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.