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Ethnohistory 49.4 (2002) 896-898



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Maya Survivalism. Edited by Ueli Hostettler and Matthew Restall. Acta Mesoamericana, vol. 12. (Markt Schwaben, Germany: Verlag Anton Saurwein, 2001. xiv + 325 pp., introduction, illustrations, maps, tables. $44.00 cloth.)

This is a fine collection of twenty-four papers originally presented at the year 2000 meetings of the International Congress of Americanists in Warsaw, Poland. The contributors are ethnographers, archaeologists, historians, and linguists, mostly North American and European, and run the gamut from emeritus to young scholars just completing dissertations. The somewhat odd title of the volume reflects the intention of the editors that the contributors bring under scrutiny the very notion of "Maya." The editors intend that this volume undermine the essentialism inherent in many past discussions of "the Maya" and "the survival of the Maya" and that it instead turn scholarly attention toward the survival, adaptation, and advancement of more narrowly delimited social groups—especially, it seems, elites.

To that end, several contributors (Jon Schackt, Matthew Restall, and Wolfgang Gabbert) examine the history of the term and the social/semantic category Maya. In Yucatec Maya at the time of the conquest, the label Maya applied to a quite narrow range of people and their sociocultural attributes in northwestern Yucatán. Though the authors may differ in the histories they trace, they concur in finding that only in the nineteenth century did the term begin to be applied to a wider range of people, languages, and eventually broad culture histories—that is, "the Mayan peoples." As Restall emphasizes, seldom if ever (until recently) did "Mayas" think of themselves or act in consort as "Mayas." People of the peninsula handled a repertoire of possible identities, appropriate for different scales of social interaction, and they chose or invoked the identity that best suited their purposes in the present. The authors will of course appreciate the awkwardness of developing [End Page 896] such a well-founded critique of the concept of Maya precisely when rapidly increasing numbers of Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Belizeans are finding it advantageous to assert that identity before their governments and before people like ourselves.

Additions are made to the repertoire of effective identities, and items in that repertoire are modified or refashioned by social groups and individuals. Several contributions to this volume provide well-documented case studies of such processes of ethnogenesis among the Quichean elite (Geoffrey E. Braswell) and the refashioning of lineage and history to justify elite ascription on the Yucatán Peninsula (Tsubasa Okoshi Harada). The editors would argue not only that such identity creation has been going on since the conquest, but that it has habitually masked (especially when practiced by latter-day Mayanist scholars like ourselves) a perennial and profound social and cultural heterogeneity. In that vein a number of contributions to this volume emphasize division and heterogeneity among "the Maya," especially in the nineteenth century (Don Dumond, William Folan, Inés de Castro).

Inevitably in this large a collection, not every contribution will illuminate the pet themes of the editors. A subset of essays in this volume do not directly contribute to the challenging of the notion of "the Maya." Rather, they explore topics in Maya history, social organization, culture, and language from the more traditional perspective of the survival, adaptation, or resistance of the Maya subject. Constance Cortez expertly displays how under colonial rule Mayas of the Yucatán refashioned Christian images of the sacred woman to conform to their own pre-conquest notions of female agency and gender hierarchy. John F. Chuchiak draws upon little known ecclesiastical records to reveal the survival of a Maya priesthood despite repeated campaigns of extirpation. In their separate contributions Murdo J. Macleod and María Dolores Palomo Infante examine in great documentary detail the adoption and adaptation of European cofradía forms by Mayas in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas. Still other contributors document the efforts of specific Maya groups to adopt new agricultural production regimes so to exploit niche markets in the export economy of Guatemala (Edward F. Fischer), to preserve their access to land and forest resources as the Mexican government extends...

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