Maya Nationalism
Smith, Carol A.
ONE WOULD HARDLY HAVE EXPECTED Maya self-determination to be the rallying cry to rise out of the ashes of Guatemala's holocaust. Indians, after all, were the main targets of the violence in...
...Modem Maya communities today, for example, have many different economic bases-urban commerce and manufacturing, trading and trucking, crafts production, as well as "traditional" plantation labor and corn farming...
...In their 1989 treatise on the "politics of rural development," COCADI called for a pluralist or multi-cultural range of rural development goals, which would allow "political space for encounter and dialogue among the different Guatemalan cultures (Maya and non-Maya) that would assure the civil, cultural, political, and economic rights of the Maya...
...The general state policy has been to target Indians for work, ignore their "backward" traditions, allow a few of the more "civilized" to become Ladinos, and brutally mow down any who pose a direct challenge to Creole or Ladino dominance...
...We can, however, document a great deal of change in the revolutionary program after Maya joined up, suggesting that their political agenda might have differed from that of the original Ladino guerrillas.' No Maya nationalists I know claim any direct experience with the guerrillas, but they all have strong opinions about the revolutionary movement...
...And they engage in a wide variety of religious practices (often simultaneously), some of them fashioned by local communities before the Conquest, others "Mayanized" only recently...
...193-228...
...The novelty of nationalism as a form of Maya resistance raises two other important issues: Chief among them is whether a pan-Maya program, led by an educated Maya elite, will be able to reform state policy without being coopted.'" For the first time, Maya leaders are attempting to use their bicultural knowledge to find a position for Maya within the Guatemalan state...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICASInfluenced by indigenous movements in other parts of the globe, the political program promoted by Maya nationalists has grown more radical, taking advantage of the small political opening offered by Guatemala's civilian regime...
...Maya nationalists' stance on the material significance of culture distances them from the traditional Guatemalan Left...
...2 (Summer 1991), p. 6 . 7. COCADI, Cultura Maya, p. 18...
...London: Zed Books, 1986...
...See Carol A. Smith, "History and Revolution," in Smith, Guatemalan Indians...
...Nationalists are most insistent on the last point, from which they draw two conclusions: First, in an apartheidlike state where Ladinos have a complete monopoly on political power, Ladinos and Maya cannot have the same political objectives...
...They were unable to draw Maya from other townships into their cause, and they wrested power from the colonial state for a mere 30 days...
...96-115...
...39-58...
...Some advocate mandatory bilingual, bicultural education at all levels for all Guatemalans...
...ONE WOULD HARDLY HAVE EXPECTED Maya self-determination to be the rallying cry to rise out of the ashes of Guatemala's holocaust...
...CISMA, "An analysis of economic variation, development projects, and development prospects in the highlands of western Guatemala," unpublished report to the Inter-American Foundation, 1990...
...And second, rather than challenge the state itself, it is preferable to challenge particular arenas of state power in local communities and civil society--community politics, family relations, control of language, education, and thought...
...As they see it, cultural and racial discrimination are at the base of the economic exploitation of Indians and the cultural impoverishment of all Guatemalans...
...See also, M. Harnecker, Pueblos en armas (Mexico: Era, 1984...
...2) the Ladino leadership was unable to take seriously any cultural issues of importance to Maya, like Maya women's clothing...
...They have dozens of different political forms, from standard electoral politics to the "traditional" council of informally selected elders...
...Ultimately, the kind of revolution Maya sought made little difference to the state...
...The colonial period saw no dramatic rebellions like the uprising of Tiipac Amaru II in Peru-an elite-led regional movement that directly challenged the colonial state and was brutally repressed by it...
...The issue of cooptation is not a simple matter of corruption...
...this led to unified state repression in 1932 when thousands were killed and native culture was virtually eradicated...
...Maya Nationalism I. Any time those ef us who are part of the dominant, hegemonic culture drown out the voices of the marginal "others" with oar own, we are oppressors-regardless of our sentiments or politics...
...Thus it may find in Maya nationalism a form of resistance it cannot ignore, despite the movement's lack of direct political challenge...
...Maya nationalists are extremely alert to this possibility, one reason they raise political and economic issues so tentatively...
...And their stance on political tactics-which they try to model on grassroots communities-distances them from the revolutionary vanguard...
...But organic intellectuals of any downtrodden group are almost always separated by their very intellectual pursuits from those they represent...
...And for Ricardo Cajas Mejia, Indian activist and 1990 candidate for mayor of the country's second largest city Quetzaltenango, it means taking charge of Maya political organizations and economic development and scholarship programs without paternalistic intermediaries-be they Ladinos (mestizo Guatemalans) or gringos.' Three types of people currently make up the movement, almost all of them literate, self-proclaimed Maya: students and intellectuals...
...of Texas, 1990...
...And the insurgent strategy was to attack the Guatemalan state directly, with the aim not just of weakening it, but of replacing it with a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist state...
...it implies the right to channel change and diversification according to self-determined guidelines...
...Think of Lenin or Che Guevara...
...See Nora C. England and Stephen R. Elliott (eds...
...community-based professionals (teachers, agronomists, health workers...
...1 3 The authors of resistant Maya culture typically have not been pan-Maya elites or organizations that attempted to create a unified and coherent Maya culture...
...In 1986 the Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) was founded to encourage the use of native tongues in state schools and other institutions, and to promote the use of a unified alphabet for writing the 21 Maya languages.' It was granted official recognition in 1990 as an "autonomous state entity," with a mandate to "promote the knowledge and use of Maya languages and to research, plan, program and implement relevant linguistic, literary, educational and cultural materials...
...Cultural freedom, they point out, implies more than an arena for the expression of peasant folklore...
...But cultural issues, as the nationalists themselves argue, are not innocent of political consequence...
...Time and again they emphasize three points: (1) Ladino leaders were so consumed by class (as opposed to ethnic) issues that they did not even know the most likely areas and issues for Maya recruitment...
...On the other hand, if they impose a rigid orthodoxy-if they no longer tap into the diverse local sources of Maya culture-their own version could become incapable of representing anyone...
...McCreery also suggests the revolt was no different from hundreds of others in colonial Guatemala with limited, local grievances that achieved limited, local goals...
...Hence the problem of being absorbed in the discourse they are attempting to resist is a real one...
...In recent years, Indians in both Huehuetenango and El Quich6 have followed Totonicapin's lead, driving out most Ladino traders, plantation labor recruiters, and politicians...
...they limit it through economic and cultural diversification...
...its membership includes both the ALMG and COCADI...
...Mayararely pose a direct challenge to state power...
...Civil society has responded by strengthening local forms of resistance-revivified and increasingly localized forms of Maya culture-which then provoke the state to greater repressiveness.'" Viewing Maya culture as plural and localized rather than generic and monolithic, and the state as weak and coercive rather than strong and hegemonic, reveals a pattern to Maya resistance and state repression in Guatemala...
...The best known example of an Indian revolt in colonial Guatemala is the Totonicapdn rebellion of 1820, one year before the Spanish empire collapsed...
...At the same time that Indians began joining the guerrillas in Huehuetenango and El Quichd, Indians in Totonicapin were challenging Ladino economic and political monopolies by giving their business and support to Maya traders, labor recruiters, and politicians...
...Indians, after all, were the main targets of the violence in the 1980s-and still are today, though now dozens rather than hundreds are murdered or disappeared each month...
...From interviews with guerrilla leaders, as well as their own accounts, it seems fairly clear that they chose to recruit in the Maya area...
...The 21 Maya languages still spoken in modem Guatemala, most of which divide into several (often dozens) of distinct dialects, reflect pre-conquest political divisions...
...26 (1984), pp...
...12, no...
...351/352 (1978), pp...
...As it takes on a more militant stance, the movement grows ever more apart from earlier forms of Maya resistance, which to date have guaranteed the strength and resilience of Maya culture...
...Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540-1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990...
...To the former, the state responded with massacres and a scorched earth policy, driving many Indians out of the area...
...Few Maya nationalists are "men of maize"-the illiterate peasants, plantation workers, traders, and artisans who constitute the majority of Guatemala's native people...
...Smith teaches anthropology at the University of California at Davis...
...Most educated Maya support these goals, but differ on how to move toward them...
...The other major question is whether a more unified form of Maya resistance will, like the more unified guerrilla struggle, lead to even greater state repression...
...Ibid...
...And soon, unless the nationalist movement is effective, there will be more Maya literate in Spanish than fluent in their native tongues...
...While the fragmentation of Maya identity is usually seen as a weakness, by both leftists and Maya nationalists, it is actually a source of cultural resilience, which allows for a variety of adept responses to changed circumstances, and prevents the state from assaulting all Maya communities at once...
...localized...
...The movement is not explicitly Right or Left...
...6. Diane M. Nelson, "The Reconstruction of Mayan Identity," Report oit Guatemala, Vol...
...In contrast, Indians in El Salvador put up a more unified (Ladino-led) resistance...
...It punished all Maya for simply appearing to threaten state power...
...9. England and Elliott (eds...
...In this way, Maya have not defined themselves in opposition to their Ladino oppressors (which would make their culture dependent and derivative), but have defined themselves in ways that allow Maya to continue determining their particular local destinies...
...When talking about this article with a Maya friend, I was surprised at the degree to which he was worried about even calling Maya nationalism a movement...
...Like all modem states, Guatemala seeks to rule more effectively by imposing its cultural hegemony on the ruled...
...This last possibility weighs heavily on the shoulders of current Maya leaders...
...This raises many questions about the kind of Maya politics that have been taken up in recent years...
...See the various articles in Carol A. Smith (ed...
...The general Maya response has been to push for economic advantage wherever openings or weaknesses exist, Mayanize useful Western imports, and eject the assimilated from their communities...
...See David McCreery, "Atanasio Tzul, Lucas Aguilar, and the Indian Kingdom of Totonicapdin," in Judith Ewell and William Beezley, The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Nineteenth Century (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1989), pp...
...2 Though troubled about the economic exploitation that Indians suffer more than any other group, Maya nationalists, few of whom were public figures before the end of formal military rule in 1986, are more concerned with the cultural oppression rife ever since "Guatemala" came into existence...
...and (3) Maya take tremendous risks if they follow non-Maya leadership in any political venture, evident in the terrible costs paid by Maya "innocents" in the latest round of state repression...
...We have no aspirations to take state power or to create a separate state...
...A full generation ago there were more Maya traders, artisans, and workers than corn farmers...
...When violence brought VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 3 (DECEMBER 1991) 31The First Nationse The First Nations unacceptably high casualties, Indians took matters up in court, and managed to hold onto most of their lands by titling them...
...And many Maya oppose all cooperation with the Ladino state...
...Ladinos simply cannot understand political powerlessness...
...She is the editor of Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 (U...
...On these grounds the rebellion could be considered an ignominious defeat...
...Lecturas...
...Some believe the ALMG should regulate who can work in Maya areas, restricting jobs to those who speak the local language...
...Nor would we hear her if she did...
...Even during the past decade, when the level of state repression was unprecedented, Maya in different parts of the country resisted the state in different ways, impeding the application of a coherent Indian policy...
...and members of local NGOs and cooperatives, often supported by foreign sources including UNICEF, OXFAM, InterAmerican Foundation, and even U.S.AID...
...By accepting the terms of discussion offered by the colonial state, the limits and attributes of the movement may come to reflectcolonial interaction more than autonomous, localized sources of determination...
...David McCreery, "State Power, Indigenous Communities, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala, 1820-1920," in Smith, Guatemalan, pp...
...but because of the community focus of individual Maya identity, these could number in the hundreds...
...The rebellion is renowned in the country mainly because it is misinterpreted as the "race war" Guatemala's Ladinos have always feared and expected...
...T HE GUERRILLA INSURGENCY OF THE 1980S, in which many Maya participated, was not the kind of resistance described above-limited in goals, leaderless...
...17 See Carol A. Smith, "Local history in global context: social and economic transitions in western Guatemala," Comparative Studies in Society and History', no...
...29The First Nations to obtain a doctorate, and one of the first to teach at the national University of San Carlos...
...2. Ricardo Falla, "El movimiento indigena," Estudios Centroamericanos, no...
...Not only is the state less likely to exact brutal repression against those who resist in this way, but it is more vulnerable to this form of opposition...
...4. Leftists, in fact, often impugn the credentials of Maya nationalists for being a small Indian elite (a petty bourgeoisie), whose grassroots ties are weak...
...9 On the basis of language alone, one could count dozens of modem Maya ethnic groups...
...However, there were very few casualties (the so-called leaders were released after nine months in jail), and the town never paid tribute again...
...We do not yet know what revolution meant to those who joined the insurgency as voluntary participants, since Maya accounts of the 1980s are mainly those of victims rather than rebels...
...As they see it, the Ladino state and Ladino guerrilla commanders should not decide the fate of the Maya traumatized by the actions of each...
...The issue for the guerrillas was class, not ethnicity...
...Lecturas sobre la Lingiiistica Maya (Antigua: CIRMA, 1990...
...S NE REASON MAYA CULTURE IS SO RESIStant is that it has never been monolithic...
...437-46 I. 3. For statements from some of these and other movement leaders, see Cultura Maya y Politicas de Desarrollo (Chimtaltenango: COCADI, 1989);: Demetrio Cojti Cuxil, Configuracidn del Pensamiento Politico Maya (Quetzaltenango: Taller 'El Estudiante,' 1991...
...M AYA NATIONALISTS ARE ATTEMPTING TO create and sustain a Maya culture that will remain vital and alive even as small peasant communities succumb to the pressures of war and modernity...
...Rigoberta Mench6, who is not a Maya nationalist but an Indian leader of a popular organization, no longer works on cotton plantations...
...he asked...
...Mario Payeras, Los dias de la selva (Mexico: Nucstro Tiempo, 1981...
...We are not fighting for our culture-we already have it...
...We want only our rights: the right to peace, the right to define our own path to development, the right to educate our children in our own languages and traditions, and the right to represent ourselves and our culture...
...Given its relative weakness, the state has historically been ever more coercive, attempting to force rather than persuade conformity among the ruled...
...Rather, they have been grassroots communities that create multiple forms of Maya culture, responding to multiple forms of oppression with diversification and creativity...
...But increasing numbers of Maya are, in fact, being drawn to "nationalist" as opposed to "popular" politics, two causes which until recently were considered one and the same...
...For these people, following the guerrillas into the montafia was little more than an act of self-preservation...
...The first Maya group to broach the loaded issue of economic and political autonomy may have been the nongovernmental organization, Cakchiquel Center for Integral Development (COCADI...
...The ALMG is now a vehicle for expanding the struggle for self-determination beyond language-to the revitalization of "traditional" dress and customs, for example.' and resilience lie in its increasingly localized nature...
...It deserves recognition as the kind of resistance that allowed Maya culture to flourish and diversify...
...The way SIL used its knowledge to convert and assimilate Maya people, in fact, fueled the nationalist sentiment surrounding the ALMG...
...Most importantly, fragmented, non-confrontational forms of resistance would not have to acquire the machinery of state domination, which inevitably comes to mirror that which was oppressive in the original state and society...
...5. Prior alphabets for writing Maya languages, produced mainly by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Wycliffe Bible Translators), were distinct for each language...
...Guatemalan histories (several written by leftists, none by Maya) allege that during the revolt Atanasio Tzul crowned himself "King of the Quich6s," in an effort to reconstitute the kingdom defeated in bloody battle 300 years earlier...
...Those who retain the symbols of their Maya identity-languages, community forms, clothing, religious practices-are not only excluded from positions of power and respect in the nation, but are derided for their backward "traditionalism," even by political progressives, whether Liberals in the nineteenth century or Marxists in the twentieth...
...Mario Payeras, a leader of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), describes his small (and mostly Ladino) group's deliberate attempt to incorporate Maya in the struggle by moving to western Guatemala (the Maya region) in the 1970s, after their failures in the eastern Ladino region in the 1960s...
...the Ladino exodus may be permanent...
...Born in a rural village near Tecpin and educated by Jesuits, Cojtf now runs a "permanent seminar" on issues of importance to the substantial number of self-identified Maya studying at San Carlos...
...The Indian exodus was temporary...
...For Guillermo Rodriguez Guajdn, until recently the director of adult education in the western highlands and currently the director of the Mayan Research Center (CISMA), Maya nationalism means combining "modern" science and technology with "traditional" Maya knowledge of language, medicine, farming know-how and community life, in order to develop new forms of Maya knowledge...
...There was a clear strata of leaders, most of them middle- or even upper-class Ladinos, who had little experience with Maya culture or people...
...But it will likely play a major role in the future of this country where nearly one quarter of the population of nine million wears the colorful clothing emblematic of Maya status, more than one third speaks a Maya language as their first tongue, and at least half thinks of themselves as members of a Maya community, defined in terms of location, tradition, language or self-identification.' Maya nationalism became an identifiable cause in the early 1970s, was quiescent during the violence, and today is emerging as a real political movement-partly as a radical alternative to the traditional Left...
...For Cojti, Maya nationalism means challenging the colonialist ideology embedded in progressive as well as conservative Guatemalan thinking about the Maya...
...Without leaders or the possibility to differentiate and grow within one's culture, they argue, a people is consigned to the dustbin of history-as time and modernity eradicate the rural, the peasant, and the illiterate...
...Indians in many parts refused to pay tribute after 1800, once it became clear the empire was in no position to force it out of them...
...SIL control of Maya linguistics came to symbolize to nationalists the foreign appropriation of Maya culture...
...When apprehended, the people labeled "leaders" did not defend their actions, but rather tried to put the blame on others...
...Whether the group advocated autonomous political and economic territories is not clear...
...The Maya of San Miguel Totonicap.n, one of the largest and wealthiest Indian communities of Guatemala (and the seat of the provincial government), stopped paying in 1810, and responded to the Spanish governor's demand for full payment ten years later by throwing him out of office and replacing him with a local Maya leader, Atanasio Tzul...
...others think this is a fantasy...
...8. COMG, "Derechos especificos del pueblo Maya," (Guatemala: Cholsamaj, 1991...
...How distant Maya nationalists are from ordinary Maya has to bejudged by other criteria-such as how closely their program hews to the needs and interests of those they represent...
...For how this occurred in India, see Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World-a Derivative Discourse...
...Though always repressive and despotic, the Guatemalan state never controlled civil institutions in Maya communities, which have variously been controlled by the Catholic Church, the lawless oligarchy, or Maya communities themselves...
...Perceptive as this critique may be, it fails to address how such a strategy could transform the oppressive conditions suffered by the vast majority of Maya...
...Adding a crown to Tzul's other insignia of office may have been a signal that there was a Crown representative in the township responsible for maintaining order in the wake of the Spanish governor's flight...
...The guerrilla leadership, in fact, insisted that poor Ladinos and poor Maya had the same interests, despite resistance to this idea from both...
...Mayas did not seek out Ladino leaders for their own insurgency...
...The cultural inventions of Maya nationalists-literatures in Maya languages, cross-community dressing of hand-woven garb by both men and women, renewed and reinvented forms of religion-may produce a cultural repertoire that will reflect the protean experiences and practices of these new Maya...
...CONCERN ABOUT SIGNIFICANT DECLINE IN Maya language use first sparked the movement for self-determination...
...Indian resistance was generally strong, consistent, and rational...
...A prominent spokesperson for today's Maya nationalists is Demetrio Cojti Cuxil, the first self-identified Maya VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 3 (DECEMBER 1991) CarolA...
...Why do you call us nationalists...
...A few examples from history illustrate the pattern...
...But there are Maya nationalists who would agree with the Left on most other issues, and none that I know would ally with the Right...
...For this reason I have added to my narrative some of the comments Maya made in response to it...
...This, at least, was Tzul's story to the court...
...McCreery's work on Guatemala's rural economy in the post-independence period provides a similar revisionist history.'" The coffee plantation economy, introduced in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, did far more than any colonial institution to create exploitative relations between the Maya, Creole plantation owners, and Ladino "middle" men...
...What's more, many Ladinos and Spanish officials were so terrorized by the numerous insurgent threats to cut off their heads that many fled the township permanently...
...An umbrella organization of Maya NGOs and cultural organizations was founded this year, the Council of Maya Organizations (COMG...
...Through the latter, Indians managed to push virtually all Ladinos out of their territory by peaceful means...
...4 Nationalists argue that encouraging Maya to define themselves as Maya, even in non-traditional or elite roles, opens up opportunities for all Maya...
...COMG pushes much farther into economic and political terrain, demanding territorial, legal, civil, and military autonomy, in order to "guarantee the Maya people their right to seek their own destiny...
...He was also somewhat offended by the nationalist label...
...COMG even brings up the taboo subject of army repression, and specifically requests participation as Maya in the dialogue currently taking place between the government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG) guerrillas...
...What I tentatively label a "Maya nationalist movement" is so young that it is difficult to know exactly what it is and where it is going...
...However, as North American historian David McCreery points out, Atanasio Tzul already held the office of "Indian governor" in Totonicapdn...
...Today there are more Maya living in cities, plantations, and refugee camps than in the traditional self-enclosed communities of the past...
...others think this would ghettoize Maya, dividing and constraining their national opportunities...
...4 Both Payeras and Gaspar Ilom of the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA) have discussed how difficult it was to enlist Maya, but how recruitment snowballed after army repression began.'" It is now widely recognized that many Mayajoined the insurgency after they were attacked by the army for merely living in places the guerrillas visited...
Vol. 25 • December 1991 • No. 3
