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Reviewed by:
  • Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage
  • Eligia Calderón-Trejo
Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage, Lisa Breglia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Xii + 242 pages, maps, photos, index. $22.95 paperback. (ISBN: 10:878-0 292-71427-0).

This converted dissertation addresses a key question and one that increasingly is to be found in the pages of many disciplinary journals: "to whom does the past belong"? Consider for a moment the impact of someone arriving at your door to tell you that your property has been classified as part of the patrimony of mankind, and that you could no longer make any changes to the structures on it without the permission of a group of cultural specialists. Clearly, one might feel very proud of such a designation, but if it meant that you could no longer modify your buildings, nor build any more buildings, then you might well consider that your personal rights had been negatively affected. What is this alleged "heritage", and who is this "mankind"? Who has the power to decide such patrimonial possession? These are the central issues considered in what the author describes as the ambivalent politics of heritage. The geographical context in this case is the Yucatan peninsula, and the case study sites are Chichén Itzá, a former colonial hacienda invented as heritage by way of tourism in the twentieth century, and Chunchucmil a site that is still becoming heritage.

The book is divided into two sections, the first of which unfortunately may put some readers off—it is full of dissertationese lauding the ideas of Foucault via mystical terms such as "ethnographic interlocutors" (p. 19), "trialectic of space (p. 32), "multiple spatial and spatializing planes" (p. 33), "cartographies of patrimony" (chapter 2) and many more that add absolutely nothing to the arguments or presentation. Such pretentious prose and opacity of language reflect a poor editorial hand. The reader will be delighted to have covered the "ambivalence of heritage" by reaching page 57.

But between chapters three and five we get the meat of the detailed ethnography. There are essentially two interrelated themes: first, the privatization of archaeological patrimony, and second, the views of heritage that local professional archaeologists, local Mayanas, Mexican authorities, and Mexican legal instruments hold of archaeological sites. The best developed context is that of Chichén Itzá and the author provides us with a most interesting account of the privatization of this site and the varied roles of well-known North Americans and institutions such as Edward Thompson, Sylvanus Morley, Harvard's Peabody Museum and the Carnegie Institute. In contrast chapter four reveals the evolution of the ideas and actions of some 36 custodians of the archaeological site; [End Page 229] some four generations of local Mayans wrapping themselves ever closer to the INAH, thus fortifying their monopolistic and lucrative controls. With more than a million visitors a year from gringo sites such as Cancun, this site is very valuable, in many ways; a neat case of what the author defines as "heritage-as-practice". Having read this account, for this reviewer visiting this site will never be the same again; this is little more than Mayalandia, but the photos are great (unfortunately not in this book)!

For Chunchucmil there are fewer data, understandably so since its scientific excavation only began in mid-1990s, thus heritage is still being rapidly invented by the local Mayans which the professionals dig much more slowly. The other significant difference between the two sites is that Chichén Itzá is located on privately held land, while Chunchucmil is scattered over the boundaries of several ejidos, with consequent issues of property rights and competing claims of communal controls. Much more significant for the Mayans of Chunchucmil are their memories of the "time of slavery" during the henequen hacienda regime; to them the unexcavated hills and scattering of surface artifacts was for long of little concern. Survival was of more importance than patrimonial pretences.

Notwithstanding the rich details of the central chapters the monograph concludes by sliding once more into post-modern deconstructionist jargon. We are reminded of the importance of "overlapping territories of multiple discursive regimes" and the perils associated with...

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