Mito y realidades sobre la criminalidad en América Latina. (Myths and Truths on Crime in Latin America)
Reviewed by Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT -- Críticas, 5/1/2008
Kliksberg, Bernardo
Guatemala: F&G Editores. 2007. 51p. ISBN 978-99922-61-73-6. pap. $6. CURRENT AFFAIRS
REVIEWED WITH:
Las Izquierdas, Rigoberta Menchú, la Historia.
(The Different Lefts, Rigoberta Menchú, History)
Torres-Riva, Edelberto.
2007. 74p. ISBN 978-99922-61-74-3.
Tiempo y emancipación. Mijaíl Bajtín y Walter Benjamin en la Selva Lacandona.
(Time and Emancipation, Mijal Bajtin and Walter Benjamin in the Lancandona Jungle)
Visquerra Tischler, Serbio
2008. 80p. ISBN 978-99922-61-71-2.
Genocidio: ¿La máxima expresión del racismo en Guatemala?
(Genocide: The Greatest Expression of Racism in Guatemala?)
Casaús Arzú, Marta Elena
2008. 80p. ISBN 978-99922-61-63-7.
SERIES:
Cuadernos del presente imperfecto.
(Pamphlets of the Imperfect Present)
2007-2008. ISBN collection: 978-99922-61-62-0. $TK.
Ea. vol.: Guatemala: F&G Editores. pap. $TK. CURRENT AFFAIRS
Guatemala’s F&G Editores is an active and innovate press producing important political and social works focused on Guatemala but important to all of Latin America. Its latest addition is this series of essays by leading writers on political and social issues and is designed to contribute works that add to the “essential debate required to build a democratic and united Guatemala.” The series, launched in the summer of 2007, has these four titles to date.
Las Izquierdas includes three essays by a well-know Guatemalan sociologist on the 2007 political climate in Guatemala. The primary essay is a personal analysis on the potential role of the left in the 2007 presidential election in Guatemala won by Álvaro Colom on November 4. The volume is not about the Noble Peace Prize winner, as the title would suggest. Rigoberta Menchú, who ran for president and came in sixth in a field of 14, is only briefly discussed at the end of the primary essay. This pamphlet, published five months before the election, does not cover the actual events of the election, but the ideas are insightful and highlight the challenges of the political left in Guatemala.
Mito y realidades… is a reprint of the author’s essay initially published by EUROsociAL, a technical cooperative program of the European Union organized to support social cohesion in Latin America. The author is Argentine and has been affiliated with several international agencies including the United Nations and the Organization of American States. This essay provides an excellent summary of the rise of criminal activity in Latin America, including statistical analyses to support his ideas. He then discusses four myths that suggest that rising crime is a political problem that can be eliminated with harsh measures and counters with his theory that the primary causes of increasing criminality are well-known social issues related to poverty and lack of educational opportunities in the region.
Tiempo y emancipación presents the combined research of sociology doctoral students at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma of Puebla, Mexico, summarized by the Visquerra Tischler, who taught the class. The purpose of the research was to examine the ideas of the Russian scholar Bajtin (Miknail Bakhtin) and the ideas Walter Benjamin among others and compare them to those of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. The class was invited to present its research at a meeting organized in the Chiapas jungle by Zapatistas rebels, and the last section is a response by one of the leaders of the Zapatistas. The result is an interesting uniting of the ideas of different generations of thinkers concerning concepts of revolution.
This fourth volume, Genocidio, is perhaps the most important of the series to date. Marta Casaús Arzú is a professor of history at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and author of the important and creative historical examination of the development of racism against the Indigenous population in Guatemala, Guatemala: Linaje y racismo (“Guatemala: Lineage and Racism”; F&G, 2007). This pamphlet summarizes the history of Guatemala in relationship to the evolution of policy related to ethnic minorities. The author suggests that in societies with large minority populations, racist ideology and practices are used as one of the most prominent mechanisms of oppression and exploitation. Because they summarize and simplify ideas important to Guatemala and Latin America in general, these pamphlets will be of interest to libraries with Latin American collections.
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