Maya Nationalism

ONE WOULD HARDLY HAVE EXPECTED
Maya self-determination to be the rallying cry to
rise out of the ashes of Guatemala’s holocaust. Indians,
after all, were the main targets of the violence in the
1980s-and still are today, though now dozens rather
than hundreds are murdered or disappeared each month.
But increasing numbers of Maya are, in fact, being drawn
to “nationalist” as opposed to “popular” politics, two
causes which until recently were considered one and the
same.
What I tentatively label a “Maya nationalist move-
ment” is so young that it is difficult to know exactly what
it is and where it is going. But it will likely play a major
role in the future of this country where nearly one quarter
of the population of nine million wears the colorful
clothing emblematic of Maya status, more than one third
speaks a Maya language as their first tongue, and at least
half thinks of themselves as members of a Maya commu-
nity, defined in terms of location, tradition, language or
self-identification.’
Maya nationalism became an identifiable cause in the
early 1970s, was quiescent during the violence, and today
is emerging as a real political movement-partly as a
radical alternative to the traditional Left. 2 Though troubled
about the economic exploitation that Indians suffer more
than any other group, Maya nationalists, few of whom
were public figures before the end of formal military rule
in 1986, are more concerned with the cultural oppression
rife ever since “Guatemala” came into existence.
As they see it, cultural and racial discrimination are at
the base of the economic exploitation of Indians and the
cultural impoverishment of all Guatemalans. Those who
retain the symbols of their Maya identity-languages,
community forms, clothing, religious practices-are not
only excluded from positions of power and respect in the
nation, but are derided for their backward “traditional-
ism,” even by political progressives, whether Liberals in
the nineteenth century or Marxists in the twentieth.
The movement is not explicitly Right or Left. Maya
nationalists’ stance on the material significance of culture
distances them from the traditional Guatemalan Left. And
their stance on political tactics-which they try to model
on grassroots communities-distances them from the
revolutionary vanguard. But there are Maya nationalists
who would agree with the Left on most other issues, and
none that I know would ally with the Right.
A prominent spokesperson for today’s Maya national-
ists is Demetrio Cojti Cuxil, the first self-identified Maya
VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 3 (DECEMBER 1991)
CarolA. Smith teaches anthropology at the University
of California at Davis. She is the editor of Guatemalan
Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 (U. of Texas, 1990).
29The First Nations
to obtain a doctorate, and one of the first to teach at the
national University of San Carlos. Born in a rural village
near Tecpin and educated by Jesuits, Cojtf now runs a
“permanent seminar” on issues of importance to the
substantial number of self-identified Maya studying at
San Carlos.
For Cojti, Maya nationalism means challenging the
colonialist ideology embedded in progressive as well as
conservative Guatemalan thinking about the Maya. For
Guillermo Rodriguez Guajdn, until recently the director
of adult education in the western highlands and currently
the director of the Mayan Research Center (CISMA),
Maya nationalism means combining “modern” science
and technology with “traditional” Maya knowledge of
language, medicine, farming know-how and community
life, in order to develop new forms of Maya knowledge.
And for Ricardo Cajas Mejia, Indian activist and 1990
candidate for mayor of the country’s second largest city
Quetzaltenango, it means taking charge of Maya political
organizations and economic development and scholar-
ship programs without paternalistic intermediaries-be
they Ladinos (mestizo Guatemalans) or gringos.’
Three types of people currently make up the move-
ment, almost all of them literate, self-proclaimed Maya:
students and intellectuals; community-based profession-
als (teachers, agronomists, health workers); and members
of local NGOs and cooperatives, often supported by
foreign sources including UNICEF, OXFAM, Inter-
American Foundation, and even U.S.AID. Few Maya
nationalists are “men of maize”-the illiterate peasants,
plantation workers, traders, and artisans who constitute
the majority of Guatemala’s native people. 4
Nationalists argue that encouraging Maya to define
themselves as Maya, even in non-traditional or elite roles,
opens up opportunities for all Maya. Cultural freedom,
they point out, implies more than an arena for the expres-
sion of peasant folklore; it implies the right to channel
change and diversification according to self-determined
guidelines. Without leaders or the possibility to differen-
tiate and grow within one’s culture, they argue, a people
is consigned to the dustbin of history-as time and moder-
nity eradicate the rural, the peasant, and the illiterate.
CONCERN ABOUT SIGNIFICANT DECLINE IN
Maya language use first sparked the movement for
self-determination. In 1986 the Academy of Mayan Lan-
guages (ALMG) was founded to encourage the use of
native tongues in state schools and other institutions, and
to promote the use of a unified alphabet for writing the 21
Maya languages.’ It was granted official recognition in
1990 as an “autonomous state entity,” with a mandate to
“promote the knowledge and use of Maya languages and
to research, plan, program and implement relevant lin-
guistic, literary, educational and cultural materials.” The
ALMG is now a vehicle for expanding the struggle for
self-determination beyond language-to the revitaliza-
tion of “traditional” dress and customs, for example.’
and resilience lie in its increasingly localized nature.
Most educated Maya support these goals, but differ on
how to move toward them. Some advocate mandatory
bilingual, bicultural education at all levels for all Guate-
malans; others think this is a fantasy. Some believe the
ALMG should regulate who can work in Maya areas,
restricting jobs to those who speak the local language;
others think this would ghettoize Maya, dividing and
constraining their national opportunities. And many Maya
oppose all cooperation with the Ladino state.
The first Maya group to broach the loaded issue of
economic and political autonomy may have been the non-
governmental organization, Cakchiquel Center for Inte-
gral Development (COCADI). In their 1989 treatise on
the “politics of rural development,” COCADI called for a
pluralist or multi-cultural range of rural development
goals, which would allow “political space for encounter
and dialogue among the different Guatemalan cultures
(Maya and non-Maya) that would assure the civil, cul-
tural, political, and economic rights of the Maya.”‘Whether
the group advocated autonomous political and economic
territories is not clear.
An umbrella organization of Maya NGOs and cultural
organizations was founded this year, the Council of Maya
Organizations (COMG); its membership includes both
the ALMG and COCADI. COMG pushes much farther
into economic and political terrain, demanding territorial,
legal, civil, and military autonomy, in order to “guarantee
the Maya people their right to seek their own destiny.”‘
COMG even brings up the taboo subject of army
repression, and specifically requests participation as Maya
in the dialogue currently taking place between the govern-
ment and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union
(URNG) guerrillas. As they see it, the Ladino state and
Ladino guerrilla commanders should not decide the fate
of the Maya traumatized by the actions of each.
REPORT ON THE AMERICASInfluenced by indigenous movements in other parts of
the globe, the political program promoted by Maya na-
tionalists has grown more radical, taking advantage of the
small political opening offered by Guatemala’s civilian
regime. As it takes on a more militant stance, the move-
ment grows ever more apart from earlier forms of Maya
resistance, which to date have guaranteed the strength and
resilience of Maya culture.
S NE REASON MAYA CULTURE IS SO RESIS-
tant is that it has never been monolithic. The 21
Maya languages still spoken in modem Guatemala, most
of which divide into several (often dozens) of distinct
dialects, reflect pre-conquest political divisions. 9 On the
basis of language alone, one could count dozens of mod-
em Maya ethnic groups; but because of the community
focus of individual Maya identity, these could number in
the hundreds.
While the fragmentation of Maya identity is usually
seen as a weakness, by both leftists and Maya nationalists,
it is actually a source of cultural resilience, which allows
for a variety of adept responses to changed circumstances,
and prevents the state from assaulting all Maya commu-
nities at once.
Modem Maya communities today, for example, have
many different economic bases-urban commerce and
manufacturing, trading and trucking, crafts production, as
well as “traditional” plantation labor and corn farming.
They have dozens of different political forms, from stan-
dard electoral politics to the “traditional” council of
informally selected elders. And they engage in a wide
variety of religious practices (often simultaneously), some
of them fashioned by local communities before the Con-
quest, others “Mayanized” only recently.
Though always repressive and despotic, the Guatema-
lan state never controlled civil institutions in Maya com-
munities, which have variously been controlled by the
Catholic Church, the lawless oligarchy, or Maya commu-
nities themselves. Given its relative weakness, the state
has historically been ever more coercive, attempting to
force rather than persuade conformity among the ruled.
Civil society has responded by strengthening local forms
of resistance-revivified and increasingly localized forms
of Maya culture-which then provoke the state to greater
repressiveness.'”
Viewing Maya culture as plural and localized rather
than generic and monolithic, and the state as weak and
coercive rather than strong and hegemonic, reveals a
pattern to Maya resistance and state repression in Guate-
mala. The general state policy has been to target Indians
for work, ignore their “backward” traditions, allow a few
of the more “civilized” to become Ladinos, and brutally
mow down any who pose a direct challenge to Creole or
Ladino dominance. The general Maya response has been
to push for economic advantage wherever openings or
weaknesses exist, Mayanize useful Western imports, and
eject the assimilated from their communities. Mayararely
pose a direct challenge to state power; they limit it through
economic and cultural diversification. A few examples
from history illustrate the pattern.
The colonial period saw no dramatic rebellions like the
uprising of Tiipac Amaru II in Peru-an elite-led regional
movement that directly challenged the colonial state and
was brutally repressed by it. The best known example of
an Indian revolt in colonial Guatemala is the Totonicapdn
rebellion of 1820, one year before the Spanish empire
collapsed.” Indians in many parts refused to pay tribute
after 1800, once it became clear the empire was in no
position to force it out of them. The Maya of San Miguel
Totonicap.n, one of the largest and wealthiest Indian
communities of Guatemala (and the seat of the provincial
government), stopped paying in 1810, and responded to
the Spanish governor’s demand for full payment ten years
later by throwing him out of office and replacing him with
a local Maya leader, Atanasio Tzul.
They were unable to draw Maya from other townships
into their cause, and they wrested power from the colonial
state for a mere 30 days. When apprehended, the people
labeled “leaders” did not defend their actions, but rather
tried to put the blame on others. On these grounds the
rebellion could be considered an ignominious defeat.
However, there were very few casualties (the so-called
leaders were released after nine months in jail), and the
town never paid tribute again. What’s more, many Ladinos
and Spanish officials were so terrorized by the numerous
insurgent threats to cut off their heads that many fled the
township permanently.
Guatemalan histories (several written by leftists, none
by Maya) allege that during the revolt Atanasio Tzul
crowned himself “King of the Quich6s,” in an effort to
reconstitute the kingdom defeated in bloody battle 300
years earlier. However, as North American historian
David McCreery points out, Atanasio Tzul already held
the office of “Indian governor” in Totonicapdn. Adding a
crown to Tzul’s other insignia of office may have been a
signal that there was a Crown representative in the town-
ship responsible for maintaining order in the wake of the
Spanish governor’s flight. This, at least, was Tzul’s story
to the court. McCreery also suggests the revolt was no
different from hundreds of others in colonial Guatemala
with limited, local grievances that achieved limited, local
goals. The rebellion is renowned in the country mainly
because it is misinterpreted as the “race war” Guatemala’s
Ladinos have always feared and expected. It deserves
recognition as the kind of resistance that allowed Maya
culture to flourish and diversify.
McCreery’s work on Guatemala’s rural economy in
the post-independence period provides a similar revision-
ist history.'” The coffee plantation economy, introduced
in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, did far
more than any colonial institution to create exploitative
relations between the Maya, Creole plantation owners,
and Ladino “middle” men. Indian resistance was gener-
ally strong, consistent, and rational. When violence brought
VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 3 (DECEMBER 1991) 31The First Nationse
The First Nations
unacceptably high casualties, Indians took matters up in
court, and managed to hold onto most of their lands by
titling them. In contrast, Indians in El Salvador put up a
more unified (Ladino-led) resistance; this led to unified
state repression in 1932 when thousands were killed and
native culture was virtually eradicated.
Even during the past decade, when the level of state
repression was unprecedented, Maya in different parts of
the country resisted the state in different ways, impeding
the application of a coherent Indian policy. At the same
time that Indians began joining the guerrillas in
Huehuetenango and El Quichd, Indians in Totonicapin
were challenging Ladino economic and political mo-
nopolies by giving their business and support to Maya
traders, labor recruiters, and politicians. To the former,
the state responded with massacres and a scorched earth
policy, driving many Indians out of the area. Through the
latter, Indians managed to push virtually all Ladinos out
of their territory by peaceful means. The Indian exodus
was temporary; the Ladino exodus may be permanent. In
recent years, Indians in both Huehuetenango and El
Quich6 have followed Totonicapin’s lead, driving out
most Ladino traders, plantation labor recruiters, and poli-
ticians. 1 3
The authors of resistant Maya culture typically have
not been pan-Maya elites or organizations that attempted
to create a unified and coherent Maya culture. Rather,
they have been grassroots communities that create mul-
tiple forms of Maya culture, responding to multiple forms
of oppression with diversification and creativity. In this
way, Maya have not defined themselves in opposition to
their Ladino oppressors (which would make their culture
dependent and derivative), but have defined themselves
in ways that allow Maya to continue determining their
particular local destinies. This raises many questions
about the kind of Maya politics that have been taken up in
recent years.
T HE GUERRILLA INSURGENCY OF THE 1980S,
in which many Maya participated, was not the kind
of resistance described above-limited in goals, leader-
less. localized. There was a clear strata of leaders, most of
them middle- or even upper-class Ladinos, who had little
experience with Maya culture or people. The issue for the
guerrillas was class, not ethnicity. The guerrilla leader-
ship, in fact, insisted that poor Ladinos and poor Maya had
the same interests, despite resistance to this idea from
both. And the insurgent strategy was to attack the Guate-
malan state directly, with the aim not just of weakening it,
but of replacing it with a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist
state.
From interviews with guerrilla leaders, as well as their
own accounts, it seems fairly clear that they chose to
recruit in the Maya area; Mayas did not seek out Ladino
leaders for their own insurgency. Mario Payeras, a leader
of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), describes his
small (and mostly Ladino) group’s deliberate attempt to
incorporate Maya in the struggle by moving to western
Guatemala (the Maya region) in the 1970s, after their
failures in the eastern Ladino region in the 1960s. 4 Both
Payeras and Gaspar Ilom of the Revolutionary Organiza-
tion of the People in Arms (ORPA) have discussed how
difficult it was to enlist Maya, but how recruitment
snowballed after army repression began.'”
It is now widely recognized that many Mayajoined the
insurgency after they were attacked by the army for
merely living in places the guerrillas visited. For these
people, following the guerrillas into the montafia was
little more than an act of self-preservation. We do not yet
know what revolution meant to those who joined the
insurgency as voluntary participants, since Maya ac-
counts of the 1980s are mainly those of victims rather than
rebels. We can, however, document a great deal of change
in the revolutionary program after Maya joined up, sug-
gesting that their political agenda might have differed
from that of the original Ladino guerrillas.’
No Maya nationalists I know claim any direct experi-
ence with the guerrillas, but they all have strong opinions
about the revolutionary movement. Time and again they
emphasize three points: (1) Ladino leaders were so con-
sumed by class (as opposed to ethnic) issues that they did
not even know the most likely areas and issues for Maya
recruitment; (2) the Ladino leadership was unable to take
seriously any cultural issues of importance to Maya, like
Maya women’s clothing; and (3) Maya take tremendous
risks if they follow non-Maya leadership in any political
venture, evident in the terrible costs paid by Maya “inno-
cents” in the latest round of state repression.
Nationalists are most insistent on the last point, from
which they draw two conclusions: First, in an apartheid-
like state where Ladinos have a complete monopoly on
political power, Ladinos and Maya cannot have the same
political objectives; Ladinos simply cannot understand
political powerlessness. And second, rather than chal-
lenge the state itself, it is preferable to challenge particular
arenas of state power in local communities and civil
society–community politics, family relations, control of
language, education, and thought. Not only is the state less
likely to exact brutal repression against those who resist
in this way, but it is more vulnerable to this form of
opposition. Most importantly, fragmented, non-confron-
tational forms of resistance would not have to acquire the
machinery of state domination, which inevitably comes to
mirror that which was oppressive in the original state and
society. Perceptive as this critique may be, it fails to
address how such a strategy could transform the oppres-
sive conditions suffered by the vast majority of Maya.
M AYA NATIONALISTS ARE ATTEMPTING TO
create and sustain a Maya culture that will remain
vital and alive even as small peasant communities suc-
cumb to the pressures of war and modernity. A full
generation ago there were more Maya traders, artisans,
and workers than corn farmers.” Today there are more
Maya living in cities, plantations, and refugee camps than
in the traditional self-enclosed communities of the past.
And soon, unless the nationalist movement is effective,
there will be more Maya literate in Spanish than fluent in
their native tongues. The cultural inventions of Maya
nationalists-literatures in Maya languages, cross-com-
munity dressing of hand-woven garb by both men and
women, renewed and reinvented forms of religion-may
produce a cultural repertoire that will reflect the protean
experiences and practices of these new Maya. On the
other hand, if they impose a rigid orthodoxy-if they no
longer tap into the diverse local sources of Maya cul-
ture-their own version could become incapable of rep-
resenting anyone.
The novelty of nationalism as a form of Maya resis-
tance raises two other important issues: Chief among
them is whether a pan-Maya program, led by an educated
Maya elite, will be able to reform state policy without
being coopted.'” For the first time, Maya leaders are
attempting to use their bicultural knowledge to find a
position for Maya within the Guatemalan state. Hence the
problem of being absorbed in the discourse they are
attempting to resist is a real one.
The other major question is whether a more unified
form of Maya resistance will, like the more unified
guerrilla struggle, lead to even greater state repression.
Maya nationalists are extremely alert to this possibility,
one reason they raise political and economic issues so
tentatively. But cultural issues, as the nationalists them-
selves argue, are not innocent of political consequence.
Like all modem states, Guatemala seeks to rule more
effectively by imposing its cultural hegemony on the
ruled. Thus it may find in Maya nationalism a form of
resistance it cannot ignore, despite the movement’s lack
of direct political challenge.
This last possibility weighs heavily on the shoulders of
current Maya leaders. When talking about this article with
a Maya friend, I was surprised at the degree to which he
was worried about even calling Maya nationalism a
movement. He was also somewhat offended by the na-
tionalist label. “Why do you call us nationalists?” he
asked. “We have no aspirations to take state power or to
create a separate state. We are not fighting for our
culture-we already have it. We want only our rights: the
right to peace, the right to define our own path to devel-
opment, the right to educate our children in our own
languages and traditions, and the right to represent our-
selves and our culture.”
Maya Nationalism
I. Any time those ef us who are part of the dominant, hegemonic culture
drown out the voices of the marginal “others” with oar own, we are
oppressors-regardless of our sentiments or politics. For this reason I have
added to my narrative some of the comments Maya made in response to it.
2. Ricardo Falla, “El movimiento indigena,” Estudios Centroamericanos,
no. 351/352 (1978), pp. 437-46 I.
3. For statements from some of these and other movement leaders, see
Cultura Maya y Politicas de Desarrollo (Chimtaltenango: COCADI, 1989);:
Demetrio Cojti Cuxil, Configuracidn del Pensamiento Politico Maya
(Quetzaltenango: Taller ‘El Estudiante,’ 1991).
4. Leftists, in fact, often impugn the credentials of Maya nationalists for
being a small Indian elite (a petty bourgeoisie), whose grassroots ties are weak.
But organic intellectuals of any downtrodden group are almost always sepa-
rated by their very intellectual pursuits from those they represent. Think of
Lenin or Che Guevara. Rigoberta Mench6, who is not a Maya nationalist but
an Indian leader of a popular organization, no longer works on cotton
plantations. Nor would we hear her if she did. How distant Maya nationalists
are from ordinary Maya has to bejudged by other criteria-such as how closely
their program hews to the needs and interests of those they represent.
5. Prior alphabets for writing Maya languages, produced mainly by the
Summer Institute of Linguistics (Wycliffe Bible Translators), were distinct for
each language; SIL control of Maya linguistics came to symbolize to nation-
alists the foreign appropriation of Maya culture. The way SIL used its
knowledge to convert and assimilate Maya people, in fact, fueled the nation-
alist sentiment surrounding the ALMG. See Nora C. England and Stephen R.
Elliott (eds.), Lecturas sobre la Lingiiistica Maya (Antigua: CIRMA, 1990).
6. Diane M. Nelson, “The Reconstruction of Mayan Identity,” Report oit
Guatemala, Vol. 12, no. 2 (Summer 1991), p. 6 .
7. COCADI, Cultura Maya, p. 18.
8. COMG, “Derechos especificos del pueblo Maya,” (Guatemala:
Cholsamaj, 1991).
9. England and Elliott (eds.), Lecturas.
10. See the various articles in Carol A. Smith (ed.), Guatemalan Indians
and the State, 1540-1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
11. See David McCreery, “Atanasio Tzul, Lucas Aguilar, and the Indian
Kingdom of Totonicapdin,” in Judith Ewell and William Beezley, The Human
Tradition in Latin America: The Nineteenth Century (Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources Inc., 1989), pp. 39-58.
12. David McCreery, “State Power, Indigenous Communities, and Land
in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala, 1820-1920,” in Smith, Guatemalan, pp.
96-115.
13. CISMA, “An analysis of economic variation, development projects,
and development prospects in the highlands of western Guatemala,” unpub-
lished report to the Inter-American Foundation, 1990.
14. Mario Payeras, Los dias de la selva (Mexico: Nucstro Tiempo, 1981).
15. Ibid. See also, M. Harnecker, Pueblos en armas (Mexico: Era, 1984).
16. See Carol A. Smith, “History and Revolution,” in Smith, Guatemalan
Indians. Ultimately, the kind of revolution Maya sought made little difference
to the state. It punished all Maya for simply appearing to threaten state power.
17 See Carol A. Smith, “Local history in global context: social and
economic transitions in western Guatemala,” Comparative Studies in Society
and History’, no. 26 (1984), pp. 193-228.
18. The issue of cooptation is not a simple matter of corruption. By
accepting the terms of discussion offered by the colonial state, the limits and
attributes of the movement may come to reflectcolonial interaction more than
autonomous, localized sources of determination. For how this occurred in
India, see Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World-a
Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books, 1986).