[PDF] Maya Ethnicity eBook

Author : Wolfgang Gabbert
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 36,52 MB
Release : 2022-08-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0816550816

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In Mexico's Yucatán peninsula, it is commonly held that the population consists of two ethnic communities: Maya Indians and descendants of Spanish conquerors. As a result, the history of the region is usually seen in terms of conflict between conquerors and conquered that too often ignores the complexity of interaction between these groups and the complex nature of identity within them. Yet despite this prevailing view, most speakers of the Yucatec Maya language reject being considered Indian and refuse to identify themselves as Maya. Wolfgang Gabbert maintains that this situation can be understood only by examining the sweeping procession of history in the region. In Becoming Maya, he has skillfully interwoven history and ethnography to trace 500 years of Yucatec history, covering colonial politics, the rise of plantations, nineteenth-century caste wars, and modern reforms—always with an eye toward the complexities of ethnic categorization. According to Gabbert, class has served as a self-defining category as much as ethnicity in the Yucatán, and although we think of caste wars as struggles between Mayas and Mexicans, he shows that each side possessed a sufficiently complex ethnic makeup to rule out such pat observations. Through this overview, Gabbert reveals that Maya ethnicity is upheld primarily by outsiders who simply assume that an ethnic Maya consciousness has always existed among the Maya-speaking people. Yet even language has been a misleading criterion, since many people not considered Indian are native speakers of Yucatec. By not taking ethnicity for granted, he demonstrates that the Maya-speaking population has never been a self-conscious community and that the criteria employed by others in categorizing Mayas has changed over time. Grounded in field studies and archival research and boasting an exhaustive bibliography, Becoming Maya is the first English-language study that examines the roles played by ethnicity and social inequality in Yucatán history. By revealing the highly nuanced complexities that underlie common stereotypes, it offers new insights not only into Mesoamerican peoples but also into the nature of interethnic relations in general.

Author : Bethany J. Beyette
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 22,53 MB
Release : 2017-03-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1607325675

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"The Only True People" is a timely and rigorous examination of ethnicity among the ancient and modern Maya, focusing on ethnogenesis and exploring the complexities of Maya identity—how it developed, where and when it emerged, and why it continues to change over time. In the volume, a multidisciplinary group of well-known scholars including archaeologists, linguists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and epigraphers investigate ethnicity and other forms of group identity at a number of Maya sites and places, from the northern reaches of the Yucatan to the Southern Periphery, and across different time periods, from the Classic period to the modern day. Each contribution challenges the notion of ethnically homogenous "Maya peoples" for their region and chronology and explores how their work contributes to the definition of "ethnicity" for ancient Maya society. Contributors confront some of the most difficult theoretical debates concerning identity in the literature today: how different ethnic groups define themselves in relation to others; under what circumstances ethnicity is marked by overt expressions of group membership and when it is hidden from view; and the processes that transform ethnic identities and their expressions. By addressing the social constructs and conditions behind Maya ethnicity, both past and present, "The Only True People" contributes to the understanding of ethnicity as a complex set of relationships among people who lived in real and imagined communities, as well as among people separated by social boundaries. The volume will be a key resource for Mayanists and will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies as well. Contributors: McCale Ashenbrener, Ellen E. Bell, Marcello A. Canuto, Juan Castillo Cocom, David A. Freidel, Wolfgang Gabbert, Stanley P. Guente, Jonathan Hill, Charles Andrew Hofling, Martha J. Macri, Damien B. Marken, Matthew Restall, Timoteo Rodriguez, Mathew C. Samson, Edward Schortman, Rebecca Storey

Author : Paul K. Eiss
Publisher : Ethnohistory
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 26,83 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822366911

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This special issue of Ethnohistory is a significant contribution to the history and anthropology of the Maya in both Mexico and Guatemala. Utilizing a comparative analytic framework, these essays explore the ethnic dimensions--indigeneity, indigenismo, mestizaje, racial subjugation--of state formation as well as state practice in indigenous regions. The contributors emphasize how the material aspects of state formation--roads and infrastructure; model villages; restored ruins; portrait photography; highland marketplaces; modern improvements; traditional cultural performances, artifacts, and dress--become theaters for the construction and reconstruction of ethnic and political entities and relationships. Taken as a whole, the collection challenges a tendency toward the segmentation of the discussion of the Maya into distinct disciplines (anthropology and history), national historiographies (Mexican and Guatemalan), and, within Mexico, distinct regional historiographies (Yucatán and Chiapas). Contributors: David Carey Jr., Paul K. Eiss, Ben Fallaw, Stephen E. Lewis, Walter E. Little, John M. Watanabe

Author : Sergio Romero
Publisher :
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 29,12 MB
Release : 2021-05-31
Category :
ISBN : 9781647690373

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Explores the unbreakable link between language, history, and ethnicity in the Maya highlands

Author : Ronald Loewe
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 39,71 MB
Release : 2010-09-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1442604220

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The Maya of the Yucatán have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). At the same time, they have contended with globalization pressures, first with hemp production and more recently with increased tourism and the fast-growing influence of American-based evangelical Protestantism. Despite these pressures to turn Maya into mestizo, the citizens of the small town of Maxcanú have used subtle forms of resistance—humor, satire, and language—to maintain aspects of their traditional identity. Loewe offers a contemporary look at a Maya community caught between tradition and modernity. He skilfully weaves the history of Mexico and this particular community into the analysis, offering a unique understanding of how one local community has faced the onslaught of modernization.

Author : James Loucky
Publisher : Temple University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 17,90 MB
Release : 2000-10-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1566397952

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Maya people have lived for thousands of years in the mountains and forests of Guatemala, but they lost control of their land, becoming serfs and refugees, when the Spanish invaded in the sixteenth century. Under the Spanish and the Guatemalan non-Indian elites, they suffered enforced poverty as a resident source of cheap labor for non-Maya projects, particularly agriculture production. Following the CIA-induced coup that toppled Guatemala's elected government in 1954, their misery was exacerbated by government accommodation to United States "interests," which promoted crops for export and reinforced the need for cheap and passive labor. This widespread poverty was endemic throughout northwestern Guatemala, where 80 percent of Maya children were chronically malnourished, and forced wide-scale migration to the Pacific coast. The self-help aid that flowed into the area in the 1960s and 1970s raised hopes for justice and equity that were brutally suppressed by Guatemala's military government. This military reprisal led to a massive diaspora of Maya throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America. This collection describes that process and the results. The chapters show the dangers and problems of the migratory/refugee process and the range of creative cultural adaptations that the Maya have developed. It provides the first comparative view of the formation and transformation of this new and expanding transnational population, presented from the standpoint of the migrants themselves as well as from a societal and international perspective. Together, the chapters furnish ethnographically grounded perspectives on the dynamic implications of uprooting and resettlement, social and psychological adjustment, long-term prospects for continued links to migration history from Guatemala, and the development of a sense of co-ethnicity with other indigenous people of Maya descent. As the Maya struggle to find their place in a more global society, their stories of quiet courage epitomize those of many other ethnic groups, migrants, and refugees today.

Author : Elizabeth Graham
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 22,12 MB
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0813065518

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It is widely held that Christianity came to Belize as an extension of the conquest of Yucatan and that adherence to Christian belief and practice was abandoned in the absence of enduring Spanish authority. An alternative view comes from the excavations of Maya churches at Tipu and Lamanai, which show that the dead were buried in Christian churchyards long after the churches themselves fell into disuse, and pre-Columbian ritual objects were cached in Christian sacred spaces both during and after Spanish occupation. Excavations also reveal that the architectural style of these early churches is Franciscan in inspiration but nonetheless the product of continuing community efforts at construction and repair. A conclusion difficult to ignore is that the Maya of Tipu and Lamanai considered themselves Christians with or without Spanish presence. Viewing historical and archaeological data through the lens of her personal experience of Roman Catholicism, and informed by feminist approaches, Elizabeth Graham assesses the concept of religion, the significance of doctrine, the empowerment of the individual, and the process of conversion by examining the meanings attributed to ideas, objects and images by the Maya, by Iberian Christians, and by archaeologists. Graham’s provocative study also makes the case that the impact of Christianity in Belize was a phenomenon that uniquely shaped the development of the modern nation. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Author : John A. Torres
Publisher : The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Page : 66 pages
File Size : 13,52 MB
Release : 2017-12-15
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 1508177376

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The Maya Empire became a thriving civilization between the third century and the seventh century CE, but by 900 CE war, drought, and disease wiped out most of its cities and the Mayan people were greatly reduced. Unfortunately, the greatest threat to their existence was yet to come, when the Guatemalan genocide would decimate those who remained in the 1970s and '80s. The facts of the Mayans' story will be intertwined with profiles of individuals and in-depth looks at related topics. Readers will learn how to help those faced with genocide and understand a history that could otherwise repeat itself.

Author : Stephen D. Glazier
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 44,54 MB
Release : 1985
Category : Caribbean Area
ISBN : 9780677066158

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First Published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.