Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity: Violence, Cultural Rights, and Modernity in Highland Guatemala

Notes

Notes Preface 1. I have used the actual names of public intellectuals, North American and Guatemalan , involved in Pan-Maya politics. In Miriam’s case, I asked her if she wished to be identified by name in the text; she said she did. In instances where consultants were not directly involved in Pan-Maya organizations or activities, I have used pseudonyms and changed identifying information to protect the individual’s anonymity. 2. Alarming homicide rates and social cleansing persist in Guatemala due to institutionalized structures of impunity that were not dismantled after the genocide. In this way, the conflict continues to persist in new forms of violence. Introduction 1. For a complete discussion of the national referendum that included several other constitutional reforms, see Warren (2002). 2. There are numerous erasures entailed in the nationalist binary of Maya-Guatemalan peoplehood. See Cadena (2001) and Casaus Arzú (1992) on discourses of ‘‘blackness’’ and ‘‘whiteness.’’ See T. Little-Siebold (2001) and C. Little-Siebold (2001) on diverse local classifications of status, race, class, and color. 3. There are two additional non-Maya minority ethnolinguistic groups in Guatemala: Garífuna, an Afro-Caribbean group with approximately 203 speakers, and Xinka, with approximately eighteen speakers (Richards 2003). 4. Certainly, Maya cultural rights activism has antecedents in the pre-genocide era, as I discuss in chapter 2. Nevertheless, the United Nations–sponsored peace accords provided a heightened and dynamic context in which cultural rights activism burgeoned. 5. Watanabe explains the salient connection between community and local indigenous identity as indelibly linked to ‘‘meaningfully bounded social places, rather than institutionally delimited structures (1992:15). 6. The Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) found that the K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Mam, Q’eqchi’, and Ixil linguistic communities were those most affected during the armed conflict (1999:69). 7. ‘‘Buscan la mayor autenticidad y tradicionalismo posibles en el plano cultural y el mayor modernismo posible en el plano tecnológico y económico. El movimiento Mayanista es a la vez predominantemente conservador el plano cultural y predominantemente innovador o revolucionario en el plan político y económico. Por ello, se dice que el camino 138 notes del movimiento Maya no va solamente a Tikal (tradicionalismo) sino va también a Nueva York y a Tokio (modernismo).’’ 8. For new perspectives on linguistic practice among Mayas in Guatemala, I encourage the reader to consult the recent works of Reynolds (2002) and Choi (2003). 9. In our sociolinguistic survey, Miriam and I spoke with 128 individuals in the urban center of Chimaltenango, the departmental capital of a Kaqchikel-speaking region close to Guatemala City. Miriam conducted around two-thirds of these interviews, while I carried out the remaining ones. See chapter 4 for a more extensive discussion of my methodology and linguistic ideology as analyst. Chapter 1 1. The original formatting is preserved to reflect parallel structure used by Maya scholars. 2. As I discuss in ‘‘Guatemala: Essentialisms and Cultural Politics’’ (2008), it is the tension between competing essentialisms—essentialisms with radically different political agendas that share assumptions about the relationship between language and indigenous identity—that situates the particularities of Guatemalan nation building at the center of broader disciplinary debates in anthropology about the theoretical and ethical implications of essentialism. 3. American Indians in the United States have been subjected to parallel processes of state-enforced linguistic assimilation though violence, particularly though the boarding school system imposed on indigenous communities. See Child (1998) for further discussion. 4. ‘‘Si la prestación de palabras viene acoplado de opresión social, diglosia inestable/ desplazante, y bilingüismo asimétrico, se da el escenario para el linguacidio.’’ Chapter 2 1. ‘‘No queda lugar para una lingüística ‘neutra,’ ‘objetiva,’ ‘pura,’ ‘apolítica.’ . . . En este país, el lingüista que trabaja sobre idiomas Mayas solo tiene dos opciones: la complicidad activa con el colonialismo y asimilismo lingüísticos vigente, o el activismo a favor de un nuevo ordenamiento lingüístico en el cual se concretice la igualdad de derechos para todos los idiomas, lo que implica igualdad de derecho para las nacionalidades y los pueblos.’’ 2. Taylor discusses how this particular idea emerged as a product of eighteenth-century British empiricism. 3. Stoll notes that the SIL does not ‘‘consider itself a mission because its Bible translations , not its members, are responsible for any spiritual growth’’ (1982:5). 4. Townsend used this grammar as the basis for training other Evangelical linguistic students for missionary work...