Download or read book Maya Or Mestizo written by Ronald Loewe and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multifaceted and beautifully written ethnography of Maxcanu, a small Maya town in the Yucatan region of Mexico, offers both an historical and a contemporary understanding of the way external pressures to modernize are often met with forms of resistance that are rooted in rituals and oral tradition. The Maya of the Yucatan have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). They have also been drawn into the North American and global economy through agriculture and, more recently, tourism and US-based evangelical organizations. Despite the many pressures to turn Mayas into mestizos, the citizens of Maxcanu use subtle forms of resistance, including humour, satire, and language, to maintain aspects of their traditional identity. Maya or Mestizo? skilfully weaves the history of Mexico into a compelling tale of a community caught between tradition and modernity.
Download or read book Maya or Mestizo written by Ronald Loewe and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya of the Yucatán have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). At the same time, they have contended with globalization pressures, first with hemp production and more recently with increased tourism and the fast-growing influence of American-based evangelical Protestantism. Despite these pressures to turn Maya into mestizo, the citizens of the small town of Maxcanú have used subtle forms of resistance—humor, satire, and language—to maintain aspects of their traditional identity. Loewe offers a contemporary look at a Maya community caught between tradition and modernity. He skilfully weaves the history of Mexico and this particular community into the analysis, offering a unique understanding of how one local community has faced the onslaught of modernization.
Download or read book The United States of Mestizo written by Ilan Stavans and published by NewSouth Books. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States of Mestizo is a powerful manifesto attesting to the fundamental changes the nation has undergone in the last half-century. Writer Ilan Stavans meditates on how the cross-fertilizing process that defined the Americas during the colonial period--the racial melding of Europeans and indigenous peoples--foretells the miscegenation that is the most salient profile of America today. If, as W.E.B. DuBois once argued, the twentieth century was defined by a color fracture at its core, Stavans believes the twenty-first will be shaped by a multi-color line that will make us all a sum of parts.
Download or read book Mayan People Within and Beyond Boundaries written by Peter Hervik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mayan People Within and Beyond Boundaries explores the Maya of Yucatan, the Maya of academic institutions and the Maya of the tourist industry. It examines the interplay between the local and the external, academic categories of the Maya, and seeks to transcend the paradoxical and incongruent relationship between the social spaces that breathe life into the categories. The notion of "shared social experience" is introduced to embody a focus on reflexivity that goes beyond the subjective position of the author and helps demystify the coexisting subjectivities characteristic of ethnographic fieldwork. It provides a basis for overcoming the exclusive focus on "author," " text," and "discourse" in contemporary postmodernist ethnography, while still conveying important ethnographic information.
Download or read book Singing to the Plants written by Stephan V, Beyer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.
Download or read book The Caste War of Yucat n written by Nelson A. Reed and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the classic account of one of the most dramatic episodes in Mexican history--the revolt of the Maya Indians of Yucatán against their white and mestizo oppressors that began in 1847. Within a year, the Maya rebels had almost succeeded in driving their oppressors from the peninsula; by 1855, when the major battles ended, the war had killed or put to flight almost half of the population of Yucatán. A new religion built around a Speaking Cross supported their independence for over fifty years, and that religion survived the eventual Maya defeat and continues today. This revised edition is based on further research in the archives and in the field, and draws on the research by a new generation of scholars who have labored since the book's original publication 36 years ago. One of the most significant results of this research is that it has put a human face on much that had heretofore been treated as semi-mythical. Reviews of the First Edition "Reed has not only written a fine account of the caste war, he has also given us the first penetrating analysis of the social and economic systems of Yucatán in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." --American Historical Review "In this beautifully written history of a little-known struggle between several contending forces in Yucatán, Reed has added an important dimension to anthropological studies in this area." --American Anthropologist "Not only is this exciting history (as compelling and dramatic as the best of historical fiction) but it covers events unaccountably neglected by historians. . . . This is a brilliant contribution to history. . . . Don't miss this book." --Los Angeles Times "One of the most remarkable books about Latin America to appear in years." --Hispanic American Report
Download or read book Women Who Live Evil Lives written by Martha Few and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women Who Live Evil Lives documents the lives and practices of mixed-race, Black, Spanish, and Maya women sorcerers, spell-casters, magical healers, and midwives in the social relations of power in Santiago de Guatemala, the capital of colonial Central America. Men and women from all sectors of society consulted them to intervene in sexual and familial relations and disputes between neighbors and rival shop owners; to counter abusive colonial officials, employers, or husbands; and in cases of inexplicable illness. Applying historical, anthropological, and gender studies analysis, Martha Few argues that women's local practices of magic, curing, and religion revealed opportunities for women's cultural authority and power in colonial Guatemala. Few draws on archival research conducted in Guatemala, Mexico, and Spain to shed new light on women's critical public roles in Santiago, the cultural and social connections between the capital city and the countryside, and the gender dynamics of power in the ethnic and cultural contestation of Spanish colonial rule in daily life.
Download or read book Maya Intellectual Renaissance written by Victor D. Montejo and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Mayan leaders protested the celebration of the Quincentenary of the "discovery" of America and joined with other indigenous groups in the Americas to proclaim an alternate celebration of 500 years of resistance, they rose to national prominence in Guatemala. This was possible in part because of the cultural, political, economic, and religious revitalization that occurred in Mayan communities in the later half of the twentieth century. Another result of the revitalization was Mayan students' enrollment in graduate programs in order to reclaim the intellectual history of the brilliant Mayan past. Victor Montejo was one of those students. This is the first book to be published outside of Guatemala where a Mayan writer other than Rigoberta Menchu discusses the history and problems of the country. It collects essays Montejo has written over the past ten years that address three critical issues facing Mayan peoples today: identity, representation, and Mayan leadership. Montejo is deeply invested in furthering the discussion of the effectiveness of Mayan leadership because he believes that self-evaluation is necessary for the movement to advance. He also criticizes the racist treatment that Mayans experience, and advocates for the construction of a more pluralistic Guatemala that recognizes cultural diversity and abandons assimilation. This volume maps a new political alternative for the future of the movement that promotes inter-ethnic collaboration alongside a reverence for Mayan culture.
Download or read book The Maya Diaspora written by James Loucky and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2000-10 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Maya refugees found new lives in strange lands.
Download or read book Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala written by Egla Martínez Salazar and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaged critique of the geopolitics of knowledge, Egla Martínez Salazar examines the genocide and other forms of state terror such as racialized feminicide and the attack on Maya childhood, which occurred in Guatemala of the 1980s and '90s with the full support of Western colonial powers. Drawing on a careful analysis of recently declassified state documents, thematic life histories, and compelling interviews with Maya and Mestizo women and men survivors, Martinez Salazar shows how people resisting oppression were converted into the politically abject. At the center of her book is an examination of how coloniality survives colonialism—a crucial point for understanding how contemporary hegemonic practices and ideologies such as equality, democracy, human rights, peace, and citizenship are deeply contested terrains, for they create nominal equality from practical social inequality. While many in the global North continue to enjoy the benefits of this domination, millions, if not billions, in both the South and North have been persecuted, controlled, and exterminated during their struggles for a more just world.
Download or read book Mexican Indian Folk Designs written by Irmgard Weitlaner-Johnson and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book is the product of intensive scholarly research, its exacting illustrations based on choice examples of Mexican Indian textiles in many different museums and private collections. Incorporating abstract and geometric forms as well as highly stylized images of flowers, plants, animals, birds, and humans, the patterns represent more than 20 major Mexican Indian cultures. Among the designs are a two-faced feathered serpent from the Huichol culture, an allover pattern dominated by horizontal zigzags woven by the Otomí, and a flower and leaf design from the Tepehua. The Huasteco people are represented by a bold motif featuring prancing animals with bushy tails; a Nahuatl design depicts a lion with a flower in his mouth; while an elegant curvilinear Mazatec motif features flowers, vines, and birds. Other peoples whose art is represented include the Tarahumara, Tepecano, Mestizo, Zapotec, Mixteco, and Cuicatec. In the bold, startling designs originated by these cultures are primal links to the imagery of other cultures and traditions, centuries old and worldwide. Artists, designers, and craftspeople will value this modestly priced collection as a source of striking and unusual royalty-free designs for inspiration and practical use; anyone interested in Mexican Indian culture will find it an important reference as well.
Download or read book Maya Lord written by John Coe Robbins and published by John Coe Robbins. This book was released on 2011 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gonzalo -shipwrecked in a violent storm in 1511, he finds himself cast away on an unknown shore in the New World. A fierce tribe enslaves him and the other Spaniards in his small party. With little hope for escape, this brilliant and pragmatic adventurer searches for a way to advance in a strange new culture. Ix Zazil -the spirited and independent daughter of a powerful chieftain, she finds herself surprisingly drawn to the strange foreigner who has been thrust into her life from another world. Jeronimo -lost in the shipwreck with Gonzalo, this uncompromising priest rejects Maya ways, holds fast to his beliefs and remains a slave. Like his fellow survivor, he is convinced he is the better man for his choice. Based on actual people and events, this exotic historical novel follows these driven characters as they chart conflicting courses through a tumultuous world unlike anything they could ever have imagined.
Download or read book Maya and the Town that Loved a Tree written by Kiki and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 1992 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A town and its people overcome by pollution is visited by Maya, a little girl who loves trees. Longer story for 5-7 yrs.
Download or read book The Making of a Market written by Juliette Levy and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the nineteenth century, Yucat&án moved effectively from its colonial past into modernity, transforming from a cattle-ranching and subsistence-farming economy to a booming export-oriented agricultural economy. Yucat&án and its economy grew in response to increasing demand from the United States for henequen, the local cordage fiber. This henequen boom has often been seen as another regional and historical example of overdependence on foreign markets and extortionary local elites. In The Making of a Market, Juliette Levy argues instead that local social and economic dynamics are the root of the region&’s development. She shows how credit markets contributed to the boom before banks (and bank crises) existed and how people borrowed before the creation of institutions designed specifically to lend. As the intermediaries in this lending process, notaries became unwitting catalysts of Yucat&án&’s capitalist transformation. By focusing attention on the notaries&’ role in structuring the mortgage market rather than on formal institutions such as banks, this study challenges the easy compartmentalization of local and global relationships and of economic and social relationships.
Download or read book G neros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico written by Robert C. Schwaller and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 19, 1554, the members of Tenochtitlan’s indigenous cabildo, or city council, petitioned Emperor Charles V of Spain for administrative changes “to save us from any Spaniard, mestizo, black, or mulato afflicting us in the marketplace, on the roads, in the canal, or in our homes.” Within thirty years of the conquest, the presence of these groups in New Spain was large enough to threaten the social, economic, and cultural order of the indigenous elite. In Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico, an ambitious rereading of colonial history, Robert C. Schwaller proposes using the Spanish term géneros de gente (types or categories of people) as part of a more nuanced perspective on what these categories of difference meant and how they evolved. His work revises our understanding of racial hierarchy in Mexico, the repercussions of which reach into the present. Schwaller traces the connections between medieval Iberian ideas of difference and the unique societies forged in the Americas. He analyzes the ideological and legal development of géneros de gente into a system that began to resemble modern notions of race. He then examines the lives of early colonial mestizos and mulatos to show how individuals of mixed ancestry experienced the colonial order. By pairing an analysis of legal codes with a social history of mixed-race individuals, his work reveals the disjunction between the establishment of a common colonial language of what would become race and the ability of the colonial Spanish state to enforce such distinctions. Even as the colonial order established a system of governance that entrenched racial differences, colonial subjects continued to mediate their racial identities through social networks, cultural affinities, occupation, and residence. Presenting a more complex picture of the ways difference came to be defined in colonial Mexico, this book exposes important tensions within Spanish colonialism and the developing social order. It affords a significant new view of the development and social experience of race—in early colonial Mexico and afterward.
Download or read book The Black Middle written by Matthew Restall and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Middle is the first book-length study of the interaction of black slaves and other people of African descent with Mayas and Spaniards in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan (southern Mexico).
Download or read book 2000 Years of Mayan Literature written by Dennis Tedlock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronological survey of Mayan literature, covering two thousand years, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to later works using the Roman alphabet.
