Representing Mayas : Indigenous Authorities and the Local Politics of Identity in Guatemala

Abstract

Against the backdrop of emerging indigenous movements in Latin America, the Maya Movement appeared as a political actor in the 1980s, bringing “the Indian Question” to the fore in Guatemalan politics. Rejecting racism and assimilationalist State policies, the Maya Movement seeks to recapture indigenous community organizing and indigenous law in her imagination of the multicultural nation-state. This has resulted in, among others, recognition of indigenous authorities in the Peace Accords as an indigenous right. Indigenous rights have futhermore been laid down in different international agreements. This book, based on extensive research in Santa Mar�quimula and Quetzaltenango—two municipios in K’iche language territory—explores the processes that take place behind those national discourses and legislation that tend to portray the indigenous population as static and homogenous. Considering local government as an arena where indigenous identity and the constitution of multicultural democracy is constantly contested, the book focuses on local contentious practices that surround the constitution of (local) multicultural democracy in the two localities studied: the election of Quetzaltenango’s first Mayan mayor and the abolition of one of the traditional community services in Santa Mar�quimula. This approach allows exploring the multilayeredness of universal and ethnic citizenship claims, not only disclosing differences between national and local indigenous identity constructions, but also revealing the many faces of indigenous identity at the local level, shaped by socio economic positions and religion, showing that the articulations of indigeneity are very fragmented and multifaceted. This makes the constitution of multicultural democracies a complicated and dynamic process.