Making a Place for the Future in Maya Guatemala - by John P Hawkins & Walter Randolph Adams (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch pounded the isolated village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán in mountainous western Guatemala, destroying many homes. The experience traumatized many Ixtahuaquenses. Much of the community relocated to be safer and closer to transportation that they hoped would help them to improve their lives, acquire more schooling, and find supportive jobs. This study followed the two resulting communities over the next quarter century as they reconceived and renegotiated their place in Guatemalan society and the world.

Making a Place for the Future in Maya Guatemala shows how humans continuously evaluate and rework the efficacy of their cultural heritage. This process helps explain the inevitability and speed of culture change in the face of natural disasters and our ongoing climate crisis.

Review Quotes

"A seminal and ground-breaking collection of informative and erudite articles, Making a Place for the Future in Maya Guatemala: Natural Disaster and Sociocultural Change in Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and college/university library Guatemala/Mayan History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists."--Able Greenspan, Midwest Book Review

"A groundbreaking long-term study of climate disaster, internal migration, sociocultural change, and identity transformation in the K'iche'-speaking Maya Highlands of Guatemala. Culture comes out in the breach, and this research team was able to follow the devastating consequences of Hurricane Mitch (1998) and its impact over twenty years as fragile Maya communities struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile political and economic environment."--James H. McDonald, author of Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala: Indigenous Responses to a Failing State