By emphasizing narratives from 'new regions, new analytical frames, new historical actors, and new historical memories,' [Out of the Shadow] offers nuanced analysis that challenges the dominant, coup-centric interpretation of events...the volume offers a meticulous reflection of the period, region, and legacies of the revolution.
~NACLA Report on the Americas
As Guatemalans face neoliberalism, corruption, and dashed hopes following the peace accords, Out of the Shadow demonstrates that revolutionary ideals continue to resonate across the decades. These essays illuminate sociopolitical continuity and disruption, shifting memories, and new stories. The complexity offered here suggests that the revolution reformed existing institutional structures rather than replacing them. This critical volume excavates the forgotten revolutions while also attending to their enduring legacies and potency within the present, which suggest that revolutionary ideals remain even more urgent.
~Hispanic American Historical Review
This ambitious, multi-stranded excavation of Guatemala's 'Ten Years of Spring' (1944-1954) effectively adds the Guatemalan revolutionary experience to recent studies of the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions, Colombia's decades of Violencia, and the brutal conflict involving Peru's Shining Path. Out of the Shadow brings the Guatemalan revolutionary process in from the dichotomous debates that were themselves a product of outmoded bipolar narratives of the Central American Cold War. In the process, the collection portrays a nation experiencing many revolutions, obliging us to consider new regions, new actors, new interpretive frames, and a new approach to memory struggles that provocatively connects Guatemala's Ten Years of Spring and the decades of repression that ensued to the nation's present struggles and future imaginaries.
~Gil Joseph, Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, Yale University
Out of the Shadow presents new analysis and thought on the Guatemalan Revolution through threads of time, place, and a variety of actors, deepening understanding and adding to the existing literature on the subject...Out of the Shadow collectively reframes our understanding of the Guatemalan Revolution by bringing in new regions, new analysis, and new historical actors. The range of topics is wide and diverse, and its references extensive, making for absorbed reading and continued research by the reader.
~Journal of Global South Studies
