Kay B. Warren - Böcker

Throughout Latin America, indigenous peoples are responding to state violence and pro-democracy social movements by asserting their rights to a greater measure of cultural autonomy and self-determination. This volume's rich case studies of movements in Colombia, Guatemala, and Brazil weigh the degree of success achieved by indigenous leaders in influencing national agendas when governments display highly ambivalent attitudes about strengthening ethnic diversity. The contributors to this volume are leading anthropologists and indigenous activists from the United States and Latin America. They address the double binds of indigenous organizing and "working within the system" as well as the flexibility of political tactics used to achieve cultural goals outside the scope of state politics. The contributors answer questions about who speaks for indigenous communities, how indigenous movements relate to the popular left, and how conflicts between the national indigenous leadership and local communities play out in specific cultural and political contexts. The volume sheds new light on the realities of asymmetrical power relations and on the ways in which indigenous communities and their representatives employ Western constructions of subjectivity, alterity, and authentic versus counterfeit identity, as well as how they manipulate bureaucratic structures, international organizations, and the mass media to advance goals that involve distinctive visions of an indigenous future.

In this first book-length treatment of Maya intellectuals in national and community affairs in Guatemala, Kay Warren presents an ethnographic account of Pan-Maya cultural activism through the voices, writings, and actions of its participants. Challenging the belief that indigenous movements emerge as isolated, politically unified fronts, she shows that Pan-Mayanism reflects diverse local, national, and international influences. She explores the movement's attempts to interweave these varied strands into political programs to promote human and cultural rights for Guatemala's indigenous majority and also examines the movement's many domestic and foreign critics. The book focuses on the years of Guatemala's peace process (1987--1996). After the previous ten years of national war and state repression, the Maya movement reemerged into public view to press for institutional reform in the schools and courts and for the officialization of a "multicultural, ethnically plural, and multilingual" national culture. In particular, Warren examines a group of well-known Mayanist antiracism activists--among them, Demetrio Cojt!, Mart!nChacach, Enrique Sam Colop, Victor Montejo, members of Oxlajuuj Keej Maya' Ajtz'iib', and grassroots intellectuals in the community of San Andr s--to show what is at stake for them personally and how they have worked to promote the revitalization of Maya language and culture. Pan-Mayanism's critics question its tactics, see it as threatening their own achievements, or even as dangerously polarizing national society. This book highlights the crucial role that Mayanist intellectuals have come to play in charting paths to multicultural democracy in Guatemala and in creating a new parallel middle class.