Guatemala, it must be emphasized, is not a poor country. On the contrary, it is rich in resources, natural and human. Guatemala has been made a poor country because the allotment of its resources, especially its land resources, is deformed by crippling geographies of inequality. Skewed patterns of land distribution lie at the heart of Guatemala’s woes. The country is still strikingly agrarian, the lives of thousands of peasant families and the existence of a privileged few connected by the politics of land ownership …
Bio:
W. George Lovell, FRSC, author of A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala (Between the Lines, 2019/2022), is Professor of Geography at Queen’s University and Visiting Professor in Latin American History at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. His most recent book is Death in the Snow: Pedro de Alvarado and the Illusive Conquest of Peru (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).