Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954

Handy provides the most detailed discussion yet of the Guatemalan agrarian reform, and he shows how peasant organizations extended its impact by using it to lay claim to land, despite attempts by agrarian officials and the president to apply the law strictly. By focusing on changes in rural communities, and by detailing the coercive measures used to reverse the "revolution in the countryside" following the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzm‡n, Handy provides a framework for interpreting more recent events in Guatemala, especially the continuing struggle for land and democracy.