Guatemala City
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 January 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0173
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 January 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0173
Introduction
The construction of Guatemala City in the Ermita Valley, its fourth and final home, began in the mid-1770s in the wake of serious earthquake damage in what today is known as La Antigua Guatemala. After slow growth as Central America disintegrated into separate republics, the city began to bustle with Guatemala’s 1871 Liberal revolution, and more so after the 1920 overthrow of the dictator Estrada Cabrera. The majority of the works in this bibliography postdate this period. From 1920 forward, modernization and infrastructure development began to give rise to an overburdened and largely impoverished metropolis, through various phases: a period of urban unionization and political opening (1920–1930); the Ubico dictatorship (1931–1944); the Guatemalan Revolution (1944–1954, the democratic “Ten Years of Spring”); the authoritarian, anticommunist period following the CIA-led invasion of 1954 (1954–early 1960s); Guatemala’s civil war (1960–1996); and finally, a period of neoliberalism, which is still underway (roughly 1986 forward). Euphemistically called the “Armed Internal Conflict,” the civil war originated in 1960. Death squads began to terrorize the city in 1966, and the military government unleashed genocidal violence in the Mayan highlands from 1981 to 1983. Despite a return from military to civilian rule in 1986, after unprecedented violence had effectively defeated the guerrillas and the popular movement, the war continued until the signing of Peace Accords in 1996. During those years, a turn to neoliberalism began, exacerbating the tensions and class-based division of space and resources in a primate city already wracked by waves of rural-to-urban migration that had become acute by the 1950s and that grew in the decades ahead. When the 1976 earthquake displaced over a million people, the majority of Guatemala City’s inhabitants who had homes were living in slums and land invasions. The informal economy remained the predominant means of sustenance as refugees fleeing atrocities and “agrarian transformation” in the countryside poured into the city. Today’s metropolitan area (Área Metropolitana de Guatemala, or AMG) is made up of seventeen municipalities, most of which continue to urbanize on a daily basis. The privatization of space, the lack of planning, and the profusion of new social, cultural, and economic phenomena such as gangs, evangelical Christianity, vigilante violence, consumer culture, and spiraling crime have attracted researchers’ attention, and a recent body of interdisciplinary works on these topics complements other strands in the literature that focus on state terror, internal migration, and urban growth. Researchers should consult works on the nation in general, not included here because they do not specifically focus on the city.
General Overviews
Other than Gellert and Pinto Soria 1990, there is no general overview of Guatemala City’s history per se. Adams 1970, Grandin, et al. 2011 and McAllister and Nelson 2013 are edited readers that have selections relating to Guatemala City, while O’Neill and Thomas 2011 focuses specifically on the capital.
Adams, Richard N., ed. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.
NNNStill of great utility today, this volume examines the anthropology of Guatemala’s social sectors as well as the power that the United States exerts over the nation. It includes work on Guatemala City by Bryan Roberts, who later produced voluminous work on the poor and the Latin American city.
Gellert, Gisela, and J. C. Pinto Soria. Ciudad de Guatemala: Dos estudios sobre su evolución urbana, 1524–1950. Guatemala City: CEUR USAC, 1990.
NNNAlso cited under Studies Covering Early Guatemala City, this source provides a general overview of Guatemala City from its origins to late in the 20th century.
Grandin, Greg, Deborah T. Levenson, and Elizabeth Oglesby, eds. The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
NNNPart of Duke University Press’s Latin America Readers series, this collection of scholarly writings, printed primary documents, and images covers a wide range of topics that range in time from the pre-Columbian past to the new millennium. Useful as a reference and for excerption in undergraduate classes.
McAllister, Carlota, and Diane M. Nelson, eds. War by Other Means: Aftermath in Post-Genocide Guatemala. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.
NNNThis interdisciplinary collection of essays is “about the violence war both channels from earlier times and generates anew, and the promise that an ‘after’ to this war will someday come.” Explores Guatemalan society, politics, and culture in the aftermath of genocide, focusing on the effects on neoliberalism.
O’Neill, Kevin Lewis, and Kedron Thomas, eds. Securing the City: Neoliberalism, Space, and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
NNNAlso cited under Urban Neighborhoods, Culture, and Society, this edited interdisciplinary reader provides an excellent overview of Guatemala City in the neoliberal period, linking social space to insecurity. It also covers the connections between urban and rural communities.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abolition
- Abortion and Infanticide
- Agricultural Technologies
- Alcohol Use
- Ancient Andean Textiles
- Andean Contributions to Rethinking the State and the Natio...
- Andean Music
- Andean Social Movements (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru)
- Anti-Asian Racism
- Antislavery Narratives
- Arab Diaspora in Brazil, The
- Arab Diaspora in Latin America, The
- Argentina in the Era of Mass Immigration
- Argentina, Slavery in
- Argentine Literature
- Army of Chile in the 19th Century
- Asian Art and Its Impact in the Americas, 1565–1840
- Asian-Peruvian Literature
- Asunción
- Atlantic Creoles
- Baroque and Neo-baroque Literary Tradition
- Beauty in Latin America
- Bello, Andrés
- Black Experience in Colonial Latin America, The
- Black Experience in Modern Latin America, The
- Body, The
- Bogotá
- Bolaño, Roberto
- Borderlands in Latin America, Conquest of
- Borges, Jorge Luis
- Bourbon Reforms, The
- Brazilian Northeast, History of the
- Buenos Aires
- Cali
- California Missions, The
- Caracas
- Caribbean Philosophical Association, The
- Caribbean, The Archaeology of the
- Cartagena de Indias
- Caste War of Yucatán, The
- Caudillos, 19th Century
- Cádiz Constitution and Liberalism, The
- Central America, The Archaeology of
- Chaco War
- Children, History of
- Chile's Struggle for Independence
- Chronicle, The
- Church in Colonial Latin America, The
- Chávez, Hugo, and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela
- Cinema, Contemporary Brazilian
- Cinema, Latin American
- Colonial Central America
- Colonial Latin America, Crime and Punishment in
- Colonial Latin America, Pilgrimage in
- Colonial Legal History of Peru
- Colonial New Granada
- Colonial Portuguese Amazon Region, from the 17th to 18th C...
- Comics, Cartoons, Graphic Novels
- Contemporary Indigenous Film and Video Production
- Contemporary Indigenous Social and Political Thought
- Contemporary Maya, The
- Cortés, Hernán
- Costa Rica
- Cárdenas and Cardenismo
- Cuban Revolution, The
- de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando
- Dependency Theory in Latin American History
- Development of Architecture in New Spain, 1500–1810, The
- Development of Painting in Peru, 1520–1820, The
- Disability
- Drug Trades in Latin America
- Dutch in South America and the Caribbean, The
- Early Colonial Forms of Native Expression in Mexico and Pe...
- Economies from Independence to Industrialization
- Ecuador
- Ecuador, La Generación del 30 in
- Education in New Spain
- El Salvador
- Enlightenment and its Visual Manifestations in Spanish Ame...
- Environmental History
- Era of Porfirio Díaz, 1876–1911, The
- Family History
- Film, Science Fiction
- Football (Soccer) in Latin America
- Franciscans in Colonial Latin America
- From "National Culture" to the "National Popular" and the ...
- Gaucho Literature
- Gender and History in the Andes
- Gender during the Period of Latin American Independence
- Gender in Colonial Brazil
- Gender in Postcolonial Latin America
- Gentrification in Latin America
- Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe
- Guaraní and Their Legacy, The
- Guatemala and Yucatan, Conquest of
- Guatemala City
- Guatemala (Colonial Period)
- Guatemala (Modern & National Period)
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Havana
- Health and Disease in Modern Latin America, History of
- History, Cultural
- History, Food
- History of Health and Disease in Latin America and the Car...
- Honor in Latin America to 1900
- Honor in Mexican Public Life
- Horror in Literature and Film in Latin America
- Hospitals
- Human Rights in Latin America
- Immigration in Latin America
- Independence in Argentina
- Indigenous Elites in the Colonial Andes
- Indigenous Population and Justice System in Central Mexico...
- Indigenous Voices in Literature
- Japanese Presence in Latin America
- Jesuits in Colonial Latin America
- Jewish Presence in Latin America, The
- José María Arguedas and Early 21st Century Cultural and Po...
- Las Casas, Bartolomé de
- Latin American Independence
- Latin American Theater and Performance
- Latin American Urbanism, 1850-1950
- Law and Society in Latin America since 1800
- Legal History of New Spain, 16th-17th Centuries
- Legal History of the State and Church in 18th Century New ...
- LGBT Literature
- Literature, Argentinian
- Machado de Assis
- Magical Realism
- Maroon Societies in Latin America
- Marriage in Colonial Latin America
- Martí, José, and Cuba
- Menchú, Rigoberta
- Mesoamerica, The Archaeology of
- Mestizaje and the Legacy of José María Arguedas
- Mexican Nationalism
- Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940, The
- Mexican-US Relations
- Mexico, Conquest of
- Mexico, Education in
- Mexico, Health Care in 20th-Century
- Migration to the United States
- Military and Modern Latin America, The
- Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990
- Military Institution in Colonial Latin America, The
- Mining
- Mining Extraction in Latin America
- Modern Decorative Arts and Design, 1900–2000
- Modern Populism in Latin America
- Modernity and Decoloniality
- Montevideo
- Music in Colonial Latin America
- Musical Tradition in Latin America, The
- Mystics and Mysticism
- Native Presence in Postconquest Central Peru
- Natural Disasters in Early Modern Latin America
- Neoliberalism
- Neruda, Pablo
- New Conquest History and the New Philology in Colonial Mes...
- New Left in Latin America, The
- Novel, Chronology of the Venezuelan
- Novel of the Mexican Revolution, The
- Novel, 19th Century Haitian
- Novel, The Colombian
- Nuns and Convents in Colonial Latin America
- Oaxaca, Conquest and Colonial
- Ortega, José y Gasset
- Painting in New Spain, 1521–1820
- Paraguay
- Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance)
- Pastoralism in the Andes
- Paz, Octavio
- Perón and Peronism
- Peru, Colonial
- Peru, Conquest of
- Peru, Slavery in
- Philippines Under Spanish Rule, 1571-1898
- Photography in the History of Race and Nation
- Piracy
- Political Exile in Latin America
- Ponce de León
- Popular Culture and Globalization
- Popular Movements in 19th-Century Latin America
- Portuguese-Spanish Interactions in Colonial South America
- Post Conquest Aztecs
- Post-Conquest Demographic Collapse
- Poverty in Latin America
- Preconquest Incas
- Pre-conquest Mesoamerican States, The
- Pre-Revolutionary Mexico, State and Nation Formation in
- Printing and the Book
- Prints and the Circulation of Colonial Images
- Protestantism in Latin America
- Puerto Rican Literature
- Quipu
- Religions in Latin America
- Revolution and Reaction in Central America
- Rosas, Juan Manuel de
- Sandinista Revolution and the FSLN, The
- Santo Domingo
- Science and Empire in the Iberian Atlantic
- Science and Technology in Modern Latin America
- Sephardic Culture
- Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Slavery in Brazil
- São Paulo
- South American Dirty Wars
- South American Missions
- Spanish American Arab Literature
- Spanish and Portuguese Trade, 1500–1750
- Spanish Caribbean In The Colonial Period, The
- Spanish Colonial Decorative Arts, 1500-1825
- Spanish Florida
- Spiritual Conquest of Latin America, The
- Sports in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Studies on Academic Literacies in Spanish-Speaking Latin A...
- Telenovelas and Melodrama in Latin America
- Textile Traditions of the Andes
- 19th Century and Modernismo Poetry in Spanish America
- 20th-Century Mexico, Mass Media and Consumer Culture in
- 16th-Century New Spain
- Tourism in Modern Latin America
- Transculturation and Literature
- Trujillo, Rafael
- Tupac Amaru Rebellion, The
- United States and Castro's Cuba in the Cold War, The
- United States and the Guatemalan Revolution, The
- United States Invasion of the Dominican Republic, 1961–196...
- Urban History
- Urbanization in the 20th Century, Latin America’s
- Uruguay
- US–Latin American Relations during the Cold War
- Vargas, Getúlio
- Venezuela
- Venezuelan Literature
- Women and Labor in 20th-Century Latin America
- Women in Colonial Latin American History
- Women in Modern Latin American History
- Women's Property Rights, Asset Ownership, and Wealth in La...
- World War I in Latin America
- Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas