The Mayan in the Mall: Globalization, Development, and the Making of Modern Guatemala by J. T. Way (review)

This book provides a history of the construction of urban space in Guatemala from the 1920s to the early 2000s. Through an analysis of government documents, newspaper reports, and oral histories, Way traces the evolution of urban neighborhoods, informal markets, state institutions, rural communities, and transnational corporations. He argues that U.S.-led capitalist development in twentieth-century Guatemala reinforced supposedly “backward” forms of economic and social interaction. Political leaders who throughout the century pursued top-down projects of economic modernization helped create a nation, but not one with a democratic political system or a socially mobile urban population. Rather, the result was extreme levels of socioeconomic inequality. This reality largely explains the highly chaotic and violent history of Guatemala City during the twentieth century.

According to Way, many of the social ills facing Guatemala today stem from a hundred years of capitalist development. Economic modernization became the mantra of Guatemalan elites during the early decades of the twentieth century. Jorge Ubico, the dictator who ruled the country between 1931 and 1944, facilitated the expansion of U.S. capital, in the process installing a repressive regime that benefited the export sector and rested on forced Maya and ladino labor. Ubico’s policies gave birth to an “anti-modern” nation-state characterized by political violence and profound racial divisions. Modernization was born and survived during the years of the October Revolution (1944–1954). Indeed, revolutionary leaders sought to bring about a new political and economic order through highly centralized projects, particularly in the form of urban development and land reform. They encountered, however, a chaotic social reality, as exemplified by growing rates of rural-to-urban migration and the proliferation of urban slums such El Gallito in Guatemala City.

The U.S.-sponsored overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 gave rise to a series of military governments. These regimes appropriated the policies and political discourses of the revolutionary years while infusing them with a reactionary tint reminiscent of the Ubico years. During the civil war (1960–1996), Guatemalan generals promoted the expansion of commercial agriculture and pursued a violent genocidal counterinsurgency campaign designed to connect the capital to the countryside, defeat the Marxist-inspired guerrilla movement, and ultimately expand the power of the state. Their development-driven policies ended up reinforcing long-standing social problems, particularly at urban spaces such as La Terminal, Guatemala City’s main market and bus station. As the twentieth century came to an end, it became apparent that capitalist development had resulted in unprecedented levels of socioeconomic exclusion and violence and a vibrant yet precarious informal economic sector sustained by male and female vendors. Thus, development produced, not prosperity and democracy for the majority of the population, but social fragmentation, as evidenced by the proliferation of nonprofit aid organizations, evangelical churches, and gangs at the turn of the twentieth first century.

Way’s work raises important issues about the history of urban space, state formation, and capitalist development. It constitutes a much-needed history of the geographical and human growth of Guatemala City, as well as the links between urban and rural development. Way shows that Mayan and ladino citizens and groups in Guatemala City carved out forms of economic and political survival. Following the lead of Greg Grandin and other historians, he demonstrates that urban Guatemalans both engaged with and resisted state policies, even in the highly polarized climate of the Cold War. State projects were informed and shaped by grassroots demands, even though at the end of the day the real beneficiaries of Guatemala’s wealth were corporate interests. In addition, Way reminds us of the contradictions underlying capitalist development in Latin America. Despite official pronouncements to the contrary, development-informed policies recreated many of those social ills that we associate with the so-called underdeveloped world.

Scholars interested in urban history, gender...