From Atitlan to Vancouver: Mayan Voices in New Works on Guatemala

Silent Looms: Women and Production in a Guatemalan Town. By Tracy Bachrach Ehlers. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000, 2nd ed. Pp. 200. $27.50 paper.) Our Elders Teach Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives. By David Carey Jr. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. Pp. 385. $29.95 paper.) The Maya Diaspora: Guatemalan Roots, New American Lives. Edited by James Loucky and Marilyn M. Moors. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2000. Pp. 263. $64.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.) JoseÑO: Another Mayan Voice Speaks from Guatemala. Narrated by Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán, translated and edited by James Sexton. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Pp. 312. $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.) Though much has been written about the Maya, their voices are often absent from academic representations of their culture and history. Many Mayan and non-Mayan scholars have sought to address that problem through a variety of academic endeavors and activism (see Fischer and Brown 1996). The urgency of addressing this dilemma has been accentuated since the signing of the Peace Accords in Guatemala in 1996. While these four books differ in many respects, their authors convey a common interest. Each provides the reader with authentic Mayan voices and perspectives to help underscore that the Maya are a part of, not apart from, identifying their joys and struggles, their historical and present contexts, and their visions for the future. These voices are represented by either interview data from ethnographic fieldwork or, as in the case of James Loucky and Marilyn Moors's book, chapters from both the Maya and non-Maya academies. Among the books reviewed here, James Sexton's Joseño: Another Mayan Voice Speaks from Guatemala is the only one that is testimonial in [End Page 305] nature. Since 1970 Sexton has worked on the western shores of Lake Atitlán in the community of San José La Laguna (a pseudonym) seeking to "understand the human condition on the highland Maya" by chronicling Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán's (also a pseudonym) life (1). This relationship began with Sexton (then a graduate student conducting fieldwork on the shores of Atitlán) requesting the help of Bizarro as a research assistant. Their work evolved into the three-decades-long endeavor of Bizarro keeping a diary and writing his autobiography. Hence, Joseño is the fourth (and final) in a series of books produced by Bizarro and Sexton. One can also see in Sexton's and Bizarro Ujpán's, Joseño, that during their thirty years of working together, some of the anthropological distance has diminished and been replaced by a genuine friendship and a caring relationship. In fact, Sexton is mentioned on a variety of occasions in Bizarro's diary. For example, when his daughter obtained her teaching credentials, Bizarro states: The truth is we feel very proud of her, but also it is a great sacrifice for the children of a poor person to study. If my friend Jaime D. Sexton had not been helping, it is certain that I alone would not have been able to do something for my daughter. (175) The insights gained by such a long working relationship are certainly among the strengths of this book. Furthermore, given that Bizarro's story is original data, Sexton suggests that this provides the reader with the freedom to "analyze the results any way he or she wishes, regardless of his or her academic perspective or view of life" (18). This reviewer would like to suggest that regardless of one's academic perspective, Bizarro's diary requires some background knowledge of Maya life in the highlands and Guatemalan history. Sexton provides a great deal of that background knowledge in his introduction. Bizarro explores a variety of themes in his diary. His personal accounts of human rights violations, religious celebrations and tensions in and between religious communities, and milestones in his children's...

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.