8 - Now Owners of Our Land

Summary

By the time that World War II reached full force, Altaverapacence anti-imperialist nationalisms found further expression in anti-fascism, helping to overthrow Ubico and inaugurate Guatemala’s famed “ten years of spring.” This final chapter illustrates how Guatemala’s entrance into World War II, the nationalization of German properties, and the internment of German citizens ruptured power relations both regionally and nationally, while also generating expectations for land redistribution among rural workers and peasants. Alta Verapaz thus reveals how Guatemala’s 1952 agrarian reform was shaped by the events of World War II. Struggles over Guatemala’s 1952 agrarian reform condensed nineteenth-century histories of landownership and use, violent dispossessions, coerced labor, and disinheritance into bureaucratic struggles over what counted as unproductive and productive land use.