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Hispanic American Historical Review 83.1 (2003) 164-165



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Maya Survivalism. Edited by Ueli Hostettler and Matthew Restall. Acta Mesoamericana, vol. 12. Markt Schwaben, Germany: Verlag Anton Saurwein, 2001. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliographies. xiv, 325 pp. Cloth, $44.00.

Those interested in the Maya region and peoples will find much to ponder in Maya Survivalism, a collection of 24 essays spun out of an international congress held in Warsaw in the summer of 2000. This volume showcases current research on the Maya-speaking areas of Mexico and Guatemala, but also points to numerous issues for further exploration. Maya Survivalism is divided into five parts: a review of Maya ethnicity and its genesis, the colonial era, the question of religious practices, the rebellious nineteenth century, and finally the conditions of Maya peoples in the present day. Introductory essays by Jon Schackt, Matthew Restall, and Wolfgang Gabbert explore the fickleness of "Maya," both as a term and as a clearly defined people, arguing that both have always walked paths of ongoing evolution. While the following essays do not provide a definitive paradigm for Maya ethnogenesis, they do suggest new ways of piecing together the Maya mosaic.

Studies of the colonial era stress adaptation over crisis. Stratified, socially complex cultures existed in the late postclassic era and allowed an easy transfer to Spanish rule (a point advanced by archaeologists Diane and Arlen Chase). Essays by Tsubasa Ikoshi Harada and Lorraine Williams-Beck document how the colonial regime provided niches for people and practices of the precontact past. Similarly, John Chuchiak documents the persistence of the Maya priests known as ah kin. Concerning these shadowy individuals, the majority of Chuchiak's examples derive from the period prior to 1630: was the ah kin the great-grandfather of the h-men or shaman of today?

The nineteenth century finds somewhat less representation here, and dwells on Maya separatist communities born in the wake of the Caste War (1847-1901). Don Dumond and William Folan argue against inherent Maya cohesiveness as the explanation for the success of Caste War rebels, instead stressing social factors as a source of unity. Inés de Castro's study of the so-called pacífico communities of southern Campeche finds ethnic diversity rather than unity, while additional essays explore memories of the nineteenth-century ethnic wars in both Quintana Roo and Chiapas. Despite the exotic lure of the rebels' oracular Speaking Cross, however, we should remember that a huge portion of history for the Maya-speaking peoples of nineteenth-century Yucatán played out not in the remote south, but much closer to home, in the area that remained under the control of the Yucatecan/Mexican state.

The most recent period of Maya history also reveals extensive change and adaptation. As Barbara Pfeiler documents, the Yucatec Maya language has steadily lost grammatical features that lack Spanish counterparts, such as the classifying [End Page 164] words used in association with specific noun groups (for example, the word o'och used to designate food). But if grammar has come unglued, at least some Maya women have witnessed upward mobility for their daughters and granddaughters, who increasingly find a place in the urban professions. While focusing on the Maya-speaking areas of Quintana Roo and Campeche, respective essays by Ueli Hostettler and Ute Schüren reinforce similar studies of late-twentieth-century agriculture for other parts of Mexico: agrarian pressures have heightened since the establishment of the midcentury federal land grants (ejidos), while the various rural development plans have favored large-scale, well-capitalized producers while tempting the rural population to migrate to cities in search of better-paying wage labor. Finally, the growing literature on transnationalism is represented in Edward Fischer's study of Guatemalan pan-Mayanism; the growth of direct contracting between multinationals and Kakchiquel farmers have tended to exclude state-level distribution systems, thus helping to shift political consciousness from a national focus to one that is more local and ethnic.

Perhaps the most critical interpretive tension of the book lies between Maya culture as persisting, and Maya culture as an ongoing...

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