Guatemala is a land of natural beauty but man-made ugliness: some 200,000 deaths from political and civic violence in the past generation, about 85 percent of the population living in poverty, deep ethnic and class divisions, massive local conflicts and repeated cycles of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary terrorism. Jonas, perhaps the most persistent and passionate U.S. analyst of contemporary Guatemala, presents a structural analysis of Guatemala's turbulence that weaves together the internal and external influences that account for Guatemala's bloody history and clouded prospects.