This book is mainly a description of la Gran Nicoya and its people during the Spanish conquest. Its main objective is to demonstrate that change and destruction occurred with the conquest and colonization of Gran Nicoya. Some cultural elements were destroyed but were reelaborated through syncretism and passed to later generations, but this is not clearly shown in the book. More time and space are devoted to the description of other problems than to the search for the protagonistas, as the author calls them in the title. There seems to be a contradiction between the title and the author’s goals. If she wants to demonstrate how cultural elements were strengthened and transmitted from the surviving indigenous peoples themselves, then why does the word desaparecidos appear? Who or what disappeared?
In part 1, on the pre-Columbian period, three chapters reconstruct the ecology, the ethnic groups, and subsistence practices. Chapter 2...
