After the Violencia: Indigenous
Activism
• Kay Warren
“Indigenous
Movements and their
Critics: Pan Mayan
Activism in
Guatemala” (1998)
Guatemala is a multinational
society…That is to say
‘Guatemalan Culture’ cannot
be other than a confederation
of cultures and languages in
which each preserves its
originality (Cojti Cuxil, in Kay
Warren, 195).
Ideological contradictions between the
left and the Mayan movement:
• Ethnicity versus class struggle
Pan Mayan Movement
• Elements of Maya culture utilized to inform
the construction of pan-Mayan politics -traditional, pre-conquest
• How pan-Mayanism contributes to nation
building through reverse orientalism
Edward Said’s orientalism (1978)
• The Orient signifies a system of
representations framed by political forces
that brought the Orient into Western
learning, Western consciousness, and
Western empire. The Orient exists for the
West, and is constructed by and in
relation to the West. It is a mirror image
of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to
the West
Orientalism
• Orientalism is "a manner of regularized
(or Orientalized) writing, vision, and
study, dominated by imperatives,
perspectives, and ideological biases
ostensibly suited to the Orient" (It is the
image of the 'Orient' expressed as an
entire system of thought and scholarship.
What are the paradoxes and
politics of reverse orientalism?
• System of thought and scholarship
dominated by ideologies suited to the
Mayan
Local events and international developments
created possibilities for the growth of the PanMaya movement
• New opportunities created with
unanticipated results
• Exposing “democratic” contradictions
International developments
• International law
• “to freely determine their political status
and freely pursue their economic, social
and cultural development”
Declaration of the right of
Indigenous Peoples (UN 1989)
• To protect their own cultural practices and
ceremonial, archaeological sites;
• To practice their own spiritual traditions;
• To promote their own language;
• To control their own educational systems;
• To have access to mass media;
• To gain recognition of their own customary laws
and land tenure systems, etc
The role of international
organizations
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
ILO (International labor organization)
UN
Catholic church
NGO’s
Amnesty International
Human right watch
Cultural survival
Observers express that:
• ethnicity could lead to a destructive break
up
• there are not clear ethnic boundaries
• there is not such thing as transcendent
concept of indigenous people
For Pan-Mayanists the movement
means:
• Challenging the legacy of colonialism,
racism
• Maya self-representation: Maya is not
Static, represent a mix of practices and
knowledges
• Problem with Indigenous identity as the
only pathway to social change and selfrepresentation
***
• Indigenous ideology as a pathway to social
change
• Cultivating common cause
• Legitimization of political and linguistic
claims
How do Pan-Mayanists try to achieve
inclusion in the Guatemalan political process?
• Creating a sense of cultural distinctiveness
• Political essentialism: issues of
representation
• Challenging others who claim to speak for
them
The development of the pan-Maya
movement in Guatemala
•
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
Is transformed from cultural to a political
movement
They seek:
Recognition of cultural diversity within the
nation state
A greater role for Indigenous politics in national
culture
A reassessment of economic inequities
Wider distribution of cultural resources and
literacy in indigenous languages
Mayan Studies: Research Centers
• Through the research centers these intellectuals
have created counter histories
• Denouncing the racism of national histories
• Critiquing foreign research practices and
scholarship (including anthropological)
• Challenging western models of development and
political psychology to counteract internalized
racism
From issues of origin to issues of
nation building
• Who are we if we are not the negative
stereotype we have been taught?
• “ Only when a people accepts its history
and assumes its identity do they have the
right to define their future”
• New demands on the state: reforms on law,
language, etc
Pan-Mayanists’ priorities
• Language revitalization: Literacy
• The revitalization of Maya chronicles of culture,
history and resistance to the Spanish invasion.
Popol Vuj and the Annals of the Kaqchikels
• Revitalization of May leadership norms
(community council run by elders, midwives,
and May shaman-priests)
• The dissemination of an internationally
recognized discourse of indigenous rights
focusing on recognition and self-determination
Critiques
• Ethnic separatism, ethnic polarization
• Violating the local grounding of indigenous identity in
place and community
• Not appropriate for the country, some regions populated
predominantly by a single group
• The Ladino cultures include indigenous elements
• Building on a language as a key basis of revitalization,
stressing language group endogamy
• Pan-Mayan leaders and urban participants are seen as a
neither indigenous nor ladino but rather a third ethnicity
Pan-Mayanists reaction
• Attempts to disempower the movement
• They are pragmatic and chose to work with
any ideological persuasion
Discussion question
• Can a strategy of tactical essentialism be
productive for the Maya?