Books of travels will be good in proportion to what a man has previously in his mind; his knowing what to observe; his power of contrasting one mode of life with another. As the Spanish proverb says, `He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. Samuel Johnson, England
Asturias, Miguel Angel. Men of Maize. London and New York: Verso, 1988. The Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner writes about the mixture of life and mythology among the Mayan Indians of Guatemala.
Burges-Debray, Elisabeth. I, Rigoberta Menchù: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London and New York: Verso, 1984. The tragic yet inspiring lifestory of the Nobel Peace Prize winner as told to a Venezuelan journalist. Chapter 24 is titled, "The torture and death of her little brother, burnt alive in front of members of his family and the community."
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985, c1961. Brilliant exposition on the Latin American psyche by the Nobel prize winner.
Schlesinger, Stephen, and Kinzer, Stephen. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1982. State Department and CIA arrogance and stupidity in 1954 breed half-a-century of disaster.
Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993, c1843. This is a beautiful photo- and drawing-filled, superbly edited (by Karl Ackerman) edition of the classic travel book by America's first major travel writer. Stephens discovered many Mayan ruins, including Copán, which he bought for $50.
Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Popol Vuh. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. The fascinating Mayan creation myth.