Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

摘要

It is only fitting that this volume should have had its origins in a round of post-conference drinks following an American Historical Association session. In the acknowledgements to his own chapter, the editor thanks deceased colleagues and friends for their contagious zest for 'happy hour' conversations-and even without happy hour reinforcements, this is a read as entertaining as it is enlightening. Following a brief foreword by William Taylor, whose classic work on Mexico is referenced often within the volume, David Carey provides both an introductory essay and one of its most detailed chapters, on 'Map Moonshiners' in the first half of the twentieth century. Stacey Schwartzkopf contributes a chapter on the role of aguardiente in nineteenth-century Maya society, followed by Rene Reeves with a chapter on women and alcohol production in the same period. Alvis E. Dunn analyses eighteenth-century tavern life and policies in Santiago (today's Antigua), while Frederick Douglas Opie vividly describes alcohol and 'lowdown culture'on the Caribbean coast in the railroad and banana era. Virginia Garrard-Burnett provides a concluding essay that explores community drunkenness and representations of Maya in modern Guatemala.