Studies on authorship in archaeology have revealed inequalities that influence interpretations of archaeological narratives. Like other countries with rich archaeological heritage, Guatemala has drawn a diverse pool of researchers for decades, owing to its renowned Maya heritage. This study examines how gender and nationality shape knowledge production in Guatemalan archaeology. We analyze publication trends in Guatemala’s most prominent publication venue, the memoirs of the annual archaeology symposium, and two international journals: Latin American Antiquity and Estudios de Cultura Maya. We also incorporate alumni data from Guatemalan universities and responses from an exploratory survey of 103 local archaeologists regarding occupations, identities, and perceptions of inequalities. Our study reveals that although Guatemalan archaeology has been characterized by relative gender parity, the dissemination of academic knowledge has been predominantly led by men, even during periods when there have been more female professional archaeologists. These disparities likely stem from several factors, including occupational variations, traditional gender-role expectations, and institutional barriers. While men have traditionally led the dissemination of academic knowledge, women have achieved leadership in other domains. This study highlights the current state of diversity in Guatemalan archaeology and serves as a first step toward building a more inclusive archaeological community.

Drawing on a range of fieldwork interviews, this paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in Guatemala. Guatemala’s mineral resources, and government efforts to encourage their extraction, are discussed, as is the emergent civil society of that nation. Guatemalan civil society has opposed mining due to the impacts of its environmental effects upon the poor engaged in subsistence agriculture. This opposition has involved protests, community consultations against mining, and networking with the forces of global civil society. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this opposition to mining is a manifestation of the opposition to neoliberalism currently underway in Latin America.

Sharp increases in “child migrants” from Central America detained at the US border in 2014 brought unprecedented levels of attention to long extant social and political issues perceived as causing youth migration. While governments on both sides of the US border faced criticism over responses to the migration “crisis,” the presumed causes of this migration presented in US media discourses went largely unquestioned. This article presents data collected in June 2015 from in-depth interviews with Guatemalan and transnational non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, scholars, lawyers, and activists in order to understand the complex interpretations of child migration by NGO actors in Guatemala. Findings illustrate how NGOs may selectively draw on the power of prevailing media narratives to buttress ideological and programmatic goals while simultaneously contesting how the same media depictions obscure the lived realities of migrants. We consider the transnational information politics of representations of “child migration” across government, media, and civil society sectors and the critical role of NGOs in articulating the complex realities faced by populations vulnerable to migration.

The processing load of sentences with three different word orders (VOS, VSO, and SVO) in Kaqchikel Maya was investigated using a sentence-plausibility judgment task. The results showed that VOS sentences were processed faster than VSO and SVO sentences. This supports the traditional analysis in Mayan linguistics that the syntactically determined basic word order is VOS in Kaqchikel, as in many other Mayan languages. More importantly, the result revealed that the preference for subject-object word order in sentence comprehension observed in previous studies may not be universal; rather, the processing load in sentence comprehension is greatly affected by the syntactic nature of individual languages.

This article examines the diplomatic strategies of Revolutionary Guatemala between 1944 and 1951, situating them within the broader continental realignments that occurred at the onset of the Cold War. Contrary to prevailing interpretations that emphasize covert warfare or ideological rhetoric, it argues that Guatemala’s revolutionary governments pursued a deliberate, multilateral diplomatic agenda aimed at reshaping inter-American relations. Drawing on research in multiple archives in the Americas and Europe, the article demonstrates how Guatemala engaged in initiatives such as the nonrecognition of coup regimes, support for the Larreta Doctrine, and campaigns against Francoist Spain while forging alliances with Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Southern Cone democracies. These efforts reveal both the agency and the limitations of states seeking to promote democracy amid shifting geopolitical pressures. By reframing Guatemala’s role, the article contributes to ongoing debates about Latin American agency, the contested nature of early Cold War alignments, and the evolution of inter-American diplomacy.

This article traces the history of how two generations of US archaeologists navigated their relationship with the Guatemalan government, from the Jorge Ubico dictatorship in the 1930s through the democratic opening of the 1940s and 1950s and the subsequent CIA-sponsored coup. Critiques of modern archaeology have focused on the discipline’s history of ideological and material collusion with different projects of US and European imperialism in the Global South. While the archaeologists discussed here benefited from US hegemony in the region, their own correspondence reflects an ambivalent relationship to formal frameworks of international law and a desire to function as autonomous nonstate actors. Rather than reflecting the political context of a given moment, the archaeologists’ behavior was often determined by a generations-old professional culture based on pragmatism and collective entitlement to the control of antiquities.

Adding to the research on Guatemalan migration, this article analyzes semistructured interviews with young adults from the Guatemalan diaspora to understand how they experience exclusion and erasure in K–12 schools in Los Angeles, California. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities as a framework, the author contextualizes these experiences within transnational histories of Indigeneity and race to unpack the various forms of erasure that students experience, including complex intersections of language, Indigenous background, and nationality. The findings note that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Guatemalans counter these erasures by finding sources of information to understand their community’s histories, including looking for information on their own, learning through student organizations, college courses or spaces, and community-based organizations. The author concludes by noting the need for Central American studies spaces that are informed by critical analysis of race and migration.

This paper examines the complex political-economic processes that shape contemporary forced displacement from Guatemala to the U.S. The study was driven by the following research question: How does capitalism and the historical context of forced migration in Guatemala relate to the creation and development of migrant-led organizations in the U.S. and the various types of leadership and political participation? Examining the political economy of Guatemalan migration to the Greater Los Angeles region and the activities of migrants and community organizations, I argue that neoliberal capitalism not only provokes the displacement of Guatemalan migrants as a social class of people from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds, but it has also contributed to the emergence of distinct political Guatemalan diaspora organizations in the U.S. at the community, national, and transnational level. Furthermore, due to historical social relations in Guatemala, organizations have emerged in Southern California along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Moreover, activism emerges within destination countries because exploitation and exclusion take on distinct forms beyond the specific economic and political forces that generate displacement in migrants’ origin countries. As such, these organizations have made significant contributions by safeguarding the human rights of Guatemalan migrants in the U.S. and have emerged based on the differences and inequalities faced by indigenous communities compared to non-indigenous (mestizo/ladino) groups as they and their organizations endure processes of “exclusionary inclusion” in the U.S.

This Article analyzes the role played by international actors, indigenous peoples, and independent lawyers as guardians of democracy in a context where democratic backsliding, abusive judicial review, and institutional takeover has taken place. Using the Guatemalan 2023 electoral process as a case study, this Article sheds new light on authoritarian constitutional practices, evidenced through the judgments of the Guatemalan Constitutional Court and activities of its Criminal Prosecutor’s Office. This Article also considers how foreign governments, international organizations, indigenous peoples, and independent lawyers came to play a guardianship role in the face of the decline of core institutions of constitutional democracy. Techniques such as transnational sanctions, judicial challenges, diplomatic “shaming,” and protest movements were successful in upholding constitutional democracy by discouraging attempts by the courts and government officials to derail the transition of power and annul the electoral results. This Article analyzes how and why these techniques had an impact in the Guatemalan context and extracts lessons and insights, both positive and negative, for dealing with abusive constitutional practices in theory and in practice.

Roads are vital for the economic development of countries but they pose major problems for wildlife. The road network in Central America is expanding, yet information about wildlife–vehicle collisions is scarce. We compiled data on vertebrate collisions with vehicles in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, from projects created on the citizen science platform iNaturalist, to provide the first assessment of how these species are affected by roads in northern Central America. Our projects gathered 670 wildlife roadkill records that had been logged by 95 users across the three countries, with 122 species identified. Mammals and reptiles represented 44 and 30% of the records, respectively, with opossums Didelphis spp. and Philander vossi, the common boa Boa constrictor and the neotropical whip snake Masticophis mentovarius being the most frequently reported species (112, 28, 43 and 23 records, respectively). One of the species recorded is categorized as globally Endangered on the IUCN Red List, two as Vulnerable, four as Near Threatened and four have not been evaluated. Forty-six species are listed as Threatened or Endangered nationally. This study is the first roadkill assessment in northern Central America to which both members of the public and specialists contributed, underscoring the value of public engagement and citizen science. We urge further assessment of road impacts on wildlife in this region using standardized methods to identify roadkill rates and hotspots, and the implementation of mitigation measures for existing and planned roads in the region.