Culturing identities,the state,and national consciousness in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala1⋆

This paper examines the procedural culture that shaped ethnic and national identities in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala. Rooted in face‐to‐face encounters between departmental jefes políticos (departmental governors) and local Maya communities, this procedural culture emerged from routines of governance such as annual municipal inspections, ethnic struggles for municipal control, and local efforts to title community lands that led Maya and state officials to develop contrasting understandings of each other and their relations. Far from precipitating a national identity of mutual belonging, state formation here intensified the racism and political violence that would rend Guatemala during the century to come.     

Vigilantes,gangsters, and alcohol: clashing citizenship regimes in postwar Guatemala

In this volatile moment in Latin America, when relations between the state and citizens are in flux, people at the margins of society draw on various notions of citizenship in social conflicts over proper behavior and the common good. I examine an intergenerational conflict over the legality of alcohol in an indigenous village in Guatemala to show how its protagonists creatively recombine different aspects of the various citizenship regimes that they have encountered. Elders have formed vigilante justice groups to combat the youth they consider gangsters. While the vigilantes draw upon a discourse of obligation to justify their actions, the generation below them counters with a language of rights. Some argue that citizenship is less meaningful in contexts where state power is ambiguous and extralegal violence is commonplace. I argue that in such contexts, it is not that citizenship does not have meaning, but rather that its meaning is intensely contested.     

Narrations of Shifting Maya Identities

Three anthropological ways of narrating the historical formation of Maya identity have recently been outlined in an article by Kay Warren on intergenerational struggles of Mayan families in Guatemala. According to the anti-racism scheme, Maya identity forms as a reaction to ethnic opposition. The cultural continuity approach treats identity formation as persistence that occurs in spite of ethnic oppression. The third, ' mestizaje ' school of thought argues that assimilation has eroded indigenous identity to the extent that it only makes sense to speak of an intermediary ladino (or mestizo ) category. Warren argues that the previous antagonism between ethnographic approaches has obscured the coexistence of these narrations in families, where discontinuity and rejection of traditional Maya identities interplay with continuity and revitalisation. In this paper, I compare the narrations of shifting identities in Guatemala to local representations of socio-cultural change in Yucutan. Based upon research in Oxkutzcab, I attempt to show how the interpretations of intergenerational changes in language, dress, and occupation relate to a set of local and regional events that evade the mutually exclusive meta-narratives of change.     

Photographing Children in Mexico City's Red‐Light Districts

This paper analyses Mexican photographer Maya Goded's representations of children living in one of Mexico City's red‐light districts. Drawing on interviews with the photographer, the practical and ethical difficulties in portraying vulnerable children are analysed to examine the representational limitations of photography in confrontation with child sex exploitation. Through close visual analysis of the images, the paper examines the children's representations as both externalised repositories of their parents' aspirations and their keen imitators. The figure of the child becomes a locus for interpolating critiques of sex work, demonstrating how photographs forge a cultural space where they become politically salient records of vulnerability in the face of neoliberal deregulation and economic rationality.     

New Formulas to Estimate Age at Death in Maya Populations Using Histomorphological Changes in the Fourth Human Rib*

Abstract: This study develops new histomorphological algorithms for Maya populations’ human ribs and tests the applicability of published algorithms. Thin sections from the fourth rib of 36 individuals of known age were analyzed under polarized light microscopy. Osteon population density (OPD, the concentration of intact and fragmented osteons per mm²), cortical area (CA), and osteon size (OS) were recorded. Seven algorithms were calculated, using all combinations of variables, and compared to the performance of published formulas. The OPD‐based formulas deviate from the known age 8.7 years on average, while those from OS and CA deviate between 10.7 and 12.8 years. In comparison, our OPD‐based algorithms perform better than the one by Stout and Paine and much better than Cho et al. In conclusion, algorithms should be developed using OPD for different ethnic groups; although Stout and Paine’s can be used for Maya and maybe Mesoamerican individuals.     

‘Paz,progreso, justicia y honradez’: law and citizenship in Alta Verapaz during the regime of Jorge Ubico⋆

Prospects for the ‘rule of law’ in the present are shaped by historical experiences of law by elite and non‐elite groups in the past. In this article I explore changing conceptions and practices of‘rights’and‘justice’as expressed in the legal and administrative encounters between indigenous people and state officials during the regime of Jorge Ubico (1931–1944). The extension of the state's coercive and administrative apparatus to remote rural areas, new legislation and changes in public administration transformed relations between working people, coffee fmqueros and the state in Guatemala. This implied new obligations and exactions for Mayans, but also provided them with new opportunities to contest and negotiate their conditions. Indigenous people strategically engaged with the law to contest the terms of their domination by elite actors and to mediate conflicts between themselves. As state ideologies of‘moral behaviour’led to increasing regulation of the private sphere, this was particularly important in the case of conflicts over gendered rights and obligations. Although formally excluded from the category of citizens, indigenous people used the official language and discourse of citizenship to further their claims, in turn reshaping Guatemalan nation‐state.     

Mayahood Through Beauty: Indian Beauty Pageants in Guatemala

The election of a Ra'bin Ajaw constitutes the climax of the National Folklore Festival ( Festival Folklórico Nacional ), which since 1969 has taken place in Cobán during the last week of July. All participants are Maya Indians and must wear the traditional folk costume of their native township. The intention of this and other Indian pageants has been to preserve and reinvigorate traditional forms of cultural expression. Different from Ladina beauty queens, Indian queens are elected not so much on the basis of their looks as on their aptitude for representing cultural 'authenticity'. However, as the notion of the authentic relates to how cultural identities are constructed in the present, the beauty pageant has increasingly been troubled by a tension between a traditional folklorist type of orientation and a more recent and politicised Mayanist one. Indeed, the Indian pageants, originally formed within a folklorist paradigm, have become important arenas for the communication of Maya consciousness and identity.     

Community forest concessionaires: resisting green grabs and producing political subjects in Guatemala

In 2005, Guatemalan community forest concessionaires achieved a remarkable legislative victory that reversed a green land grab in the Maya Biosphere. The fight over this space, the Mirador Basin, provides valuable contributions to analyses of global land grabs, grassroots politics and power relations underpinning environmental governance. First, the fight for the Mirador Basin illustrates how green land grabs create new natures, rather than simply enclosing existing green spaces. Second, it contributes to recent scholarship detailing land-grabbing practices of resistance, acquiescence and incorporation ‘from below’ by describing how Maya Biosphere community forest concessionaires were able to reverse a green grab. Lastly, I argue this successful reversal largely rests on the articulation and mobilization of a new rights-bearing subject – the forest concessionaire. Struggles for land in the Maya Biosphere illustrate that practices and relations of green governance do not always create disciplined, neo-liberal, green subjects. Rather, community forestry has provided a political platform turning reserve residents into influential actors participating in the re-territorialization of power in contemporary Guatemala.     

玛雅·黛润的电影三部曲与女性意识的觉醒

玛雅·黛润被誉为美国地下电影之母.她的电影三部曲<下午的罗网>、<梦中>与<变形时间中的仪式>从独特的女性视角出发,对于女性的"纳卡索斯"自我进行深层探索,抒发职业女性受到外界环境漠视的痛苦感受,寻找现代女性在当今社会中的生活与精神出路,不仅在题材与形式上为美国先锋派电影开辟了道路,而且还发出了女性主义的呼声.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Moreno Cebrián El virreinato del marqués de Castelfuerte 1724–1736: el primer intento borbónico por reformar el Perú
Schwaller The Church in Colonial Latin America
Uribe-Uran Honorable Lives: Lawyers, Family, and Politics in Colombia, 1780–1850
López-Alves State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900
Bieber Power, Patronage, and Political Violence: State Building on a Brazilian Frontier, 1822–1889
Scott Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899
Suárez Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920
Hora The Landowners of the Argentine Pampas. A Social and Political History 1860–1945
Brennan and Pianetto Region and Nation: Politics, Economy and Society in Twentieth Century Argentina
Klarén Peru: Society and nationhood in the Andes
Grandin Streets, The Blood of Guatemala. A History of Race and Nation
Serbin Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil
Kingstone and Power Democratic Brazil. Actors, institutions and Processes
Piedra and Sonnleitner (eds) Democracia en tierras indÕgenas: Las elecciones en Los Altos de Chiapas (1991–1998)
Harris To Make the Earth Bear Fruit: Ethnographic Essays on Fertility, Work and Gender in Highland Bolivia
Agier Anthropologies du Carnaval: la ville la fête et l'Afrique à Bahia
Wade Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Columbia