Overview

In The Mayan in the Mall, J. T. Way traces the creation of modern Guatemala from the 1920s to the present through a series of national and international development projects. Way shows that, far from being chronically underdeveloped, this nation of stark contrasts - where shopping malls and multinational corporate headquarters coexist with some of the Western hemisphere's poorest and most violent slums - is the embodiment of globalized capitalism. Using a wide array of historical and contemporary sources, Way explores the multiple intersections of development and individual life, focusing on the construction of social space through successive waves of land reform, urban planning, and economic policy. He moves from Guatemala City's poorest neighbourhoods and informal economies (run predominantly by women) to a countryside still recovering from civil war and anti-Mayan genocide, encompassing such artifacts of development as the modernist Pan-American Highway and the postmodern Grand Tikal Futura, a Mayan-themed shopping mall ringed by gated communities and shanty towns. Capitalist development, he concludes, has dramatically reshaped the country's physical and social landscapes, engendering poverty, ethnic regionalism, and genocidal violence - and positioned Guatemala as a harbinger of globalization's future.

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9786613582485

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Finally, a history of Guatemala City, a place that most scholars flee from despite its centrality to Guatemala's history. J. T. Way has unearthed a wealth of material from archival, literary, and oral sources. In striking and vibrant detail, he skillfully traces the history of neighborhoods and individuals from the first half of the twentieth century to today and he uses this history to open up a remarkable and original discussion of the play of ethnicity and modernity in the making of a cultural texture and urban political economy that uses the 'Mayan' in the absence of Mayas, or worse, in the presence of their oppression. The Mayan in the Mall brings to life the city's residents in this 'society of vendors' and simultaneously delivers a devastating and brilliant critique of development. --Deborah T. Levenson, coeditor of The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics

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