For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960-1990

In 1978, a Maya community queen stood on a stage to protest a massacre of indigenous campesinos at the hands of the Guatemalan state. She spoke graphically to the dead and to the living alike: Brothers of Panzós, your blood is in our throats!

Given the context, her message might come as a surprise. A revolutionary insurgency in the late 1970s was being met by brutal state efforts to defeat it, efforts directed not only at the guerrilla armies but also at reform movements of all kinds. Yet th...