Mita, Guatemala
Mita, Guatemala
Guatemala Mita, a region that roughly corresponds to the eastern highlands of Guatemala, south of the Motagua River. The territory is now occupied by the departments of Santa Rosa, Jalapa, and Jutiapa and borders El Salvador. Mita was unique in Guatemala in that it became ladino, or Hispanicized, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Under such conditions of social change, the region erupted in political violence on several occasions. Indeed, it became the home of peasant leader Rafael Carrera, whose revolutionary activities led to the downfall of liberal rule in 1838 in Guatemala and the eventual destruction of the United Provinces of Central America. Thereafter, as Carrera controlled the political life of the nation for the next three decades, a disproportionate number of Guatemala's military and political leaders came from the region.
See alsoGuatemala .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pedro Tobar Cruz, Los Montañeses (1959).
Additional Bibliography
Grandin, Greg. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Shea, Maureen E. Culture and Customs of Guatemala. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Michael F. Fry