Lanterna Rally

Author: Richard Newbold Adams

Publisher:

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13:

To observe that events are determined by historical antecedents is hardly informative. What is difficult about history is that it is rarely equally easy to find out how the past shapes the future. Central America presents an interesting case in which indigenous cultures and Spanish conquest have succeeded in reproducing old geographical patterns while the cultures and societies therein have changed in extraordinary ways. The present paper suggests how it is that some of these cultural and social relational continuities, perhaps difficult to understand apart from this long tradition, may have continued down from the pre-Columbian period to the present. A key element in the process seems to lie in the ethnic relations, those relations that have been retained between Ladinos and the state on the one hand, and the highly populous Indian population of Guatemala.