The Jungle, the Swamp and the Forest: Mario Payeras in his Peripheral Itineraries Through the Cold War

Abstract

From a global microhistory, the article studies the trajectory and writings of Mario Payeras (1940-1995), a Guatemalan philosopher and guerrilla fighter whose action and thought unfolded during the beginning of the Cold War, the revolutionary gesture in Guatemala and, in the post-conflict moment, in the construction of peace. Throughout this period Payeras completed a peripheral itinerary through the global geography of the Cold War that took him to Mexico, Cuba, Romania, the German Democratic Republic, the Soviet Union and North Korea. By following his travels, it is argued that these allowed the Guatemalan to mature a vision of the world founded on philosophy, social sciences and ecology, aimed to explaining social change and move from an East-West to North-South geopolitics.