Central America category: 775 books

In 1984, indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú published a harrowing account of life under a military dictatorship in Guatemala. That autobiography—I, Rigoberta Menchú—transformed the study and understanding of modern Guatemalan history and brought its author international renown. She...

Popular art is a masculine and working-class genre, associated with Panama's black population. Its practitioners are self-taught, commercial painters, whose high-toned designs, vibrant portraits, and landscapes appear in cantinas, barbershops, and restaurants. The red devil buses are popular art's...

Guatemala emerged from the clash between Spanish invaders and Maya cultures that began five centuries ago. The conquest of these “rich and strange lands,” as Hernán Cortés called them, and their “many different peoples” was brutal and prolonged. “Strange Lands and Different Peoples”...

"Of all the American people , the Quiché region of Guatemala have left us the richest mythological legacy. The story of creation, which appears in the Popol Vuh, which may be called the national book of the Quiché, in its rude and strange eloquence and poetic originality, is one of the most...

1987 - An old woman finds a baby girl abandoned by the road in El Salvador. In the USA, Diane Remer-Thamert mourns the loss of a stillborn girl. Civil war is raging in El Salvador. Diane’s husband Glen wants to adopt a child from El Salvador. He meets a Salvadoran attorney whose father can help...

The treaties of Bartolomé de las Casas are arguments in favor of the Indians; the best known of these, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, was not published until 1552. Along with passages like the above, with passionate descriptions of the New World, Bartolomé de las Casas reflects on the Conquest and its aftermath. 

La Historia del almirante no se publicó en vida de Hernando Colón, el manuscrito pasó a María de Toledo, su cuñada, la esposa de Diego Colón. Luego Luis Colón (hijo de Diego) lo entregó al genovés Baliano de Fornari. Este lo llevó a Venecia, donde fue impreso en 1571, con el título de Historie...

El estilo literario de la Historia de la conquista se anticipa al neoclasicismo, por lo que los autores del siglo XVIII tuvieron esta obra en gran estima. Se sabe que el autor escribió varias veces el texto. Sin embargo, al igual que López de Gómara, Solís nunca estuvo en América.

Basta esta cita para comprender la idea del «buen gobierno» de los Incas descrita por Bartolomé de las Casas: Consideraba (...) la condición e inclinaciones de las gentes, y si entendía que eran orgullosos o inquietos, traía de otros pueblos, mayormente de los que tenía más conocidos y experimentados...

Eva’s story continues half a world away in this vivid sequel to "Eva’s War." After World War II, Eva and her husband Manfred are preparing to leave the scars and devastation of post-war Germany behind to begin an exciting new adventure in sunny, beautiful Chile. Even as Eva steps off the plane,...

It doesn't take long to discover that Belize is a land of contrasts. From the poverty and disarray of the cities to the quiet countryside, many differences are soon found. With poverty and crime running rampant in cities such as Belize City and Belmopan, the traveler has to be constantly aware of...

Las Cartas de relación, son cinco cartas escritas durante siete años y dirigidas al emperador de España Carlos V, y constituyen uno de los testimonios más notables —junto con los Diarios de Colón, la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España de Díaz del Castillo y la Historia...

Making sense of our universe...It's an age-old practice that transcends cultures and generations. From our vantage point, the larger than life Maya civilization grappled with the urge in a grand scale. Join us as we take a voyage to understand the ways of the Maya.  Inside you will read about... ✓...

From Hitler to Trujillo is a memoir by a Holocaust survivor Alfredo Vorshirm. His gripping story embodies the Jewish European experience during and after World War II and dramatizes the events that impelled Vorshirm to the Dominican Republic at the height of the Trujillo dictatorship. Living in Belgium...