 and its immediate reincorporation into the State of Guatemala. A second separatist attempt, following Carrera's brief ouster in 1848, ended quickly with the return of Carrera the following year. Taracena narrates these events vigorously and provides a careful analysis of the rise of regionalism in Guatemala in...