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10. Shaming the Shift Generation: Intersecting Ideologies of Family and Linguistic Revitalization in Guatemala
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chapter 10 Shaming the Shift Generation Intersecting Ideologies of Family and Linguistic Revitalization in Guatemala jennifer f. reynolds During one late afternoon in August 1994 the teacher of an adult Kaqchikel literacy class sponsored by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (Mayan Languages Academy of Guatemala, or ALMG), a prominent and autonomous Maya organization devoted to the standardization and modernization of Mayan languages, assigned the following parable to be read aloud and discussed for its cultural significance to Kaqchikel Mayas. ‘‘Man Kach’oke’ (Katz’uye’)’’ (Don’t Sit Down [Sit Down]) is one among a collection of parables in a pamphlet entitled Ri Na’oj: Maya K’aslemal—Maya Ch’ab’äl (The Belief: Maya Way of Life— Mayan Language): Man kach’oke’ pa ruch’okolb’äl jun ti ri’j winäq, roma chanin nisaqïr ri rusumal awi’. Don’t sit down upon the chair of an elder, or else your hair quickly will turn white. Juana Mactzul Batz authored the text, which was published by the Linguistic Institute/PRODIPMA, Universidad Rafael Landívar (URL). Rafael Landívar is one of the few Ladino (non-Indian, i.e., people of European or mixed ancestry) institutions in Guatemala to employ influential Maya leaders and linguists, members of a Pan-Maya social movement whose primary mission is to revive and revitalize Guatemala’s twenty-one Mayan languages (England 2003; Warren 1998).∞ While ‘‘Man Kach’oke’ ’’ is first and foremost a pedagogical text, it is also a Pan-Maya ideological response to the perceived increasing numbers of Spanish monolingual Maya children. In the 1990s Pan-Mayas felt compelled to 214 jennifer f. reynolds concentrate and consolidate their strategies in reversing language shift by politicizing domestic spheres of language use. In what follows I examine how Pan-Mayas’ language ideologies enmesh culturally salient ideologies of familial authority and respect in their macro- and microstruggles to secure the future for their communities in an ‘‘unstable place’’ (Greenhouse , Mertz, and Warren 2002). Classroom discussion over the form and content of that parable occurred almost a decade ago, but Pan-Maya texts like ‘‘Man Kach’oke’ ’’ resonate even more now that Guatemala has entered the ‘‘postwar’’ phase of its history. Since ex-president Álvaro Arzú signed the peace accords in 1996, representatives of the Maya movement, like other previously excluded sectors, have been allowed to participate as interlocutors in public forums on how to achieve peace and democracy in a country that, since its independence from Spain and especially after the U.S.–assisted military coup d’état of 1954, had only known military forms of governance and a thirty-six-year civil war turned genocidal project. In addressing the question of how to democratize a society that has relied upon a ‘‘culture of violence,’’ many sectors, including representatives of Maya organizations, acknowledged that one begins with reforming the institution of ‘‘the family .’’≤ Despite many different contending constructions of what this Guatemalan family should look like, ‘‘the family’’ has become a metonym for a democratic nation-state. For example, in the national media the authoritarian state was likened to an adult, male-dominated household. Prensa Libre’s opinion columnist, Maíces (a.k.a. Carlos Aldana Mendoza), wrote on March 12, 1998, ‘‘Adults (parents) have the right to control, dominate, and order (in the most militaristic sense of the word) children to blindly and acritically obey.’’ He argued that the new construction of family (i.e., a liberal democratic family) would engender ‘‘a community of people’’ and that democratizing society begins at home, where parents would exercise authority, not authoritarianism. Additional alternative visions of the family also reflected positions held by the Religious Right, universal rights advocates, and cultural rights activists. Pan-Mayas’ cultural politics intervened in these debates with the demand to create a Maya nation concerned with preserving family practices according to una Cosmovisi ón Maya (a Maya Cosmology), making domestic language use an issue of identity politics and reintroducing literacy in Mayan languages via adult literacy courses (Brown 1998c).≥ [54.173.214.79] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:50 GMT) linguistic revitalization in guatemala 215 First, I provide a brief history of Pan-Mayas’ participation within the greater Maya social movement in order to situate it within the politics of culture currently being fought over linguistic terrain. Of considerable importance to this history is the role that past and present North American linguists and sociolinguists have played in characterizing Guatemala ’s linguistic diversity and theorizing language shift...