Ch'orti Maya Area: Past and Present

12. Searching for Ch′orti′ Maya Indigenousness in Contemporary Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador

12 Searching for Ch′orti′ Maya Indigenousness in Contemporary Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador Brent E. Metz Searching for indigenousness in the contemporary Ch′orti′ area may seem naïve from various perspectives. From a purist perspective in which cultures are seen as bounded complex wholes, truly unadulterated indigenous cultures ceased to be practiced in the New World as soon as Europeans invaded. Attention to indigenousness is also misguided from a strictly Marxist perspective, for in that view it is only a capitalist fetish for selling precapitalist fantasies and diverting attention from exploitation based on class, not ethnicity. Similarly, from a radical deconstructionist approach, cultures and identities are fluid and fleeting because knowledge , communication, and interests are, and therefore, the task is not to (re)search indigenous realities “out there” but to deconstruct discourses about them. To expect to find objectively “indigenous peoples” ultimately reflects an interest in romanticism, exoticism, nostalgia, and racism. In opposition is the essentialist and activist “peoples-of-the-world” point of view, in which ethnic groups are identifiable by their phenotypes and obvious aspects of culture such as language and dress, not to mention their impeccable moral values. Even from this angle, however, very few people in the “Ch′orti′ area” would stand out as indigenous, because of biological and cultural mixing. If one combines the strengths of the social historical, Marxist, and deconstructionist approaches, instead of radically taking one or another to extremes, searching for indigenousness in the mixed and ambiguous Ch′orti′ area can be especially revelatory of both the cultures “on the ground” and the cultures of those people with the power to publicly evalu161 162 · Brent E. Metz ate them. The borderline indigenousness in eastern Guatemala, western Honduras, and northwestern El Salvador highlights how indigenousness is contextual and negotiated. I recognize, as do others in this volume, that history or social reproduction always informs contemporary identities and cultures, while people may also accentuate aspects of their heritage, or ostensible heritage, for instrumental reasons. As conditions on the ground change, expectations of what Indian, indigenous, native, and so on, mean also change. In recent decades, as the world has become increasingly smaller due to modern communications and capitalist growth, categories have become increasingly blurred, contested, renovated, and abandoned. Indigenousness matters more than ever. Since World War II the negative valence of the backward Indian/savage has been reversing to positive conceptions of indigenousness (Ramos 2002; Brysk 1996). Global public opinion seems to have changed, for which anthropology can take partial credit, and global superinvestors dare not ignore the shift. With the support of academics, environmental organizations, religious leaders , and nationalist politicians, indigenous movements have procured land titles, bilingual education programs, some national and United Nations (UN) representation, and greater autonomy. Former exploiters of indigenous peoples—such as Western nation-states, the World Bank, and development organizations—now provide special funding and protections for them. At the same time, indigenous resources are among the last on the planet untapped by the superinvestors, so the threat of duplicitous predation is constant (Hale 2005). Almost by definition, indigenous peoples are the first to suffer, the last to benefit, and the last to surrender when natural resource exploitation is expanded and social investments are cut, ostensibly to reduce the public debts incurred by nonindigenous elites. Latin American indigenous movements in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador , and Mexico are seen as the principal defenders of national sovereignty against the superinvestors’ undemocratic neoliberal dictates, such that Marxists now ride the coattails of indigenous movements rather than vice versa. Some Latin American indigenous movements have become so powerful that the U.S. National Intelligence Council considers them as terrorist threats (González 2005). The World Bank (2001), European Union (1998), ILO (1989), UN (UNDP 2003), and many nation-states have found defining indigenousness to be a tricky business, in no small part because of the contradictory expectations of both cultural continuity and colonization. Definitions generally share three overarching criteria: (1) having a distinct culture, usually related to subsistence economies and associated worldviews; (2) suffering from an ongoing legacy of colonization, and (3) self-identifying as indigenous , including in territoriality (compare Niezen 2003: 19; Maybury- Ch′orti′ Maya Indigenousness in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador · 163 Lewis 1997; Plant 2002: 214; Sieder 2002: 2; Kuper 2003). All these criteria are necessarily vague and increasingly contentious as conditions continue to change. Regarding culture, disagreement exists as to whether indigenous people must...