ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Fuentes y Guzmn, and a little-known region of Guatemala, the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, and focuses on what happened there under Spanish rule. Fuentes y Guzmn had served the Crown as district governor of the Cuchumatanes in the 1670s, when he was in his early thirties and ruled the region with authoritarian zeal. with all due respect to Fuentes y Guzmn, must be extended to the man who breathed new life into the Recordacin florida by making it the centerpiece of La patria del criollo, extracting from a Baroque chronicle the raw material from which a Marxist critique was wrought. Seeing Guatemala from a childs point of view, as at that moment did Fuentes y Guzmn, made a lasting impression on Martnez Pelez, not least because it was one with which he could identify, and indeed turned into an epiphany of sorts in La patria del criollo.
