Victor Montejo – författare

Elilal, exile, is the condition of thousands of Mayas who have fled their homelands in Guatemala to escape repression and even death at the hands of their government. In this book, Victor Montejo, who is both a Maya expatriate and an anthropologist, gives voice to those who until now have struggled in silence--but who nevertheless have found ways to reaffirm and celebrate their Mayaness.Voices from Exile is the authentic story of one group of Mayas from the Kuchumatan highlands who fled into Mexico and sought refuge there. Montejo's combination of autobiography, history, political analysis, and testimonial narrative offers a profound exploration of state terror and its inescapable human cost.

Mayan civilization once flourished in what is today Guatemala and the Yucatan. The Mayan sacred book the Popol Vuh tells of the creation of the universe, the world of gods and demi-gods and the creation of mankind.

Offers a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies from an Indigenous and postcolonial perspective.In Mayalogue, Native Mayan scholar Victor Montejo provides an alternative reading and interpretation of cultures, challenging Western ethnocentric approaches that have marginalized Native knowledge and worldviews in the past. He proposes instead a methodology for studying culture as a unified whole, a radical departure from the compartmentalized sections of knowledge recognized by Western scientific tradition. Offering a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies, with its terms and categories that have denigrated Indigenous cultures throughout the centuries, Montejo's postcolonial work aims to dismantle the colonialist construction of Indigenous cultures, giving way to a Native approach that balances insider and outsider descriptions of a particular culture. Developed from an Indigenous Maya perspective, Mayalogue is a contribution to the dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, students, and general audiences in the social sciences and humanities, and will be an essential text in decolonizing the minds of those who engage in the study of cultures anywhere in the world in the twenty-first century.

Offers a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies from an Indigenous and postcolonial perspective.In Mayalogue, Native Mayan scholar Victor Montejo provides an alternative reading and interpretation of cultures, challenging Western ethnocentric approaches that have marginalized Native knowledge and worldviews in the past. He proposes instead a methodology for studying culture as a unified whole, a radical departure from the compartmentalized sections of knowledge recognized by Western scientific tradition. Offering a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies, with its terms and categories that have denigrated Indigenous cultures throughout the centuries, Montejo's postcolonial work aims to dismantle the colonialist construction of Indigenous cultures, giving way to a Native approach that balances insider and outsider descriptions of a particular culture. Developed from an Indigenous Maya perspective, Mayalogue is a contribution to the dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, students, and general audiences in the social sciences and humanities, and will be an essential text in decolonizing the minds of those who engage in the study of cultures anywhere in the world in the twenty-first century.

Durante siglos, un niño como yo, nacido en una comunidad indígena en el occidente de Guatemala, sabía lo que sería cuando creciera… un campesino como su padre. Crecí aprendiendo sobre mi entorno a través de los mitos y tradiciones orales de mi pueblo, Jacaltenango. Una noche, durante la soledad forzada de la pandemia de Covid-19, no pude dormir pensando en el futuro de mis tres hijos y en cómo me había convertido, no en un campesino, sino en un antropólogo y profesor de la Universidad de California.Cuando tenía siete años comenzó para mí, un futuro diferente. Las hermanas Maryknoll llegaron a la aldea donde vivían mis padres, muy cerca de la frontera mexicana. Anunciaron que estaban buscando niños indígenas para asistir a un internado que ellos crearon en la cabecera municipal de Jacaltenango. En esa escuela mi vida cambió para siempre, pues comencé a vivir entre dos mundos.Este libro de memorias detalla esta increíble trayectoria de un niño maya en la búsqueda de un mejor futuro por medio de la educación. Es una historia de sueños y metas que ha unificado mis dos mundos, mi mundo Maya y el mundo occidental. Espero que mi historia sea de inspiración a otros soñadores.