Customer Reviews (3)

Still the best
As the curator of artemaya has pointed out this is the book to have. I concurr with everything he has saidand find this book indespensible when studying the ancient or modern Maya. Without a doubt this is my favorite book on the subject and even after twenty three years in my possession I still open it up and gaze upon the magnificent pictures. Carmen Pettersen'spaintings were done in the early 1970's and are of the highestand utmost quality. Her personal observations on the culture reflect her sensitivity to the subject which in turn is refleted in her art. For example, when describing the toursist hot spot Chichicastenango, with its beautiful marketplace and church where pagan and Christian religion is practised, she comments on the "disintegration of this tribe"and "the complete degeneration of the people who wrote the Popol Vuh" as "the older people and leaders stand fast and steady, suffering silently with sullen hatred in their eyes." The models used in the book are of such exceptional quality and life like that it is as though they willbegin moving . She depicts her subject matter as strong and proud, in spite of a humbling history of European influence. Pettersen obviouslywas in tune with her subjects in art as the expressions on their faces come to life. The details of the clothing are superb and exquisite artistry. The pullouts pages have even more detail as she shows an entire village scene like a marketplace or the people gathered in Chichicastenango. If you are familiar with Maya clothing and the various tribes that continue the ancient traditions, including embroidery sewn with a bone needle, you are probably aware of of colorful and intricate patterns achieved on these textiles. These are not the products sold to tourists but the authentic attire that the people themselves wear. Nothing is lostor compromisedin the paintings and are exact reproductions of authentic dress. If you are planing a trip to Guatemala it is highly recommended that you get this book before you goor if nothing else before you leave country to return home. It is preferable to have the book before so you can understand what you will see as you step back in time and enter the remote jungles and ancient customs of the Maya. This is THE BOOK on the contemporary life and dress in Guatemala. If you have anything more than a passing interest in the people of Guatemalathan this is the book to have, get it NOW, you will not be dissappointed.

Getting into the Culture of the Mayans of Guatemala
This is my favorite book!We were living in Mexico and had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala and and visit the Museo Ixchel in Guatemala City, where we found Carmen Pettersen's beautiful book. We also had the wonderful opportunity to see some of Carmen Pettersen's original water color paintings of the Mayans in their "traje," or indigenous apparel, in a friend's home in Antigua!

The water color depictions of the "traje" are incredibly detailed, and the text so intimately describes the culture of the Mayans.It is amazing how much the indigenous dress tells about the ancient and "modern" life of the Mayans.

Every traveler to Guatemala would benefit immensely by reading this book--easy to read and with sixty water color pages (some are fold-out pages) and thirteen photographs to guide the reader through the daily life, religion, and cultural practices of the Mayan families in their villages.

Mayan Dress
The Maya of Guatemala is THE classic book on the "traje tipico"(native dress) of the Mayan Indians of Guatemala.The exquisitelybeautiful paintings produced by Carmen Pettersen over many years constitutethe best illustrations ever done of the Mayan "traje". The sixtycolorful full page paintings face parallel texts in English and Spanishtelling about the particular "traje" and the customs of the Mayanpeople. Pettersen writes the informative text rather like a diary of hertravels to the various towns so while concentrating on the traje andtraditions we see something of the individuals and the writer. Thepaintings, the real point of the book, succeed better than photographsbecause the detail of the "traje" is not obscured by light andshadow. While accurately detailing the "traje," the paintings atthe same time are intensely personal portraits of the individuals. Althoughthere is no book yet which shows the traje of all the different Mayan townsin Guatemala (and Mexico), this book illustrates more than any other. It ismy book of first reference to find out about the "traje" of aparticular town. If among the many books I have on the Mayan culture Icould keep just one book this book would probably be it.

CarmenPettersen, born in Guatemala of an English father and Mexican mother,learned to paint in England. As a young woman her family moved back toGuatemala where she lived among the Mayan Indians for the rest of her life.The paintings and the text reveal the high regard she had for the Mayans.The original gouache paintings now reside in the Ixchel Museum of Traje inGuatemala City.

Joseph Johnston, Curator, Arte MayaTz'utuhil

www.artemaya.com ... Read more

Product Description
Based on fieldwork carried out in a Mayan village in Guatemala, this book examines local understandings of mind through the lens of language and culture. It focuses on a variety of grammatical structures and discursive practices through which mental states are encoded and social relations are expressed: inalienable possessions, such as body parts and kinship terms; interjections, such as 'ouch' and 'yuck'; complement-taking predicates, such as 'believe' and 'desire'; and grammatical categories such as mood, status and evidentiality. And, more generally, it develops a theoretical framework through which both community-specific and human-general features of mind may be contrasted and compared. It will be of interest to researchers and students working within the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. ... Read more

Product Description
Guatemala is one of the few places on earth where traditional textile arts from ancient cultures survive: Mayan spinners and weavers still produce the traditional motifs developed by their ancestors, but modern dyes add brilliant, luminous color to their textiles. This book presents 150 superb photographs by Gianni Vecchiato, providing a magnificent view of the textiles people, and daily life of Guatemala. It is truly a feast for the eye and spirit. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

beautiful photos !
this book has gorgeous photos of Guatemala.
we wish, however, that the photos had better captions to describe them.

Documentary photography
I bought this book for my girlfriend who is going to Guatemala for an 8-week field study for her master's degree in anthropology. The pictures are in no way artistic photographs, I would classify them as documentary photos. There are a few that have some drama or depth to them, but most are simply documenting the Guatemalen culture through thier famous colorful weavings and how they use them.

My girlfriend and I wish that the pictures had lengthier captions to explain what we were looking at, as most of the images only have the name of the city they are from. There is a brief and simple introduction at the beginning of the book about Guatmalen culture, the weavings and Mayan history, but the rest of the book is all pictures.

I gave it to my girlfriend to get her excited and motivated for her coming field study, and in that respect I guess the book was a success!

Stunning!
I bought this book for my family as we are adopting a child from Guatemala. This was one of the only books with pictures of the culture that I could find, and I am SO glad that I did. I can be rest assured that my son will feel pleasure and pride in his birth-country after looking at the pictures in this book. It is a beautiful, colorful, and rich culture that deserves to be displayed vividly for all to see!

Pot of Gold
Stunning images, true to Guatemalan life. Not just "pictures". A window into a beautiful land with colorful people.!EXCELLENTE!

A pot of gold
Guatemala Rainbow is just what I hoped it might be and more- the photos are stunning and full of local color. They portray the personality of the Guatemalan people. Having lived in Central America, I can say that they authentically document the typical lifestyle of those outside the capital city, free from United States' influence. This will be a real gem in my collection for Spanish classes as I introduce the students to the culture. The images will help them get a feel for being there. ... Read more

Product Description
This comprehensive volume presents evidence of Teotihuacan influence at Kaminaljuyu and elsewhere in the Valley of Guatemala and offers a variety of theories regarding the nature of contact and the flow of influence between these two political entities during the Middle Classic period.It focuses upon new evidence of Teotihuacan influence at Kaminaljuyu, indicating how such evidence may be interpreted to support contrasting viewpoints and how it affects earlier interpretations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good study (but wrong image)
This is a strong academic study by a leading scholar on Teotituacan.However the image is not from this book, but from another strong academic stury - The Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom by Michels, Joseph W. (w/ ISBN 0271002247). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential but not without faults
Scholarly books about Guatemalan textiles are scarce.Therefore, this is an important contribution; it is not without flaws.Maya Culture &Costume documents an important collection of Guatemalan textiles, thecollection of the Taylor Museum, collected during the late 1920's and early1930's by E.B. Ricketson, archaelogist and ethnographer. Photographs of thepieces from the Taylor collection are supplemented by and compared topieces from other collections. Because the Ricketson pieces were collectedduring such a narrow range of time, the pieces can be dated accurately tostem from 1934 or earlier. Many pieces in other collections cannot be soaccurately dated. This is clearly a strength of the the collection and thebook.Anyone seriously interested in Guatemalan textiles should befamiliar with this book.However, more color plates would have beenhelpful, and some pictures are too small to be useful. ... Read more

Product Description
Being Young and Homeless is an intimate portrayal of life on the street from the perspective of young people in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, and Guatemala City. Jeff Karabanow passionately portrays street youth experiences in various locales, highlighting reasons for entering street life, struggles to survive on the street, encounters with service providers, and for some, the street exiting process. This insightful book is relevant for students and practitioners of social work, sociology, social administration, and public policy. ... Read more

Product Description
The secrets of the past are uncovered in this authoritative social history of the ancient proples of Central America and Mexico. ... Read more

Product Description
Los cuadernos del presente imperfecto son una contribución al imprescindible debate que requiere la construcción de una sociedad democrática y solidaria en GuatemalaÉste es un trabajo sobre una reunión en la Selva Lacandona convocada para hablar sobre el tema del tiempo y la revolución. Entre los invitados debemos mencionar a Mijaíl Bajtín y Walter Benjamin, en cuyas respectivas obras hay aportes significativos al tema. Los convocantes fueron los zapatistas de uno de los Caracoles. , , , En la reunión se estableció un diálogo entre las las generaciones en lucha del presente y algunos representantes de las generaciones del pasado que lucharon y dejaron plasmada esa lucha en obras que son como cristales que guardan conocimientos importantes, los cuales solamente pueden ser alcanzados bajo la luz del presente. . . . Uno de los resultados de esa polifonía en la Selva Lacandona fue la conciencia de que la urgencia de lo nuevo por abrirse paso en el mundo envejecido y pervertido había sido el factor que movió a los organizadores a realizar la reunión. A eso, o a algo parecido, el señor judío con gafas, Walter Benjamin, le llamó "constelación". También se dijo algo así como que el tiempo no corre en línea recta sino a tropezones, y que los "golpes" que le damos al tiempo de los de arriba curiosamente sacan la historia del carril en que el poder la pone a moverse. El poeta maya-guatemalteco Humberto Ak'abal, expresa esta idea claramernte:De vez en cuando_camino al revés:_es mi modo de recordarSi caminara sólo hacia delante,_te podría contar_como es el olvido . ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Each year in the Highland Guatemala town of Santiago Momostenango, Maya religious societies, dance teams, and cofradías perform the annual cycle of rituals and festivals prescribed by Costumbre (syncretized Maya Christian religion), which serves to renew the cosmic order. In this richly detailed ethnography, Garrett Cook explores how these festivals of Jesucristo and the saints derive from and reenact three major ancient Maya creation myths, thus revealing patterns of continuity between contemporary expressive culture and the myths, rituals, and iconography of the Classic and Postclassic Maya. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s and renewed in the 1990s, Cook describes the expressive culture tradition performed in and by the cofradías and their dance teams. He listens as dancers and cofrades explain the meaning of service and of the major ritual symbols in the cults of the saints and Jesucristo. Comparing these symbols to iconographic evidence from Palenque and myths from the Popol Vuh, Cook persuasively argues that the expressive culture of Momostenango enacts major Maya creation myths--the transformative sunrise, the representation of the year as the life cycle of anthropomorphized nature, and the erection of an axis mundi. This research documents specific patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the communal expression of Maya religious and cosmogonic themes. Along with other recent research, it demonstrates the survival of a basic Maya pattern--the world-creating vegetative renewal cycle--in the highland Maya cults of the saints and Jesucristo. ... Read more

Product Description
The world has two dominant images of the Maya: one as the builders of magnificent, but now ruined, temples and cities in the rainforests of Central America; the other as a militant peasantry, such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas, confronting the inequalities of the modern state. Maya activists draw quite explicitly on an historical consciousness of five hundred years of cultural resilience. North America: School for Advanced Research Press ... Read more

Product Description
This multicultural activity book celebrates the myriad cultures of Mexico and Central America and their shared ancient Aztec and Mayan roots. For each country, a brief introduction is provided that includes illustrated maps and facts about population and geography. More than 40 projects and three dramatic play scripts explore the interconnectedness of these countries and help children experience aspects of daily life throughout the region including school, work, home, art and poetry, food and agriculture, and special holidays. Activities include embroidering Mayan designs, painting in the Salvadoran style, creating an ofrenda for the Day of the Dead, crafting political puppets, cooking chocobananas, and making piñatas. Engaging sidebars throughout the book provide children with an introduction to the Spanish language. Also included are tips for teachers who want to use the activities in the classroom, complete with more specific age ranges and suggested modifications. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very politicized

I'm an elementary school Spanish teacher, and this book looked wonderful to me at first glance. Yes, there are lots of cute crafts and recipes, and lots of info about geography, history, and culture. However, there's definitely a whiff of PC here, and an anti-American, anti-European,
pro-illegal immigration slant. Lots of material about strikes, unions,
sweatshops, the evils of big business, etc. Yes, the history of Latin America is very complex, and colonization was not a pretty thing, but this book's leftist/socialist slant is excessive. ... Read more

Product Description
"Cultural Dimensions - Guatemala" has been written for the expat or serious traveler who intends to go well below the touristic surface of this marvellously complex and subtle culture. The following is a typical passage, explaining some of the many linguistic curiosities and challenges facing even a fluent Spanish-speaker in Guatemala.

"As in other Spanish speaking countries, in Guatemala the foreigner needs guidance on the use of the formal, "usted", or the familiar, "tu." One can generalize: "usted" will never be wrong in Guatemala; "tu" may be . "Usted" preserves distance with one's employees while granting them respect. "Usted" also is not so formal as to be unfriendly and may be used by two long-time Guatemalan friends, who reserve "tu" for their spouses and children.

A third form of you in English strikes the foreigner's ear immediately: "vos". "Que tal, vos." This form is totally divorced from the second person plural, "vosotros". "Vos" in Guatemala is colloquial, very informal, and used by young people, drinking companions, and the like. It should not be used by the uninitiated, such as new expatriates still learning the verbal ropes.

"One U. S. citizen who has resided happily in Guatemala for more than ten years is quick to advise newcomers that the three most critical expressions they should beware of are "ahorita," "no tenga pena," and "fijese," in ascending order of intensity. He says jokingly that "ahorita" ("ahora" = now), implying right now, has little to do with right now and a lot to do with never. Actually it tends to be used when someone is a little late in accomplishing a task; he says "ahorita" and quickly begins the task with gusto. This same long- time resident says that in response to his complaint that the supplies he ordered one month ago are not yet even a gleam in his Guatemalan supplier's eye, the supplier may say "¡No tenga pena!" (Don't worry! It'll work out, et cetera.) Our man always wants to reply, "¡Tengo mucha pena!", (I have a lot of worry), a linguistic anomaly, but his way of wishing to convey a sense of urgency.

"Fijese" is a little Guatemalan treasure house of meaning. It uses the verb "fijarse" (to become fixed, to settle, to notice) as a mere point of departure. One dictionary of "Chapinismos" describes it as a pet phrase placed before or after statements to mean "Que le parece?" (What do you think of that?). That's only the beginning. It takes weathering only a few statements beginning or ending with "fijese" to condition the newcomer to brace himself. "Fijese," said quickly and with an expulsion of air, precedes a statement of sins of omission or commission as surely as the howling of dogs and roaring of winds precede earthquakes in Guatemala.

Senora: All of the guests are here. We can serve in twenty minutes.
Maid: (smiling guiltily) "¡Fijese!" ( insert )
Possible inserts:
I forgot to defrost the meat.
The tank of butane gas for the oven is empty.
The dog ate the meat.
There is no water.

"Fijese" is never said with malice, always with good will and the desire to please. It's the I-know-you-are-not-going-to-like-this-but-you'll-never-guess-what-happened-on-the-way-to( insert )

Preparing dinner for the guests.
Ordering bricks for the construction of your fireplace six months ago.
Repairing your car.

"Fijese" cushions the truth, the painful truth, but nonetheless the truth. At least it probably doesn't precede a lie, but it nonetheless should alert the newcomer. Eventually he realizes that he, too, can dance the "fijese."

Maid: Senora, could I please have an extra day off on Friday to go visit my cousin who lives three hours from here...?
Senora: "Fijese," ( insert )

There are two house guests plus twenty U.S. Congressmen for dinner that night.
I'm having surgery that day.
There's going to be an earthquake Friday and we'll need all hands on deck.
... Read more