Download or read book Maya Resurgence in Guatemala written by Richard Wilson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across Guatemala, Mayan peoples are struggling to recover from decades of cataclysmic upheaval--religious conversions, civil war, displacement, military repression. Richard Wilson carried out long-term research with Q’eqchi’-speaking Mayas in the province of Alta Verapaz to ascertain how these events affected social organization and identity. He finds that their rituals of fertility and healing--abandoned in the 1970s during Catholic and Protestant evangelizations--have been reinvented by an ethnic revivalist movement led by Catholic lay activists, who seek to renovate the earth cult in order to create a new pan-Q’eqchi’ ethnic identity.

Download or read book The Democracy Development Machine written by Nicholas Copeland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Copeland sheds new light on rural politics in Guatemala and across neoliberal and post-conflict settings in The Democracy Development Machine. This historical ethnography examines how governmentalized spaces of democracy and development fell short, enabling and disfiguring an ethnic Mayan resurgence. In a passionate and politically engaged book, Copeland argues that the transition to democracy in Guatemalan Mayan communities has led to a troubling paradox. He finds that while liberal democracy is celebrated in most of the world as the ideal, it can subvert political desires and channel them into illiberal spaces. As a result, Copeland explores alternative ways of imagining liberal democracy and economic and social amelioration in a traumatized and highly unequal society as it strives to transition from war and authoritarian rule to open elections and free-market democracy.The Democracy Development Machine follows Guatemala's transition, reflects on Mayan involvement in politics during and after the conflict, and provides novel ways to link democratic development with economic and political development. Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Download or read book Faces of Resistance written by S. Ashley Kistler and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Maya have faced innumerable and constant challenges to their cultural identities in the last 500 years, from the subjugation of the contact and colonial periods, to the brutality of state-sponsored violence in Guatemala and the introduction of new global technologies. Oral tradition plays a fundamental role among the contemporary Maya as a means to record history and resist oppression. Although scholars have examined the processes of resistance and identity in different spheres, The Faces of Resistance: Maya Heroes, Power, and Identity is the first to unpack the importance of heroes as a cornerstone of Maya cultural and political resistance. This collection of essays by leading scholars explores how Maya communities draw on stories of indigenous heroes as an empowering cultural memory and a way to connect with the legacy of their extraordinary past. In particular, this volume considers how the Maya, following centuries of persecution and marginalization, use historical knowledge to generate and fortify their indigenous identities. The analysis of Maya heroes presented in this volume reveals that narratives of hero figures help the Maya to re-connect with an understanding of their history that has survived centuries of oppression and legitimize the practices, beliefs, and morality that will define their future"--

Download or read book Tecpan Guatemala written by Edward F Fischer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the indigenous people of Tecpan Guatemala, a predominantly Kaqchikel Maya town in the Guatemalan highlands. It seeks to build on the traditional strengths of ethnography while rejecting overly romantic and isolationist tendencies in the genre.

Download or read book The Blood of Guatemala written by Greg Grandin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.

Download or read book Re Enchanting the World written by C. Mathews Samson and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In considering the interplay between contemporary Protestant practice and native cultural traditions among Maya evangelicals, this work documents the processes whereby some Maya have converted to different forms of Christianity and the ways in which the Maya are incorporating Christianity for their own purposes.

Download or read book Our Time is Now written by Julie Gibbings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustration of how indigenous and non-indigenous actors deployed concepts of time in their conflicts over race and modernity in postcolonial Guatemala.

Download or read book The Maya of Guatemala written by Phillip Wearne and published by Minority Rights Group. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MAYA: A PEOPLE IN RESISTANCE ‘As I go around the world, people seem surprised that we indigenous people of Central America still exist’, noted the Maya Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú in 1992. More than 500 years after the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, the Maya, descendants of one of the greatest pre-Columbian civilizations, not only exist but are thriving. The survival of 21 different Maya speaking peoples in Guatemala is a living testimony to their powers of resistance. In recent years, the brutal conquest of their cities and mountain lands by Spanish conquistadores in the early sixteenth century, has been replayed in all its horrors. In the 1980s alone, the Guatemalan army is conservatively estimated to have murdered 20,000 Maya. Whole villages were wiped out, as at least 120,000 fled into Mexico and 500,000 became internal refugees. The MAYA OF GUATEMALA studies the Maya world in depth: the history, culture, beliefs and responses to the nonindigenous world. The author, Phillip Wearne, a journalist with long experience in Central America, looks at the Maya cultural resurgence of recent years – the product of both fearsome oppression and international geo-political changes of the 1980s. This is a story of indomitable will, a plea for solidarity and international support for a people who want to reclaim their identity as one of the ‘first peoples’ of the world. It is also a story of resistance and resurgence on behalf of the Maya who in the words of one internal refugee ‘want to come out of the mud, the cold, the shadows and into the sunshine’. Please note that the terminology in the fields of minority rights and indigenous peoples’ rights has changed over time. MRG strives to reflect these changes as well as respect the right to self-identification on the part of minorities and indigenous peoples. At the same time, after over 50 years’ work, we know that our archive is of considerable interest to activists and researchers. Therefore, we make available as much of our back catalogue as possible, while being aware that the language used may not reflect current thinking on these issues.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies—from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations—and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.

Download or read book A Beauty That Hurts written by W. George Lovell and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though a 1996 peace accord brought a formal end to a conflict that had lasted for thirty-six years, Guatemala's violent past continues to scar its troubled present and seems destined to haunt its uncertain future. George Lovell brings to this revised and expanded edition of A Beauty That Hurts decades of fieldwork throughout Guatemala, as well as archival research. He locates the roots of conflict in geographies of inequality that arose during colonial times and were exacerbated by the drive to develop Guatemala's resources in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lines of confrontation were entrenched after a decade of socioeconomic reform between 1944 and 1954 saw modernizing initiatives undone by a military coup backed by U.S. interests and the CIA. A United Nations Truth Commission has established that civil war in Guatemala claimed the lives of more that 200,000 people, the vast majority of them indigenous Mayas. Lovell weaves documentation about what happened to Mayas in particular during the war years with accounts of their difficult personal situations. Meanwhile, an intransigent elite and a powerful military continue to benefit from the inequalities that triggered armed insurrection in the first place. Weak and corrupt civilian governments fail to impose the rule of law, thus ensuring that Guatemala remains an embattled country where postwar violence and drug-related crime undermine any semblance of orderly, peaceful life.

Download or read book Human Rights in Development Yearbook 1999 2000 the Millennium Edition written by Hugo Stokke and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth in the series of yearbooks on "Human Rights in Development" the current millennium edition attempts to take stock of developments in the human rights arena since the Universal Declaration was adopted over half a century ago. The introductory overview article chronicles developments within the human rights field to date and sets the stage for a future scenario by looking at the respective roles of governments and the business community in respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights. An article on the World Trade Organisation follows the challenges posed by international trade in a human rights perspective. The appropriateness of so-called smart sanctions as a means of bolstering human rights is discussed in a third contribution. A fourth highlights the gender dimensions of the statute of the new international criminal court. The challenge of accommodating diversity and the rights of indigenous peoples in the new political dispensation of Guatemala is assessed in a fifth essay, whereas affirmative action policies within the context of Malaysia are examined in a sixth one. The difficulties inherent in designing, managing and evaluating aid programmes for human rights and democracy purposes is the theme of the penultimate contribution, whereas the final article considers the use of research in designing aid projects in the judicial system of Nepal. The Yearbook on "Human Rights in Development" is a joint project of European and Canadian research institutes and centres on human rights: the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen; the Danish Centre for Human Rights, Copenhagen; the Icelandic Human Rights Centre, Reykjavik; the Ludwig Boltzman Institute of Human Rights, Vienna; theInternational Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Montreal; the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht; the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Oslo; and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund. The Yearbook is geared to a broad readership, including government agencies, donors, embassies, the mass media, non-governmental organisations, the academic community, and the interested public at large.

Download or read book Human Rights in Development Volume 6 written by Hugo Stokke and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth in the series of yearbooks on Human Rights in Development the current millennium edition attempts to take stock of developments in the human rights arena since the Universal Declaration was adopted over half a century ago. The introductory overview article chronicles developments within the human rights field to date and sets the stage for a future scenario by looking at the respective roles of governments and the business community in respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights. An article on the World Trade Organisation follows the challenges posed by international trade in a human rights perspective. The appropriateness of so-called smart sanctions as a means of bolstering human rights is discussed in a third contribution. A fourth highlights the gender dimensions of the statute of the new international criminal court. The challenge of accommodating diversity and the rights of indigenous peoples in the new political dispensation of Guatemala is assessed in a fifth essay, whereas affirmative action policies within the context of Malaysia are examined in a sixth one. The difficulties inherent in designing, managing and evaluating aid programmes for human rights and democracy purposes is the theme of the penultimate contribution, whereas the final article considers the use of research in designing aid projects in the judicial system of Nepal. The Yearbook on Human Rights in Development is a joint project of European and Canadian research institutes and centres on human rights: the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen; the Danish Centre for Human Rights, Copenhagen; the Icelandic Human Rights Centre, Reykjavik; the Ludwig Boltzman Institute of Human Rights, Vienna; the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Montreal; the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht; the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Oslo; and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund. The Yearbook is geared to a broad readership, including government agencies, donors, embassies, the mass media, non-governmental organisations, the academic community, and the interested public at large.

Download or read book Divided by Faith and Ethnicity written by Andrea Althoff and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two unprecedented, striking developments form part of the reality of many Latin Americans. Recent decades have seen the dramatic rise of a new religious pluralism, namely the spread of Pentecostal Christianity - Catholic and Protestant alike - and the growth of indigenous revitalization movements. This study analyzes these major transitions, asking what roles ethnicity and ethnic identities play in the contemporary process of religious pluralism, such as the growth of the Protestant Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the indigenous Maya movement in Guatemala. This book aims to provide an understanding of the agenda of religious movements, their motivations, and their impact on society. Such a pursuit is urgently needed in Guatemala, a postwar country experiencing acrimonious religious competition and a highly contentious debate on religious pluralism. This volume is relevant to scholars and students of Latin American Studies, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Practical Theology, and Political Sciences.

Download or read book A Companion to Latin American Anthropology written by Deborah Poole and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-21 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprised of 24 newly commissioned chapters, this defining reference volume on Latin America introduces English-language readers to the debates, traditions, and sensibilities that have shaped the study of this diverse region. Contributors include some of the most prominent figures in Latin American and Latin Americanist anthropology Offers previously unpublished work from Latin America scholars that has been translated into English explicitly for this volume Includes overviews of national anthropologies in Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and Brazil, and is also topically focused on new research Draws on original ethnographic and archival research Highlights national and regional debates Provides a vivid sense of how anthropologists often combine intellectual and political work to address the pressing social and cultural issues of Latin America

Download or read book Beyond Primitivism written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-02-24 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when local traditions across the world are forcibly colliding with global culture, Beyond Primitivism explores the future of indigenous religions as they encounter modernity and globalisation.

Download or read book Cultural Logics and Global Economies written by Edward F. Fischer and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 2002 As ideas, goods, and people move with increasing ease and speed across national boundaries and geographic distances, the economic changes and technological advances that enable this globalization are also paradoxically contributing to the balkanization of states, ethnic groups, and special interest movements. Exploring how this process is playing out in Guatemala, this book presents an innovative synthesis of the local and global factors that have led Guatemala's indigenous Maya peoples to assert and defend their cultural identity and distinctiveness within the dominant Hispanic society. Drawing on recent theories from cognitive studies, interpretive ethnography, and political economy, Edward F. Fischer looks at individual Maya activists and local cultures, as well as changing national and international power relations, to understand how ethnic identities are constructed and expressed in the modern world. At the global level, he shows how structural shifts in international relations have opened new venues of ethnic expression for Guatemala's majority Maya population. At the local level, he examines the processes of identity construction in two Kaqchikel Maya towns, Tecpán and Patzún, and shows how divergent local norms result in different conceptions and expressions of Maya-ness, which nonetheless share certain fundamental similarities with the larger pan-Maya project. Tying these levels of analysis together, Fischer argues that open-ended Maya "cultural logics" condition the ways in which Maya individuals (national leaders and rural masses alike) creatively express their identity in a rapidly changing world.

Download or read book The Social Life of Scriptures written by James Bielo and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do Christians do with the Bible? How do theyùindividually and collectivelyùinteract with the sacred texts? Why does this engagement shift so drastically among and between social, historical, religious, and institutional contexts? Such questions are addressed in a most enlightening, engaging, and original way in The Social Life of Scriptures. Contributors offer a collection of closely analyzed and carefully conducted ethnographic and historical case studies, covering a range of geographic, theological, and cultural territory, including: American evangelicals and charismatics; Jamaican Rastafarians; evangelical and Catholic Mayans; Northern Irish charismatics; Nigerian Anglicans; and Chinese evangelicals in the United States. The Social Life of Scriptures is the first book to present an eclectic, cross-cultural, and comparative investigation of Bible use. Moreover, it models an important movement to outline a framework for how scriptures are implicated in organizing social structures and meanings, with specific foci on gender, ethnicity, agency, and power.