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God and Revolution: Protestant Missions in Revolutionary Guatemala, 1944-1954
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
“Our institutions,” remarked a North American Protestant missionary in Guatemala in 1910 referring to his denomination's missions, schools and clinics, “can do more than gunboats.” From the time of the Liberal reform of Justo Rufino Barrios, most of Guatemala's Liberal rulers had agreed. Valued by nineteenth century Liberal rulers for their development projects, their usefulness in the struggle against Catholic clericalism, and, most importantly, for the packaging of North American values, beliefs and culture in which they wrapped the Word of God, Protestant missionaries worked in Guatemala with the blessing and encouragement of the government from the late nineteenth century until 1944. That year, the “last caudillo”—the old Liberal dictator Jorge Ubico —was ousted from power and replaced by a reformist junta, marking the beginning of Guatemala's decade-long flirtation with progressive revolutionary government.
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References
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