Contemporary Expressions of Maya Indigenous Knowledge: Politics and Poetry in Ixim Ulew

This article reviews Maya Cú’s poetry, arguing that it embodies contemporary expressions of Maya Indigenous Knowledge (MIK), also found in ancient texts like the Popol Vuh. The Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies present in the concept of Jun Winaq’ demonstrate MIK’s focus on continuity and change. This notion extends Alicia Ivonne Estrada’s analysis on the function of Maya Cú’s poetry, and Gloria Chacón’s proposition that contemporary Mayan writers’ poetry disrupts essentialist notions of their condition to provide contemporary examples of reclaiming and building multiple and self-defined Maya identities grounded in MIK.