Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope Volume 8 Paperback - 2005

First line

The land, breathtaking in its beauty, reflects the turmoil beneath it.

From the rear cover

"Manz captures one of the most tragic periods of Guatemalan history with truly extraordinary insight, intimacy and brilliance. Myrna Mack, her friend and colleague, was murdered by the military, but ultimately the epic story of these isolated areas could not be extinguished. This outstanding, courageous and committed anthropologist has given us a precious gift in these pages--a masterpiece that is sure to become a classic of this troubled time."--Helen Mack Chang, President of the Myrna Mack Foundation and recipient of the 1992 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Peace Prize."

"Much more than the ethnography of a beleaguered village in Guatemala, Paradise in Ashes is about how international politics, in this case, the Cold War, played itself out within a culture that is every bit as 'foreign' as that of Iraq or Afghanistan. Combining a lifetime of uncommonly solid scholarship with a lively, accessible style, Manz has produced a genuine landmark, blending the local with the global into a compelling new approach to problems that continue to bedevil our world."--Lars Schoultz, author of Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America

"Manz reads the larger political, national, and international contexts into the gripping and nail-biting horror stories she tells about the life, death, and rebirth of Santa María Tzejá, a tough little village in Guatemala to which she is emotionally and politically bound for life. More than any anthropologist of her generation Manz is both ethnographer and compańera."--Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

"Paradise in Ashes is a masterpiece. Written with a lucid and sensitive anthropological eye it is a work of scholarly and literary excellence. There is no happy ending to this remarkable, revealing story. Nonetheless, the strength, courage and hope of the Mayans, poignantly revealed by Beatriz Manz, makes this, after all its horrors, an up-beat, even inspiring, story. Manz brings back to us the best, the most illuminating of the legendary Latin American anthropology."--Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's ambassador to the United Nations, and member of the Security Council

"Beatriz Manz has written a moving chronicle of Guatemalan villagers who have endured unspeakable injustice, yet remarkably look to the future with hope. This splendid book is a beautifully written human story that is framed by the passions and devastating consequences of the cold war. The narrative is a testament to the power of public anthropology and a must read for those concerned about the marginalized of the South."--Isabel Allende

"The violent overthrow of democracy in Guatemala in 1954 by the army, with CIA backing, spelled the end of FDR's 'good neighbor' policy. In its stead, cold war ideology transformed Guatemala into one vast death camp. No wonder President Clinton apologized to the victims of that genocide. Beatriz Manz, as both an anthropologist and a human being, gives us the precise account of the high price of a political mistake."--Carlos Fuentes

"No one could have written this book but Beatriz Manz: she understood the villagers in the most perceptive of ways, and she gained their trust. Her passion and lifetime of dedication to Guatemala shine through as she brings alive these exceptional human beings and the fire they walked through. Paradise in Ashes is an extraordinary achievement and a defining document of this genocidal period."--Rigoberta Menchú Tum