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Guatemalan Journey
Guatemala draws some half million tourists each year, whose brief visits to the ruins of ancient Maya cities and contemporary highland Maya villages may give them only a partial and folkloric understanding of Guatemalan society. In this vividly written travel narrative, Stephen Connely Benz explores the Guatemala that casual travelers miss, using his encounters with ordinary Guatemalans at the mall, on the streets, at soccer games, and even at the funeral of massacre victims to illuminate the social reality of Guatemala today. The book opens with an extended section on the capital, Guatemala City, and then moves out to the more remote parts of the country where the Guatemalan Indians predominate. Benz offers us a series of intelligent and sometimes humorous perspectives on Guatemala's political history and the role of the military, the country's environmental degradation, the influence of foreign missionaries, and especially the impact of the United States on Guatemala, from governmental programs to fast food franchises.
- GenresMemoirTravelNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 16, 2018
Stephen Connely Benz's Guatemalan Journey (1998) is a well-thought-out look at a country that is still trying to recover from an American-instigated coup that replaced the elected Arbenz government in 1954. Half the material deals with Guatemala City -- but as seen from a different perspective. This is no tourist guidebook: Benz shows us what interests him and which illustrates life from a Guatemalan viewpoint.
Only then does he take the grand tour, encompassing the Western Highlands and the Petén Jungle. He visits sites of army massacres, describes being stopped at military checkpoints, and describes the ecological deterioration of much of the land beyond the tourist trail.
This is a valuable book, and Benz is an astute observer.
Only then does he take the grand tour, encompassing the Western Highlands and the Petén Jungle. He visits sites of army massacres, describes being stopped at military checkpoints, and describes the ecological deterioration of much of the land beyond the tourist trail.
This is a valuable book, and Benz is an astute observer.
October 10, 2023
I was introduced to the author by his agent, who sent me another book of his, Topographies, to review. A stellar collection of travel essays that take the reader through places as diverse as rural Wyoming, the Florida Everglades, and a train ride across the border from Romania to the former Soviet Union. https://millionmilewalker.com/2020/06...
While researching my forthcoming book, The Guatemala Reader, I was delighted to learn that he’d written a book similar to this entitled Guatemalan Journey. Identical to my Peace Corps experience there, he spent two years as a Fulbright Scholar doing the day-to-day activities and dealing with the same bureaucracy ordinary Guatemalans have to do. Unlike my memoir, Different Latitudes, he doesn’t mention his family, although he brought them along for this impressive trek. Always the consummate observer, Benz starts the book grappling with critical issues facing the country, like the influx of foreign missionaries, mass killings, the strangling bureaucracy, and cultural appropriation.
He starts the book by contrasting two unrelated events that sum up the complexity and ambiguity of Guatemala’s social reality. On the one hand, a massive new mall, the “Megacentro,” featuring 70 stores, which would have been the envy of any mall in the U.S., is hogging all the publicity and focus of Guatemala City’s population.
The very next day, a massacre occurred in a small village near Chimaltenango, El Aguacate, where 22 men were dragged from their homes and murdered. After the typical government pronouncements that the guerrillas were to blame, it became apparent that the military was the source of the violence. The author follows the funeral procession to the cemetery, which is like “a scene from a Latin American novel. Twenty coffins were carried up a hill of rocks. The wind whipped up dust and swirled it everywhere.” He ends with, “for me, it was the beginning of a difficult struggle to better understand a place where malls and massacres could be so strangely juxtaposed.”
He analyzes some underlying conditions behind this juxtaposition - the fundamental disrespect of the Mayan rural population, starting with travel writers. Guidebooks from the 1920s and 1930s barely mentioned them, although they’re close to 50% of the people, other than to say they were “primitive but Christianized.” Their distant past was considered much more interesting than their degraded present; even intelligent and appreciative travelers of the time, such as archaeologist Alfred Maudsley and the novelist Aldous Huxley, were dismayed by the “primitive” culture of the descendants of the great Maya…”
In recent times, the elite in the late twentieth century were more concerned with progress than the survival of indigenous culture. They were amazed that the world seemed to embrace the Indians and wished to protect them. “Rigoberta Menchú, an untutored Indian woman, for a prestigious award like the Nobel Peace Prize? Had the world gone mad?”
Later in the book, the author marvels at the weavings that made up each Maya group's clothing. “Walking around Nebaj, I saw each ‘huipil’ as a fragment of a huge, unending hieroglyphic text - one that for me must remain elusive and mysterious, though I felt certain the Ixil could read these texts and could see in each individual weaving what my untrained eye could not.”
The book's second part focuses on the places he visited, most of which I’ve lived in, or worked around, over the years. One of my favorites is his description of The “Biotopo,” not far from where I met my Guatemalan wife. The “Biotopo” is over 2,800 acres and is a bold attempt to save one of Guatemala's most symbolic creatures, the quetzal. It’s revered because it can’t be held in captivity, and its glowing green/red plumage sets it apart from anything in the cloud forest. Unfortunately, many predicted that the quetzal would not survive the first decade of the twenty-first century, which reflects the extreme deforestation and effects of climate control.
It has a unique environment where it can rain all night and still be drizzling in the morning. Benz describes such a morning when he saw the guard in the visitor’s center waving him over. “Somehow, he’d gotten a fire going in this dampness - a skill one had better develop in the land of the ‘chipi-chipi’ - and had boiled some coffee.”
Benz sums up his experience by listing some of the names he was called over two years in Guatemala. Everything from “illustrious doctor” and “eminent critic” to “gringo jodido.” But after two years in Guatemala, one term stood out, “I remained a stranger.”
I’d agree with The Publisher’s Weekly, when it observed, “Unfortunately, the book comes to a rather abrupt end, leaving readers searching for a missing chapter.” But I will definitely add this to the bibliography of my forthcoming book.
Product details
• Language : English
• File Size : 864 KB
• Publication date : May 28, 2010
• Date First Available : December 7, 2012
• Publisher : University of Texas Press
• ASIN : B00DCD9KKS
• Best Sellers Rank: #3,692,432 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
o #455 in Guatemala History
o #642 in Central American Travel
o #1,728 in General Central America Travel Guides
• Customer Reviews:
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
The Author
Stephen Benz is a Fulbright Scholar and an award-winning writer whose previous travel narratives include the Guatemalan Journey and Green Dreams. His essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Miami Herald, and TriQuarterly. He teaches professional writing at the University of New Mexico. You can learn more about him at https://www.stephenconnelybenz.com/about
The Reviewer
Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world with agencies like Food for the Hungry, Make A Wish International, and Hagar USA. His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association. His second book, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, won the 2023 Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Travel Book. He’s a contributing writer for Literary Traveler, Wanderlust Journal, and The Authors’ Show. “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading And Why” can be found in the Arizona Authors’ Association Newsletter, Authors Digest. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com.
While researching my forthcoming book, The Guatemala Reader, I was delighted to learn that he’d written a book similar to this entitled Guatemalan Journey. Identical to my Peace Corps experience there, he spent two years as a Fulbright Scholar doing the day-to-day activities and dealing with the same bureaucracy ordinary Guatemalans have to do. Unlike my memoir, Different Latitudes, he doesn’t mention his family, although he brought them along for this impressive trek. Always the consummate observer, Benz starts the book grappling with critical issues facing the country, like the influx of foreign missionaries, mass killings, the strangling bureaucracy, and cultural appropriation.
He starts the book by contrasting two unrelated events that sum up the complexity and ambiguity of Guatemala’s social reality. On the one hand, a massive new mall, the “Megacentro,” featuring 70 stores, which would have been the envy of any mall in the U.S., is hogging all the publicity and focus of Guatemala City’s population.
The very next day, a massacre occurred in a small village near Chimaltenango, El Aguacate, where 22 men were dragged from their homes and murdered. After the typical government pronouncements that the guerrillas were to blame, it became apparent that the military was the source of the violence. The author follows the funeral procession to the cemetery, which is like “a scene from a Latin American novel. Twenty coffins were carried up a hill of rocks. The wind whipped up dust and swirled it everywhere.” He ends with, “for me, it was the beginning of a difficult struggle to better understand a place where malls and massacres could be so strangely juxtaposed.”
He analyzes some underlying conditions behind this juxtaposition - the fundamental disrespect of the Mayan rural population, starting with travel writers. Guidebooks from the 1920s and 1930s barely mentioned them, although they’re close to 50% of the people, other than to say they were “primitive but Christianized.” Their distant past was considered much more interesting than their degraded present; even intelligent and appreciative travelers of the time, such as archaeologist Alfred Maudsley and the novelist Aldous Huxley, were dismayed by the “primitive” culture of the descendants of the great Maya…”
In recent times, the elite in the late twentieth century were more concerned with progress than the survival of indigenous culture. They were amazed that the world seemed to embrace the Indians and wished to protect them. “Rigoberta Menchú, an untutored Indian woman, for a prestigious award like the Nobel Peace Prize? Had the world gone mad?”
Later in the book, the author marvels at the weavings that made up each Maya group's clothing. “Walking around Nebaj, I saw each ‘huipil’ as a fragment of a huge, unending hieroglyphic text - one that for me must remain elusive and mysterious, though I felt certain the Ixil could read these texts and could see in each individual weaving what my untrained eye could not.”
The book's second part focuses on the places he visited, most of which I’ve lived in, or worked around, over the years. One of my favorites is his description of The “Biotopo,” not far from where I met my Guatemalan wife. The “Biotopo” is over 2,800 acres and is a bold attempt to save one of Guatemala's most symbolic creatures, the quetzal. It’s revered because it can’t be held in captivity, and its glowing green/red plumage sets it apart from anything in the cloud forest. Unfortunately, many predicted that the quetzal would not survive the first decade of the twenty-first century, which reflects the extreme deforestation and effects of climate control.
It has a unique environment where it can rain all night and still be drizzling in the morning. Benz describes such a morning when he saw the guard in the visitor’s center waving him over. “Somehow, he’d gotten a fire going in this dampness - a skill one had better develop in the land of the ‘chipi-chipi’ - and had boiled some coffee.”
Benz sums up his experience by listing some of the names he was called over two years in Guatemala. Everything from “illustrious doctor” and “eminent critic” to “gringo jodido.” But after two years in Guatemala, one term stood out, “I remained a stranger.”
I’d agree with The Publisher’s Weekly, when it observed, “Unfortunately, the book comes to a rather abrupt end, leaving readers searching for a missing chapter.” But I will definitely add this to the bibliography of my forthcoming book.
Product details
• Language : English
• File Size : 864 KB
• Publication date : May 28, 2010
• Date First Available : December 7, 2012
• Publisher : University of Texas Press
• ASIN : B00DCD9KKS
• Best Sellers Rank: #3,692,432 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
o #455 in Guatemala History
o #642 in Central American Travel
o #1,728 in General Central America Travel Guides
• Customer Reviews:
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
The Author
Stephen Benz is a Fulbright Scholar and an award-winning writer whose previous travel narratives include the Guatemalan Journey and Green Dreams. His essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Miami Herald, and TriQuarterly. He teaches professional writing at the University of New Mexico. You can learn more about him at https://www.stephenconnelybenz.com/about
The Reviewer
Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world with agencies like Food for the Hungry, Make A Wish International, and Hagar USA. His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association. His second book, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, won the 2023 Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Travel Book. He’s a contributing writer for Literary Traveler, Wanderlust Journal, and The Authors’ Show. “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading And Why” can be found in the Arizona Authors’ Association Newsletter, Authors Digest. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com.
February 7, 2019
Definitely a must read if you are planning a trip to Guatemala (which I am). The author went to live in Guatemala in 1988 as a Fulbright Scholar and this book is a culmination of his experiences traveling and living in the country for two years. It also outlines the history of Guatemala, which includes periods of authoritarian rule followed by a short period of democracy derailed by the military with support from the USA, back to military rule with opposition from mostly Mayan Indian guerillas from small poor towns. The author, Benz, discusses how tourism has destroyed the culture and at the same time has saved the Guatemalan poor by creating jobs. An expansive look at the society. Unfortunately, his negative opinion of tourism (“foreigners”) was overwhelming.
June 27, 2018
The book was informative and pretty interesting. Told from the perspective of a liberal American academic. I liked the descriptions and juxtaposition of the people who live in Guatemala with the tourists and Americans who adventure/work there but at times it was a bit repetitive with that theme and the overwhelming disdain for the “common tourists” -came off to me as a bit elitist at times.
January 17, 2020
Must read for anyone who wants an opinion on immigration from our southern borders.
December 10, 2010
Benz's book stems from his experience living in Guatemala in the late 1980s on a Fulbright Scholarship. The beauty of Benz's work is that it is an on-the-ground, uncensored and serious perspective on life in Guatemala at the time with the pertinent historical details to put it into perspective. I read his book immediately prior to a trip I took to Guatemala and found it just as relevant as when it was written because it provides context to the current political and social climate of Guatemala today. Another valuable service Benz provides in his book is his critical examination of the history of European and US involvement in Guatemalan politics. While an academic, Benz's writing is highly readable and not a dry anthropological tome. In preparation for my trip, I read a couple of other travelogue-type accounts of Guatemala that gave haphazard treatment -- if at all -- to political environment that cannot be gained from the tourist's "just passing through" viewpoint. If you are traveling to Guatemala, you will acquire a finer understanding for the Guatemalan people if you read this. If you've been to Guatemala, you will undoubtedly gain a fuller appreciation of life there from Benz's book. I would consider "Guatemalan Journey" as equally important for the European or American traveler to Guatemala as any guidebook.
January 28, 2013
Erik-not done yet but eye opening and a bit alarming. Fascinating. Written in 1996 and I hope things are better there now, behind the tourist facade.
Later: A must read if you are going to Guatemala.Although written in 1996 I believe a lot of the things are still true and if things have changed,the vestiges probably remain.The country had a 30+year reign of civil war, with 200,000 people "disappearing". Causes and factors complex but mainly enlightening re: the Guatemalan rulers AND the role of the U.S. (and further back, the roles of Spain and the Catholic church.)
Later: A must read if you are going to Guatemala.Although written in 1996 I believe a lot of the things are still true and if things have changed,the vestiges probably remain.The country had a 30+year reign of civil war, with 200,000 people "disappearing". Causes and factors complex but mainly enlightening re: the Guatemalan rulers AND the role of the U.S. (and further back, the roles of Spain and the Catholic church.)
April 30, 2009
What awesome insight about life living in Guatemala City. I liked the first section of the book more, mostly because it was all about living in Guatemala City and dealing with certain things like, traffic, beauracracy, etc. that I sometimes get to experience. I hope to find more good reads about Guatemala during my 2 year stay in this awesome country.
October 21, 2010
Very well written. History of Guatemala over the last 60 years. Benz travels the country and describes the areas and the people. This excellent book would be of interest to those who want to know more about Guatemala.
December 15, 2010
Benz wrote his impressions of Guatemala from the eyes, of a two year journey, as a Fulbright Scholar. He not only discussed the dangers, but what caused them. He longed for the Mayan people to be able to keep their culture and was saddened by the way American capitalism caused their corription.
January 27, 2012
This book is outstanding. Very meaningful observations make you feel like you're right in Guatemala with him. Great historical / political analysis.
March 1, 2012
Learned a lot!
June 24, 2012
travelogue…most pleasant at end where he leaves city ("outsider" view leaves holes but is an articulate first glance intertwined with historical information
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews