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Ethnohistory 47.3-4 (2000) 815-816



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Book Review

Telling Maya Tales:
Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico


Telling Maya Tales: Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico. By Gary H. Gossen. (New York: Routledge, 1999. xxxiii + 309 pp., preface, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $75.00 cloth.)

In this collection of essays, most of which have been previously published over the past sixteen years, Gary H. Gossen offers both a variety of perspectives on the study of Mayan ethnicity and identity and a chart of his own intellectual progress as an anthropologist. Some of the essays are true gems, like his miniethnography of the fascinating, monumental Chamula festival of the games or his minibiography of slain Chamula Protestant leader Miguel Kaxlan. Some essays are innovative and provocative continuations of Gossen’s original explorations of the deep symbolic templates of Mayan oral traditions, rituals, and historical action. That category would include an essay coauthored with archeologist Richard Leventhal, which despite its obscure title, “Topography of Ancient Maya Religious Pluralism,” is essentially an exploration of the gender principels in Mayan calendrics and political succession. Some essays are old wine in new bottles—more Tzotzil texts that reveal how Tzotzil’s think and act in history, their moral geography, and the like, already fully explicated in Gossen’s earlier work. Others are mush, however, like the chapter purporting to explain how Chamula exiles and colonists in the lowlands maintain their conservative character and ties to their highland home community. That article was published back in 1983 as a preliminary report on research still to be conducted. With no further research evident, Gossen concludes that Chamule women are the key. Few contemporary anthropologists would question that morally and politicly acceptable conclusion, but where is the evidence? Two other essays are little better. In them Gossen finds traditional Mayan habits of thought and leadership manifest in the Zapatista shell-game of “Who’s really in charge among us?” That is to say, Gossen tries to explain why a [End Page 815] white man (Subcommandante Marcos) is the spokesperson for an otherwise hidden Indian leadership. Yet the serious efforts that have been made to identify Zapatista leadership conclude that there are virtually no Indian leaders for whom Marcos is speaking.

This is not a bad collection from which to choose some readings for undergraduates. As a intellectual biography, however, it is the portrait of someone who stalled some time ago or who has battled fruitlessly with competing directions and impulses and the desire to address an always-shifting professional audience. When Gossen does what he does best, he is very good and inspiring. When he tries to be trendy or jump on the bandwagon, however, the result can be quite silly. But then he already knows that, and I suppose he is brave for experimenting with these “different voices,” as he calls them. One hopes that he will continue to develop his own true voice in future work.

Paul Sullivan, Independent Scholar

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