Excerpt from Political Changes in Guatemalan Indian Communities: A SymposiumFollowing the revolution of 1944, the intendente system was abolished and under a new constitution a new municipal policy was established. Elected mayors and town councils were re-established, but with the difference that the elections were intended to be competitive. Towards this end, poli tical parties were promoted. Silvert (1954) and the various cases to follow provide a description of the local political situation from 1945 on. Aside from these structural changes during the period from 1930 to 1954, there were others which, because of their relevance to the general picture, must be briefly mentioned (see also Goubaud, Prior to the time of Ubico, debt peonage was a standard practice of the large-scale farmers: Ubico abolished this practice and substituted a vagrancy law, and a required annual labor and military service from the Indian population. With the constitution of 1945, both these de mands were abolished and suffrage was extended to all literates and to all illiterate males. During the Ubico period radicalism of any kind was strongly suppressed, fol lowing the 1944 revolution, numerous exiles returned to the country and political beliefs of whatever character, providing they were not reactionary, were encour aged.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.