DEMOCRACY, MARGINALITY AND ETHNIC
RESISTANCE: The aftermath of “La Violencia
• 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 1008: 195).
Aftermath of “La Violencia”
• The impact of la violencia on Maya
communities
• The internalization of violence in those
communities
Anthropologists sought to:
• Reveal patterns in the killings,
• Reveal the personal character of
intracommunity violence
• And to understand the social
characteristics of the perpetrators of the
violence
Anthropologists’ Work
• Carmack (1988) “Harvest of Violence”
• Stoll (1993) “ Between Two Armies”
• Warren (1998) “Indigenous Movements and
Their Critics”
Pan Maya Movement
• Elements of Maya culture utilized to inform
the construction of pan-Maya politics -traditional, pre-conquest
• How pan-mayanism contributed 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.
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
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ILO (International labor organization
UN
Catholic church
NGO’s
Amnesty International
Human right watch
Cultural survival
Observers expressed fears
• Ethnicity could lead to destructive break up
• No clear ethnic boundaries
• No such thing as transcendent concept of
indigenous people
Pan-Mayanists the movement
means
• Challenging the legacy of colonialism,
racism
• Maya is not Static: represent a mix of
practices and knowledges
• See Indigenous identity as he only pathway
to social change and self-representation
• Legitimating the position of their people
• Finding a place in the nation
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
• Transforms from cultural to a political movement
• They seek to:
1. Recognition of cultural diversity within the
nation state
2. A greater role for indigenous politics in national
culture
3. A reassessment of economic inequities
4. Wider distribution of cultural resources and
literacy in indigenous languages
May Studies: Research Centers
• , these intellectuals have created counter
histories denouncing
• 1.
The racism of national histories
• 2. Critiquing foreign research practices and
scholarship (including anthropological)
• 3.
Challenging western models of development
and political psychology to counteract internalized
racism
From issues of origin to 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
1.Language revitalization: literacy training in all May
languages
• 2.The revitalization of Maya chronicles of culture, history
and resistance to the Spanish invasion. Popol vuj and the
Annals of the Kaqchikels (sacred cosmological texts and
indigenous histories
• 3.Revitalization of May leadership norms (community
council run by elders, midwives, and May shaman-priests
• 4.The dissemination of an internationally recognized
discourse of indigenous rights focusing on recognition and
self-determination. (Radical transformation of Guatemalan
politics to accommodate a pluricultural nation, candidates
for national office, etc.
Critics
1. Ethnic separatism, ethnic polarization,
2. Violating the local grounding of indigenous identity in place and
community,
3. Not appropriate for the country, some regions populated
predominantly by a single group,
4. The Ladino cultures include indigenous elements
5. Building on a language as a key basis of revitalization, stressing
language group endogamy
6. 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 questions
• What is the film “Haunted Land’ about?
• Why are historical/cultural memories important in
situations of violence and oppression such as those
experienced by the Maya in Guatemala?
• According to what you can discern from the film
“Haunted Land’ and the readings, what is the
future place for the Maya in the nation state of
Guatemala?
• What is the social, cultural and political impact of
‘la Violencia’ on Maya communities?