Ch’orti’-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala: Indigeneity in Transition by Brent E. Metz (review)

The Latin Americanist, October 2008 with some degree of similarity, by a given non-Western culture. Yet Lee is correct in insisting that the boundaries (if there were any) between what we would consider to be the roles of poet, composer, and performer may never be completely understood in the Nahua context. It may well be the case that the poems attributed to Nezahualcoyotl were only commissioned by him, or merely associated with his court for circumstantial reasons. In his epilogue, Lee exposes Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal as yet another blind follower of the Nezahualcoyotl mystique. And therein lies the terrible truth of Lee’s assertions: if we believe them, as it appears that we should from the evidence he marshals, then we are left with nothing beyond Nezahualcoyotl’s reconstruction of Texcoco, after the Tepanec invasion , in the guise of the politically dominant Tenochtitlan. While it seems dutiful to decry the colonial manipulation of Nezahualcoyotl’s alleged religious orientation in order to spin a tale of him somehow foreseeing the end of the Triple Alliance and the arrival of the Spaniards, it is not without reluctance that the reader forfeits the cherished vision of Texcoco as a Mesoamerican Athens, the claim that the poetic theme of ephemerality was somehow separate from the theme of war, the supreme vision of Tloque Nahuaque (The Lord of the Near and the By), and above all, any foundation for believing that Nezahualcoyotl, or anyone else for that matter, can clearly be identified as author of any of the extant in xochitl in cuicatl (flower and song) texts. In the end, Lee does not so much prove that “the allure of Nezahualcoyotl ” is unfounded, but rather confounded. In Lee’s frenzy of debunking, in which even Nezahualcoyotl’s famed aquatic park of tranquil repose at Texcotzinco is proven to have been a sacrificial slaughterhouse, the reader is left with the idea that, because of the active misinterpretations perpetuated up to the present, there is very little about Nezahualcoyotl’s life and circumstances that anyone can know for certain. What Lee can show for certain is that a mystification of the man and his legacy did occur for political gain, and that pictorial texts have often been misinterpreted or ignored. A challenge now for specialists in this area would be to somehow defend for accuracy the accounts of Pomar and Alva Ixtilxochitl, a daunting task indeed in the aftermath of Lee’s findings. Bruce Dean Willis Department of Languages University of Tulsa CH’ORTI’-MAYA SURVIVAL IN EASTERN GUATEMALA: INDIGENEITY IN TRANSITION. By Brent E. Metz. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006, p. 346, $29.95. Brent Metz has penned a landmark ethnographic account of the Ch’orti’-Maya of eastern Guatemala and their struggle for physical, 90 Book Reviews cultural and economic survival amidst enormous challenges. His thorough and well-documented account provides a description of the present-day Ch’orti’. It also situates the cultural and linguistic group historically and socially within the larger context of the Eastern Guatemalan region, the nation, and globalized systems of markets and trade. His accounts blend descriptive ethnography with clear advocacy that is never paternalistic or condescending. Throughout the book, Metz addresses his original questions of how and why Ch’orti’-Maya have transformed their identity as “indigenous,” and to what degree they ought to be labeled or understood as such. Ultimately, Metz accomplishes his goal of moving beyond simplistic formulations and polarized political interpretations of “indigeneity” toward a more complex and accurate depiction of rural, subsistence living among the Ch’orti’. Ch’orti’-Maya Survival progresses nicely from the national stage to the local experiences of the Ch’orti’. Metz provides a concise, documented background of Ch’orti’ colonial experience before presenting his own field research and interview material. He builds on ethnographic studies completed prior to Guatemala’s lengthy civil war, and he decries the excessive violence directed toward various groups, particularly the rural, indigenous populations like the Ch’orti’. The overviews for each section are brief, yet full of rich documentary information that contextualizes his work. As an ethnographer, he has finely tuned his craft, and reveals the Ch’orti’-Maya in complex...