When it first appeared in Spanish in 1970, La patria del criollo created a sensation in Central America, becoming an instant classic. The book exhibited an invigorating combination of extensive research in primary documents, not then a characteristic of historical work in Guatemala, with a powerful if even then slightly outdated Marxist analysis that sought to explain the origins of that country’s current socioeconomic problems. Now translators and editors connected to the CIRMA research center in Guatemala have made La patria available in English in a smooth translation and with an excellent critical introduction. At about half the page length of the original, it may appear to those familiar with the Spanish language version that the text has been greatly abridged, but closer examination shows that little of importance has been left out. More questionable, if understandable, is the editors’ decision to omit Martínez Peláez’s extensive content endnotes, which sometimes...
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