Chiapas Maya Awakening

Mexico’s indigenous people speak a number of rich and complex languages today, as they did before the arrival of the Spanish. Yet a common misperception is that Mayas have no languages of their own, only dialectos, and therefore live in silence. In reality, contemporary Mayas are anything but voiceless. Chiapas Maya Awakening, a collection of poems and short stories by indigenous authors from Chiapas, Mexico, is an inspiring testimony to their literary achievements. A unique trilingual edition, it presents the contributors’ works in the living Chiapas Mayan languages of Tsotsil and Tseltal, along with English and Spanish translations. As Sean S. Sell, Marceal Méndez, and Inés Hernández-Ávila explain in their thoughtful introductory pieces, the indigenous authors of this volume were born between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, a time of growing cultural awareness among the native communities of Chiapas. Although the authors received a formal education, their language of instruction was Spanish, and they had to pursue independent paths to learn to read and write in their native tongues. In the book’s first half, devoted to poetry, the writers consciously speak for their communities. Their verses evoke the quetzal, the moon, and the sea and reflect the identities of those who celebrate them. The short stories that follow address aspects of modern Maya life. In these stories, mistrust and desperation yield violence among a people whose connection to the land is powerful but still precarious. Chiapas Maya Awakening demonstrates that Mayas are neither a vanished ancient civilization nor a remote, undeveloped people. Instead, through their memorable poems and stories, the indigenous writers of this volume claim a place of their own within the broader fields of national and global literature.

In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, a large indigenous population lives in rural communities, many of which retain traditional forms of governance. In 1996, some 350 women of these communities formed a weavers’ cooperative, which they called Jolom Mayaetik. Their goal was to join together to market textiles of high quality in both new and ancient designs. Weaving Chiapas offers a rare view of the daily lives, memories, and hopes of these rural Maya women as they strive to retain their ancient customs while adapting to a rapidly changing world. Originally published in Spanish in 2007, this book captures firsthand the voices of these Maya artisans, whose experiences, including the challenges of living in a highly patriarchal culture, often escape the attention of mainstream scholarship. Based on interviews conducted with members of the Jolom Mayaetik cooperative, the accounts gathered in this volume provide an intimate view of women’s life in the Chiapas highlands, known locally as Los Altos. We learn about their experiences of childhood, marriage, and childbirth; about subsistence farming and food traditions; and about the particular styles of clothing and even hairstyles that vary from community to community. Restricted by custom from engaging in public occupations, Los Altos women are responsible for managing their households and caring for domestic animals. But many of them long for broader opportunities, and the Jolom Mayaetik cooperative represents a bold effort by its members to assume control over and build a wider market for their own work. This English-language edition features color photographs—published here for the first time—depicting many of the individual women and their stunning textiles. A new preface, chapter introductions, and a scholarly afterword frame the women’s narratives and place their accounts within cultural and historical context.

Mikel Ruiz's The Errant Children, the first novel published in the Tsotsil Maya language, offers a bold and unflinching portrayal of contemporary Maya life in Chiapas, México. Pedro Ton Tsepente' has a position in his village's traditional council, but rather than taking just a few ceremonial drinks, he becomes an alcoholic, subject to blackouts and delirium tremens. His wife, Pascuala, rages at God to step in and change her husband's behavior, taking extreme measures when He does not. Their neighbor, seventeen-year-old Ignacio Ts'unun, learns about gender relations by watching television programs where beautiful women are lighter-skinned and about sex by watching pornography, which leads to disastrous choices. These characters' suffering comes not from conquerors, missionaries, or settlers but from invasive economic and cultural forces that can make Indigenous people devalue themselves. Do not expect to be uplifted, but do prepare to be astonished.

Mexico's southernmost state, Chiapas, is a land of towering myths and extravagant beauty. Home to the largest concentration of indigenous people in the Americas, its history is marked by brutal oppression and bloodshed that extends to this day. Veteran journalist and author Worth H. Weller, who has covered conflict in Central America for two decades, breaks through the fogs of time in this book of rare insights and photographs to explore the reality of the modern Maya and their unique Zapatista revolutionary movement. An eye-witness epilogue draws a startling parallel between the cultural and economic issues that face the Maya and those that face their Sioux brethren in South Dakota at the close of the millennium. Book jacket.

Most recent books about Chiapas, Mexico, focus on political conflicts and the indigenous movement for human rights at the macro level. None has explored those conflicts and struggles in-depth through an individual woman's life story. The Journey of a Tzotzil-Maya Woman of Chiapas, Mexico now offers that perspective in one woman's own words. Anthropologist Christine Eber met "Antonia" in 1986 and has followed her life's journey ever since. In this book, they recount Antonia's life story and also reflect on challenges and rewards they have experienced in working together, offering insight into the role of friendship in anthropological research, as well as into the transnational movement of solidarity with the indigenous people of Chiapas that began with the Zapatista uprising. Antonia was born in 1962 in San Pedro Chenalhó, a Tzotzil-Maya township in highland Chiapas. Her story begins with memories of childhood and progresses to young adulthood, when Antonia began working with women in her community to form weaving cooperatives while also becoming involved in the Word of God, the progressive Catholic movement known elsewhere as Liberation Theology. In 1994, as a wife and mother of six children, she joined a support base for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Recounting her experiences in these three interwoven movements, Antonia offers a vivid and nuanced picture of working for social justice while trying to remain true to her people's traditions.

December 21, 2012—not the end of life as we know it, but the dawn of a powerful new era of enlightenment. This engaging and easy-to-use guide reveals how to use the ancient wisdom of the Mayans to develop your inherent spiritual gifts. The unique self-exploration system uses the twenty Day Signs of the Mayan calendar—symbolized by animals and forces of nature, such as crocodile, wind, and night—to help you identify and activate the greatest treasures of your soul. With quick quizzes and questionnaires, you’ll gain valuable insights into your spirituality type and the energy patterns that motivate and inspire you. Once you discover your true calling, you’ll begin to have deeper and more meaningful spiritual experiences. Along with more fulfilling personal relationships and more satisfaction in your spiritual life, work, and leisure activities, you’ll be contributing to the harmony and well-being of the Earth.

The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Literary Translation offers an understanding of translation in Latin America both at a regional and transnational scale. Broad in scope, it is devoted primarily to thinking comprehensively and systematically about the intersection of literary translation and Latin American literature, with a curated selection of original essays that critically engage with translation theories and practices outside of hegemonic Anglo centers. In this introductory volume, through survey and case-study chapters, contributing authors cover literary and cultural translation in the region historically, geographically, and linguistically. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the chapters focus on issues ranging from the role of translation in the construction of national identities to the challenges of translation in the current digital age. Areas of interest expand from the United States to the Southern Cone, including the Caribbean and Brazil, as well as the impact of Latin American literature internationally, and paying attention to translation from and to indigenous languages; Portuguese, English, French, German, Chinese, Spanglish, and more. The first of its kind in English, this Handbook will shed light on different translation approaches and invite a rethinking of intercultural and interlingual exchanges from Latin American viewpoints. This is key reading for all scholars, researchers, and students of literary translation studies, Latin American literature, and comparative literature.

Víctor Montejo’s story recounts the near-death experience of his grandfather, Antonyo Mekel Lawuxh (Antonio Esteban), who fell gravely ill in Guatemala in the late 1920s but survived to tell his family and community what he had witnessed of the afterlife. Narrated from Antonio’s perspective, the reader follows along on a journey to the Maya underworld of Xibalba, accompanied by two spirit guides. Antonio traverses Xibalba’s levels of heaven and hell, encountering instructive scenes of punishment and reward: in one chapter, conquistadors are perpetually submerged in a pool of their victims’ blood; in another, the souls of animal abusers are forever unable to cross a crocodile-infested river. Infused with memory, the author illustrates Guatemala’s unique religious syncretism, exploring conceptions of heaven and hell shared between Catholicism and Indigenous Maya spirituality. In the tradition of both the Popol Vuh and the Divine Comedy, Montejo’s narrative challenges easy categorization—this is a work of family history, religious testimony, political allegory, and sacred literature.