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La Patria del Criollo: An Interpretation of Colonial Guatemala. Severo Martínez Peláez. Translated by Susan M. Neve and W George Lovell. W George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz (eds.). Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Ui + 329 pp., map, diagram, glossary, and index. $24.95 paper (ISBN: 978-082-234-415-5).
Severo Martínez Peláez published La Patria del Criollo in 1970 after 15 years of research and writing, pardy in exile in Mexico and pardy in his native Guatemala. Patria del Criollo quickly became a key text for students of Central America because it offered several important arguments, such as the claim that instruments of repression implemented under colonial rule permeated Guatemalan society long after Independence: "the colonial essence of our society. . .conditions our present reality" in the absence of revolutionary change (p. 280). Martínez Peláez also argued that "Indians were the outcome of feudal exploitation imposed by a colonial regime" (p. 295) even as Indian labor "propped up the entire colonial enterprise" (p. 115). Appropriation of Indian labor through feudal means to generate wealth for ktifundia was the basis of the criollo homeland or patria.
George Lovell is one of three people responsible for bringing Patria into English translation; he helped translate and edit the book, and also co-authored the informative forward, which is a concise intellectual biography of Martínez Peláez. Lovell and Christopher Lutz synthesize Patrias argument and indicate the...