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.