Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World

Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World PDF Author: Garrett W. Cook
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826353185
Category : Cofradías (Latin America)
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Based on more than thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork in Highland Guatemala, this study of Maya diviners, shamans, ritual dancers, and religious brotherhoods describes the radical changes in traditional Maya religious practice wrought by economic globalization and political turmoil. Focusing on the primary participants in the annual festival in the K'iche' Maya village of Santiago Momostenango, the authors show how older religious traditionalists and the new generation of "cultural activist" religious practitioners interact within a single local community, and how their competing agendas for adapting Maya religiosity to a new and continually changing political economy are perpetuating and changing Maya religious traditions.

Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World

Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World PDF Author: Garrett W. Cook
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826353185
Category : Cofradías (Latin America)
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on more than thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork in Highland Guatemala, this study of Maya diviners, shamans, ritual dancers, and religious brotherhoods describes the radical changes in traditional Maya religious practice wrought by economic globalization and political turmoil. Focusing on the primary participants in the annual festival in the K'iche' Maya village of Santiago Momostenango, the authors show how older religious traditionalists and the new generation of "cultural activist" religious practitioners interact within a single local community, and how their competing agendas for adapting Maya religiosity to a new and continually changing political economy are perpetuating and changing Maya religious traditions.

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya PDF Author: Thomas Hart
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826343503
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The myth and ceremony of Maya beliefs have been sustained for over five hundred years in spite of massacres, persecution, and discrimination.

Maya Intellectual Renaissance

Maya Intellectual Renaissance PDF Author: Victor D. Montejo
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778651
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
When Mayan leaders protested the celebration of the Quincentenary of the "discovery" of America and joined with other indigenous groups in the Americas to proclaim an alternate celebration of 500 years of resistance, they rose to national prominence in Guatemala. This was possible in part because of the cultural, political, economic, and religious revitalization that occurred in Mayan communities in the later half of the twentieth century. Another result of the revitalization was Mayan students' enrollment in graduate programs in order to reclaim the intellectual history of the brilliant Mayan past. Victor Montejo was one of those students. This is the first book to be published outside of Guatemala where a Mayan writer other than Rigoberta Menchu discusses the history and problems of the country. It collects essays Montejo has written over the past ten years that address three critical issues facing Mayan peoples today: identity, representation, and Mayan leadership. Montejo is deeply invested in furthering the discussion of the effectiveness of Mayan leadership because he believes that self-evaluation is necessary for the movement to advance. He also criticizes the racist treatment that Mayans experience, and advocates for the construction of a more pluralistic Guatemala that recognizes cultural diversity and abandons assimilation. This volume maps a new political alternative for the future of the movement that promotes inter-ethnic collaboration alongside a reverence for Mayan culture.

Memory Traces

Memory Traces PDF Author: Laura M. Amrhein
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457196336
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
"In Memory Traces, art historians and archaeologists come together to examine the nature of sacred space in Mesoamerica. Through five well-known and important centers of political power and artistic invention in Mesoamerica—Tetitla at Teotihuacan, Tula Grande, the Mound of the Building Columns at El Tajín, the House of the Phalli at Chichén Itzá, and Tonina—contributors explore the process of recognizing and defining sacred space, how sacred spaces were viewed and used both physically and symbolically, and what theoretical approaches are most useful for art historians and archaeologists seeking to understand these places.Memory Traces acknowledges that the creation, use, abandonment, and reuse of sacred space has a strongly recursive relation to collective memory and meanings linked to the places in question, and reconciles issues of continuity and discontinuity of memory in ancient Mesoamerican sacred spaces. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Mesoamerican studies and material culture, art historians, architectural historians, and cultural anthropologists."

In this Body

In this Body PDF Author: Servando Z. Hinojosa
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826335233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This account of life in one highland Maya community shows how, among Kaqchikels, spirit expresses itself fundamentally through the body, and not as something entirely separate from the body.

Reckoning

Reckoning PDF Author: Diane M. Nelson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Following the 1996 treaty ending decades of civil war, how are Guatemalans reckoning with genocide, especially since almost everyone contributed in some way to the violence? Meaning “to count, figure up” and “to settle rewards and punishments,” reckoning promises accounting and accountability. Yet as Diane M. Nelson shows, the means by which the war was waged, especially as they related to race and gender, unsettled the very premises of knowing and being. Symptomatic are the stories of duplicity pervasive in postwar Guatemala, as the left, the Mayan people, and the state were each said to have “two faces.” Drawing on more than twenty years of research in Guatemala, Nelson explores how postwar struggles to reckon with traumatic experience illuminate the assumptions of identity more generally. Nelson brings together stories of human rights activism, Mayan identity struggles, coerced participation in massacres, and popular entertainment—including traditional dances, horror films, and carnivals—with analyses of mass-grave exhumations, official apologies, and reparations. She discusses the stereotype of the Two-Faced Indian as colonial discourse revivified by anti-guerrilla counterinsurgency and by the claims of duplicity leveled against the Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú, and she explores how duplicity may in turn function as a survival strategy for some. Nelson examines suspicions that state power is also two-faced, from the left’s fears of a clandestine para-state behind the democratic façade, to the right’s conviction that NGOs threaten Guatemalan sovereignty. Her comparison of antimalaria and antisubversive campaigns suggests biopolitical ways that the state is two-faced, simultaneously giving and taking life. Reckoning is a view from the ground up of how Guatemalans are finding creative ways forward, turning ledger books, technoscience, and even gory horror movies into tools for making sense of violence, loss, and the future.

Memories of Conquest

Memories of Conquest PDF Author: Laura E. Matthew
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807882585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? Laura Matthew's study of Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala--the first study to focus on a single allied colony over the entire colonial period--places the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala and their descendants within a deeply Mesoamerican historical context. Drawing on archives, ethnography, and colonial Mesoamerican maps, Matthew argues that the conquest cannot be fully understood without considering how these Indian conquistadors first invaded and then, of their own accord and largely by their own rules, settled in Central America. Shaped by pre-Columbian patterns of empire, alliance, warfare, and migration, the members of this diverse indigenous community became unified as the Mexicanos--descendants of Indian conquistadors in their adopted homeland. Their identity and higher status in Guatemalan society derived from their continued pride in their heritage, says Matthew, but also depended on Spanish colonialism's willingness to honor them. Throughout Memories of Conquest, Matthew charts the power of colonialism to reshape and restrict Mesoamerican society--even for those most favored by colonial policy and despite powerful continuities in Mesoamerican culture.

Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian

Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian PDF Author: Matthew Krystal
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457111594
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Focusing on the enactment of identity in dance, Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian is a cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, and cross-national comparison of indigenous dance practices. Considering four genres of dance in which indigenous people are represented--K'iche Maya traditional dance, powwow, folkloric dance, and dancing sports mascots--the book addresses both the ideational and behavioral dimensions of identity. Each dance is examined as a unique cultural expression in individual chapters, and then all are compared in the conclusion, where striking parallels and important divergences are revealed. Ultimately, Krystal describes how dancers and audiences work to construct and consume satisfying and meaningful identities through dance by either challenging social inequality or reinforcing the present social order. Detailed ethnographic work, thorough case studies, and an insightful narrative voice make Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian a substantial addition to scholarly literature on dance in the Americas. It will be of interest to scholars of Native American studies, social sciences, and performing arts.

The 2012 Story

The 2012 Story PDF Author: John Major Jenkins
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 158542823X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
From the pioneering author who helped introduce the question of 2012 into the global spiritual community comes an epic exploration of the authentic origins and meaning of this portentous date. Drawing from his own groundbreaking research (including his involvement in the modern reconstruction of Mayan 2012 cosmology), John Major Jenkins has created the crucial guide to 2012, surveying its roots in Mayan cosmology, modern astronomy, ancient prophecy, and metaphysical philosophy and exploring why it has become a focal point for millions today.

Biography of a Mexican Crucifix

Biography of a Mexican Crucifix PDF Author: Jennifer Scheper Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199710392
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In 1543, in a small village in Mexico, a group of missionary friars received from a mysterious Indian messenger an unusual carved image of Christ crucified. The friars declared it the most poignantly beautiful depiction of Christ's suffering they had ever seen. Known as the Cristo Aparecido (the "Christ Appeared"), it quickly became one of the most celebrated religious images in colonial Mexico. Today, the Cristo Aparecido is among the oldest New World crucifixes and is the beloved patron saint of the Indians of Totolapan. In Biography of a Mexican Crucifix, Jennifer Scheper Hughes traces popular devotion to the Cristo Aparecido over five centuries of Mexican history. Each chapter investigates a single incident in the encounter between believers and the image. Through these historical vignettes, Hughes explores and reinterprets the conquest of and mission to the Indians; the birth of an indigenous, syncretic Christianity; the violent processes of independence and nationalization; and the utopian vision of liberation theology. Hughes reads all of these through the popular devotion to a crucifix that over the centuries becomes a key protagonist in shaping local history and social identity. This book will be welcomed by scholars and students of religion, Latin American history, anthropology, and theology.