This extensively researched and thoughtful volume examines the connections between development, Indigeneity, and Cold War geopolitics in Guatemala. Sarah Foss explores how development policy is implemented by everyday actors and is navigated by the populations targeted by state development programs. In so doing, Foss demonstrates how the concepts of development and modernity “are historically contingent, highly contextualized, and constantly negotiated” (p. 6). Despite focusing on local instantiations of development practice, Foss effectively provides a scalar analysis connecting Indigenous community practices in Guatemala with nation-building projects and hemispheric constructions of modernity from the 1940s to the present. This approach illuminates how questions of modernity, race, and citizenship are embedded within development.
The book chronologically proceeds from a brief history of prerevolutionary development projects and the emergence of Pan-American indigenismo to analyze how development is socially constructed during the revolutionary era (1944–54) and reconstructed during the counterrevolution (1954–96). The manuscript evinces extensive...