Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History By David Carey

Distilling the influence of alcoholmists

Sugar coffee corn and chocolate have long dominated the study of Central American commerce and researchers tend to overlook one other equally significant alcohol Often illicitly produced and consumed aguardiente distilled sugar cane spirits or rum was central to Guatemalan daily life though scholars have often neglected its fundamental role in the country s development Throughout world history alcohol has helped build family livelihoods boost local economies and forge nations The alcohol economy also helped shape Guatemala s turbulent categories of ethnicity race class and gender as these essays demonstrate Established and emerging Guatemalan historians investigate aguardiente s role from the colonial era to the twentieth century drawing from archival documents oral histories and ethnographic sources Topics include women in the alcohol trade taverns as places of social unrest and tension between Maya and State authority By tracing Guatemala s past people and national development through the channel of an alcoholic beverage Distilling the Influence of Alcohol opens new directions for Central American historical and anthropological research David Carey Jr Alvis E Dunn Virginia Garrard Burnett Frederick Douglass Opie Ren Reeves Stacey Schwartzkopf Distilling the Influence of Alcohol Aguardiente in Guatemalan History.