{"product_id":"silence-on-the-mountain","title":"Silence on the Mountain","description":"new in paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSilence on the Mountain\u003c\/i\u003e is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala’s thirty-six-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of some 200,000 people, the vast majority of whom died (or were “disappeared”) at the hands of the U.S.-backed military government. Written by Daniel Wilkinson, a young human rights worker, the story begins in 1993, when the author decides to investigate the arson of a coffee plantation’s manor house by a band of guerrillas. The questions surrounding this incident soon broaden into a complex mystery whose solution requires Wilkinson to dig up the largely unwritten history of the country’s recent civil war, following its roots back to a land reform movement that was derailed by a U.S.-sponsored military coup in 1954 and to the origins of a plantation system that put Guatemala’s Mayan Indians to work picking coffee beans for the American and European markets. \u003cp\u003eDecades of terror-inspired fear have led the Guatemalans to adopt a survival strategy of silence so complete that it verges on collective amnesia. The author’s great triumph is that he finds a way for people to tell their stories, and it is through these stories-dramatic, intimate, heartbreaking-that we are shown the anatomy of a thwarted revolution that has relevance not only to Guatemala but also to countless places around the world where terror has been used as a political tool.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54245822726488,"sku":"9780822333685","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780822333685_7e7959cc-002c-474b-8fac-386afa1d9db9.jpg?v=1777770922","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/silence-on-the-mountain","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}