About the Book
So, with the help of my family, Gail and her son Chris, I began research at Santo Tomás Jalieza in 1973 that lasted around four months, and resulted in this ethnographic study.
It includes an accumulation of considerable descriptive material useful for gaining a basic understanding of village life, but the most important finding was that after decades of debate and compromise a weaving cooperative was established in the village. The process of founding the cooperative led to the practice of resolving social and economic conflict by discussion, debate, and compromise rather than by the violence that is said to have been endemic in the area.
Lawrence G. Desmond received a PhD in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Colorado-Boulder; an MA in anthropology from the Universidad de las Americas in Cholula, Mexico, and carried-out archaeological research in Mexico and Guatemala for more than 40 years. He taught at the University of Minnesota and San Francisco State University. His books, "A Dream of Maya" and "Yucatán through her eyes," are about the 1870s photography and studies of the ancient Maya by Alice and Augustus Le Plongeon. His photos of Mexico and Guatemala are at Harvard University's Peabody Museum, photos of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project are at the Getty Research Institute, archaeology project photos and research materials at Tulane University, earliest photos at the Bancroft Library at UC-Berkeley. He is a senior research fellow in archaeology with the MMARP at Harvard University, and a research associate with the Dept. of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences.