The Time of Freedom: Campesino Workers in Guatemala's October Revolution (review)

Forster's Time of Freedom makes several important contributions to our understanding of modern Guatemalan history. First, Forster shows conclusively that the democratic revolution of Guatemala was not the top-down enterprise that much of the historiography has led us to believe; it was propelled from below. One key example that she uncovers is how the labor code was extended to the countryside due to high levels of rural agitation. She also documents massive peasant participation in San Marcos in the 1944 movement that she effectively contrasts with the pro-regime participation of Indians in other parts of Guatemala (notably Chimaltenango). Forster's discovery of this sharp contrast within the indigenous highlands reveals a crucial dimension to modern Guatemalan history. En passant, she makes telling critiques of those who have argued for a benign pro-Indian vision of the Ubico regime (1931-1944).

Forster demonstrates that high levels of rural class conflict existed before the agrarian reform of 1952. This argument about the impact of rural class conflict on the revolutionary process is not surprising to labor historians, but it does speak to an important silence in Guatemalan national political history. Forster does an excellent job of explaining the unique characteristics of the San Marcos rural population, permitting a better understanding of their crucial and hitherto silenced role in the revolutionary process. These social characteristics include proximity to the Mexican border, the generational and geographical separation from traditional highlands communities, and residence on or near coffee plantations.

Forster highlights the role of the San Marcos Indian laborers in resisting noncapitalist social relations at the dawn of the democratic revolution and in pushing the administration toward the recognition of basic rights for the rural worker. Her well-documented argument about the distinct meanings of "justice" in national and local-level political discourse posits a broader economic and social dimension. Indeed, she offers an incisive comparison between the primarily indigenous coffee and sugar laborers of San Marcos and the largely nonindigenous banana laborers of Tiquisate. Her discussion about the different meanings of the language of revolution in local and national political environments is crucial. It shows not only how the reactionary elites were enshrined in power following the coup of 1954 but also how the revolutionary elites in Guatemala silenced the history of that region's revolutionary process. This stunning contribution will reverberate in Central America and beyond for some time to come.

Forster also makes use of judicial and other archives that provide a cross section of social and gender history virtually unknown in twentieth-century Central American historiography. She reveals both the change and continuity in gender relations inside and outside of the judicial system, especially during the revolution. She demonstrates conclusively that even though the revolutionary process failed to articulate clear goals in favor of women's rights, it created the possibility of a major transformation in rural women's lives. Yet, the revolution's failure to gobeyond rhetorical flourishes in terms of issues related to urban women—especially rape and domestic violence—alienated large numbers of female urban poor people and inclined them toward the counter- revolution.

The book might have provided a more ethnographically nuanced account of the differences between the San Marcos indigenous people and those from the highlands. Forster sharply delineates the unique, politically engaged behavior of the San Marcos indigenous population throughout the twentieth century. Did these differences in, for example, dress and other customs create in San Marcos a predisposition to challenge existing societal hierarchies and engage in relations with nonindigenous militants?

Forster's fascinating discussion about the loss of some ethnic markers is left dangling. The elegant testimonies about never becoming ladinos or remaining indígenas but not indios need more explication. Who were the living ladinos (given the multiple meanings of the term) and indios in the minds of the informants...