Download or read book The Mayan Movement in Contemporary Colonial Guatemala written by Demetrio Cojti Cuxil and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Indigenous Movements and Their Critics written by Kay B. Warren and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length treatment of Maya intellectuals in national and community affairs in Guatemala, Kay Warren presents an ethnographic account of Pan-Maya cultural activism through the voices, writings, and actions of its participants. Challenging the belief that indigenous movements emerge as isolated, politically unified fronts, she shows that Pan-Mayanism reflects diverse local, national, and international influences. She explores the movement's attempts to interweave these varied strands into political programs to promote human and cultural rights for Guatemala's indigenous majority and also examines the movement's many domestic and foreign critics. The book focuses on the years of Guatemala's peace process (1987--1996). After the previous ten years of national war and state repression, the Maya movement reemerged into public view to press for institutional reform in the schools and courts and for the officialization of a "multicultural, ethnically plural, and multilingual" national culture. In particular, Warren examines a group of well-known Mayanist antiracism activists--among them, Demetrio Cojt!, Mart!n Chacach, Enrique Sam Colop, Victor Montejo, members of Oxlajuuj Keej Maya' Ajtz'iib', and grassroots intellectuals in the community of San Andr s--to show what is at stake for them personally and how they have worked to promote the revitalization of Maya language and culture. Pan-Mayanism's critics question its tactics, see it as threatening their own achievements, or even as dangerously polarizing national society. This book highlights the crucial role that Mayanist intellectuals have come to play in charting paths to multicultural democracy in Guatemala and in creating a new parallel middle class.
Download or read book Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala written by Edward F. Fischer and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala marks a new era in Guatemalan studies by offering an up-to-the-minute look at the pan-Maya movement and the future of the Maya people as they struggle to regain control over their cultural destiny. The successful emergence of what is in some senses a nationalism grounded in ethnicity and language has challenged scholars to reconsider their concepts of nationalism, community, and identity. Editors Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown have brought together essays by virtually all the leading U.S. experts on contemporary Maya communities and the top Maya scholars working in Guatemala today. Supplementing scholarly analysis of Mayan cultural activism is a position statement originating within the movement and more wide-ranging and personal reflections by anthropologists and linguists who have worked with the Maya over the years. Among the broader issues that come in for examination are the complex relations between U.S. Mayanists and the Mayan cultural movement, efforts to promote literacy in Mayan languages, the significance of woven textiles and native dress, the relations between language and national identity, and the cultural meanings that the present-day Maya have encountered in ancient Mayan texts and hieroglyphic writing.
Download or read book Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala written by Emilio del Valle Escalante and published by School for Advanced Research Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few decades, indigenous movements throughout the Americas have become the cornerstone of popular mobilizations. These movements have made their mark in diverse institutional and political landscapes. Although this prominence has been considered a recent phenomenon, it is but the latest example of the ongoing creativity of indigenous peoples in their efforts to achieve civil rights and legal recognition as differentiated cultural entities. Their struggle has changed the makeup of Latin American nation-states to the point that these can no longer be conceived in conventional terms, that is, as culturally and linguistically homogenous. This book focuses on the emergence and political-cultural implications of Guatemala's Maya movement. It explores how, since the 1970s, indigenous peoples have been challenging established, hegemonic narratives of modernity, history, nation, and cultural identity as these relate to the indigenous world. For the most part, these narratives have been fabricated by non-indigenous writers who have had the power not only to produce and spread knowledge but also to speak for and about the Maya world. Contemporary Maya narratives promote nationalisms based on the reaffirmation of Maya ethnicity and languages that constitute what it means to be Maya in present-day society, as well as political-cultural projects oriented toward the future.
Download or read book The Mayan Movement Today written by Víctor Gálvez Borrell and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Fourth Invasion written by Giovanni Batz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research, The Fourth Invasion examines an Ixil Maya community's movement against the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. The arrival of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant (built by the Italian corporation Enel Green Power) to the municipality of Cotzal highlighted the ongoing violence inflicted on Ixils by outsiders and the Guatemalan state. Locals referred to the building of the hydroelectric plant as the "new invasion" or "fourth invasion" for its similarity to preceding invasions: Spanish colonization, the creation of the plantation economy, and the state-led genocide during the Guatemalan armed conflict. Through a historical account of cyclical waves of invasions and resistance in Cotzal during the four invasions, Giovanni Batz argues that extractivist industries are a continuation of a colonial logic of extraction based on the displacement and destruction of Indigenous Peoples' territories and values that has existed since the arrival of the Spanish in 1524. The current movements in Cotzal, rooted in a long history of resistance, counter dominant narratives of Indigenous Peoples that often portray them as "conquered."
Download or read book Mayas in Postwar Guatemala written by Walter E. Little and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2009-05-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like the original Harvest of Violence, published in 1988, this volume reveals how the contemporary Mayas contend with crime, political violence, internal community power struggles, and the broader impact of transnational economic and political policies in Guatemala. However, this work, informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mayan communities and commitment to conducting research in Mayan languages, places current anthropological analyses in relation to Mayan political activism and key Mayan intellectuals’ research and criticism. Illustrating specifically how Mayas in this post-war period conceive of their social and political place in Guatemala, Mayas working in factories, fields, and markets, and participating in local, community-level politics provide critiques of the government, the Maya movement, and the general state of insecurity and social and political violence that they continue to face on a daily basis. Their critical assessments and efforts to improve political, social, and economic conditions illustrate their resiliency and positive, nonviolent solutions to Guatemala’s ongoing problems that deserve serious consideration by Guatemalan and US policy makers, international non-government organizations, peace activists, and even academics studying politics, social agency, and the survival of indigenous people. CONTRIBUTORS Abigail E. Adams / José Oscar Barrera Nuñez / Peter Benson / Barbara Bocek / Jennifer L. Burrell / Robert M. Carmack / Monica DeHart / Edward F. Fischer / Liliana Goldín / Walter E. Little / Judith M. Maxwell / J. Jailey Philpot-Munson / Brenda Rosenbaum / Timothy J. Smith / David Stoll
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 Tecpan Guatemala written by Edward F Fischer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 184 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 Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity written by Brigittine M. French and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged context of contemporary Guatemala. Beginning with an examination of the “nationalist project” that has been ongoing since the end of the colonial period, French interrogates the “Guatemalan/indigenous binary.” In Guatemala, “Ladino” refers to the Spanish-speaking minority of the population, who are of mixed European, usually Spanish, and indigenous ancestry; “Indian” is understood to mean the majority of Guatemala’s population, who speak one of the twenty-one languages in the Maya linguistic groups of the country, although levels of bilingualism are very high among most Maya communities. As French shows, the Guatemalan state has actively promoted a racialized, essentialized notion of “Indians” as an undifferentiated, inherently inferior group that has stood stubbornly in the way of national progress, unity, and development—which are, implicitly, the goals of “true Guatemalans” (that is, Ladinos). French shows, with useful examples, how constructions of language and collective identity are in fact strategies undertaken to serve the goals of institutions (including the government, the military, the educational system, and the church) and social actors (including linguists, scholars, and activists). But by incorporating in-depth fieldwork with groups that speak Kaqchikel and K’iche’ along with analyses of Spanish-language discourses, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity also shows how some individuals in urban, bilingual Indian communities have disrupted the essentializing projects of multiculturalism. And by focusing on ideologies of language, the author is able to explicitly link linguistic forms and functions with larger issues of consciousness, gender politics, social positions, and the forging of hegemonic power relations.
Download or read book The Pan Maya Movement of Guatemala written by Apha Thirakaroonwongse and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Contemporary Maya Spirituality written by Jean Molesky-Poz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative study of the indigenous religion still practiced in Guatemala based on extensive original research and participant observation. Jean Molesky-Poz draws on in-depth dialogues with Maya Ajq’ijab’ (keepers of the ritual calendar), her own participant observation, and inter-disciplinary resources to offer a comprehensive, innovative, and well-grounded understanding of contemporary Maya spirituality and its theological underpinnings. She reveals significant continuities between contemporary and ancient Maya worldviews and spiritual practices. Molesky-Poz opens with a discussion of how the public emergence of Maya spirituality is situated within the religious political history of the Guatemalan highlands, particularly the pan-Maya movement. She investigates Maya cosmovision and its foundational principles, as expressed by Ajq’ijab’. At the heart of this work, Ajq’ijab’ interpret their obligation, lives, and spiritual work. Molesky-Poz then explores aspects of Maya spirituality, including sacred geography, sacred time, and ritual practice. She confirms contemporary Maya spirituality as a faith tradition with elaborate historical roots that has significance for individual, collective, and historical lives, reaffirming its own public space and legal right to be practiced.
Download or read book Guatemalan Indians and the State written by Carol A. Smith and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1992-04-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence in Central America, especially when directed against Indian populations, is not a new phenomenon. Yet few studies of the region have focused specifi cally on the relationship between Indians and the state, a relationship that may hold the key to understanding these conflicts. In this volume, noted historians and anthropologists pool their considerable expertise to analyze the situation in Guatemala, working from the premise that the Indian/state relationship is the single most important determinant of Guatemala's distinctive history and social order. In chapters by such respected scholars as Robert Cormack, Ralph Lee Woodward, Christopher Lutz, Richard Adams, and Arturo Arias, the history of Indian activism in Guatemala unfolds. The authors reveal that the insistence of Guatemalan Indians on maintaining their distinctive cultural practices and traditions in the face of state attempts to eradicate them appears to have fostered the development of an increasingly oppressive state. This historical insight into the forces that shaped modern Guatemala provides a context for understanding the extraordinary level of violence that enveloped the Indians of the western highlands in the 1980s, the continued massive assault on traditional religious and secular culture, the movement from a militarized state to a militarized civil society, and the major transformations taking place in Guatemala's traditional export-oriented economy. In this sense, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 provides a revisionist social history of Guatemala.
Download or read book Modern Guatemalan Mayan Literature in Cultural Context written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation examines the revival of written Mayan language literature in Guatemala since 1980 - a literature created by Mayan authors who write in Mayan languages and also in Spanish. I explore the impact of socio-political context on the choice of literary language, and review how these bilingual authors express their world view and culture through their use of language-specific vocabulary, syntax and style in their literary texts. Bilanguaging in their texts in each language is an epistemological statement, and evidence of a dialogical and aesthetic communicative process of social transformation. In Guatemala, new written Mayan language literature has developed since the political conflicts of 1954-1996, and follows a long tradition of oral literature, pre-colonial glyph writing and early colonial alphabetic writing, with characteristic themes, genres and stylistic features. I describe the contemporary linguistic situation, the movement to preserve Mayan languages in writing and the corresponding need for Mayan-language literacy. I also discuss the need for translation into Spanish, as a lingua franca that both Ladino readers and speakers of different Mayan languages can access, and also as the only language that has been taught in schools. I evaluate recent transcriptions of Mayan oral literature and their translations into Spanish to show how their themes and styles form a foundation for written literature. I then analyze bilanguaging in the works of three authors: Humberto Ak'abal (K'iche'), Gaspar Pedro González (Q'anjob'al) and Victor Montejo (Jakaltek) who write in Mayan K'iche', Q'anjob'; al, and Popb'al Ti' and who themselves re-write/translate their works into Spanish. This process of writing in two languages itself reflects the dual world views the authors inhabit. I compare the Spanish and Mayan language texts to demonstrate lexical and syntactic asymmetry, and show how the Spanish text includes Mayan lexical borrowings, syntactic structures and stylistic features in order to foreground the Mayan voice in the Spanish text. I conclude by discussing the significance and the viability of this emerging literature as an expression of cultural linguistic rights and de-colonial epistemological transformation in the socio-political context of Guatemala.
Download or read book Word and War written by Erich Fox Tree and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Le Maya Q atzij Our Maya Word written by Emil’ Keme and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing to the fore the voices of Maya authors and what their poetry tells us about resistance, sovereignty, trauma, and regeneration In 1954, Guatemala suffered a coup d’etat, resulting in a decades-long civil war. During this period, Indigenous Mayans were subject to displacement, disappearance, and extrajudicial killing. Within the context of the armed conflict and the postwar period in Guatemala, K’iche’ Maya scholar Emil’ Keme identifies three historical phases of Indigenous Maya literary insurgency in which Maya authors use poetry to dignify their distinct cultural, political, gender, sexual, and linguistic identities. Le Maya Q’atzij / Our Maya Word employs Indigenous and decolonial theoretical frameworks to critically analyze poetic works written by ten contemporary Maya writers from five different Maya nations in Iximulew/Guatemala. Similar to other Maya authors throughout colonial history, these authors and their poetry criticize, in their own creative ways, the continuing colonial assaults to their existence by the nation-state. Throughout, Keme displays the decolonial potentialities and shortcomings proposed by each Maya writer, establishing a new and productive way of understanding Maya living realities and their emancipatory challenges in Iximulew/Guatemala. This innovative work shows how Indigenous Maya poetics carries out various processes of decolonization and, especially, how Maya literature offers diverse and heterogeneous perspectives about what it means to be Maya in the contemporary world.
Download or read book Textual Transversals written by Alicia Ivonne Estrada and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
