2021 CALACS Book Prize Winner

Patricia Harms: Ladina Social Activism in Guatemala City, 1871-1954. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2020.

Patricia Harms has written a superb book that provides an in-depth study of a previously neglected, yet highly relevant topic in the complex history of Guatemala. This excellent piece of scholarship is based on solid archival work and uses a sophisticated theoretical framework, covering the important role of non-indigenous women, ladinas, over the span of eight decades of Guatemalan history. The book critically examines the complex political relationships established by ladinas in their struggles against Guatemala’s entrenched patriarchal system. It is a rigorous and impressive work and a major contribution to the historiographies on gender, race, class, and state- and nation-building in Latin America.