Discarded Pages: Araceli Cab Cumí, Maya Poet and Politician

Appendix: Methodology

263 Appendix Methodology  The saints aren’t going to help me, you are! —Araceli Cab Cumí, conversation, July 999 As Araceli suggests in her opening phrase to this appendix, she recognizes my role in helping publish her work. I have long thought that she conceives this book as a final opportunity to gain the intellectual recognition she deserves. My first goal for this book is to introduce an original and powerful writer to a wider audience. A secondary goal was to introduce a writer all the more rare because she is an indigenous Maya woman, one of a few to be published to date. Anthropology is a personal science. Reflection upon oneself, one’s work, or the people with whom one works is part of the process of doing anthropology. And so, I have written my reflections in the text when I thought they would illuminate its meaning, the relationship between Araceli and me, or our collaborative process of producing this book. I have been careful, however, to ensure that my reflections enhance the text rather than detract from Araceli’s life narrative or her writings. The focus of this book is Araceli and her work. I did not want this book to become a confessional, as some current anthropology is, with the focus on the anthropologist and her or his angst—leaving one to wonder whose story is actually being told. It seems to me that it is one thing to inform appendix 264 the reader about the process of producing the text; it is another to make this process the text. It is important to acknowledge the difference. In this book I have written only two “interventions,” as I term them, focusing more on my thoughts in writing this book than on Araceli’s writings or life narrative: one in chapter 4, “An Agenda for the Maya,” and the other in chapter 6, “Endings?” In the first intervention I wrote about my response to Araceli’s poem about Maya slavery after visiting Sisal, a port from which the enslaved Maya were shipped out to Cuba. Her poem sobered my memory of a relaxed, joyful vacation with my husband and overlaid it with haunting images of the Maya being sent away from their flat, beloved homeland. I thought others might understand Araceli’s passionate poem better with the counterpoint of my experience. In the second intervention I sought to honor Zazil Espinosa Patrón, Araceli’s eldest granddaughter, who supported and aided our efforts to produce this book. She, unlike her sister, Zoila, or her cousin Edna, has not written anything for this book but has been central to its production. Zazil deserves acknowledgment. I described in the introduction how Araceli and I met in 993 while she was a congressional representative whom I interviewed for the project “Women’s Participation in Democratization: Transforming the Mexican State.” Since then we have continued to stay in touch in all my subsequent, almost yearly, trips to Yucatán. Over the years we have had many conversations sitting around her dining room table in Maxcanú or in the cafés and restaurants of Mérida. Our ongoing discussions continued when we have visited Celestún, a Yucatecan seaside village; Oxkintok, the ancient Maya ruin; and on several occasions, the former Hacienda de Santa Rose de Lima, now a hotel and restaurant, all relatively near Maxcanú. From the beginning Araceli seemed to like talking to me and I certainly valued hearing her thoughts on women, politics, and indigenous issues. I also simply enjoy her company. She was one of three people including my friends, Sister Terry, a Maryknoll sister, and Thomas C. Gerhard (Sr. Tom), a North American retiree and longtime resident of Mérida, whom I always contact on my visits to Yucatán because I value their thoughts and enjoy their company. Sadly, my beloved friend, Sr. Tom, passed on in the spring of 2003. During my absences from Yucatán, Araceli and I have communicated occasionallybyexchanginglettersandcards.Until2000IwouldcallAraceli at a neighbor’s home or at the telephone in a Maxcanú pharmacy. Then our communication eased when in 2000 Araceli got a semipublic telephone methodology 265 by her front gate so that calling on her birthday, to make arrangements to work together, or when hurricanes threatened Yucatán was much easier. Since the arrival of cybercafes in Mérida and the more widespread use of...