No abstract

In Antigua, Guatemala, Maya handicrafts vendors work in a tourism marketplace that brings together multiple ethnolinguistic groups and international visitors. In this article I discuss the interrelationship between occupation and social movements to examine the essentialized identities propagated by the Maya Movement and Ladino racism. I argue that making a living helps shape the interrelated processes of economic and political mobilization. I use work and local political contexts, in particular, to illustrate why vendors do not embrace established social movements.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies increasingly used by Kaqchikel women, where the private household/ domestic sphere becomes public and also part of the global. These enactments have changed the economic and social organization of the household in terms of gender relations. (Guatemala, Kaqchikel Mayas, performance, tourism, gender, transnationalism, globalization) In a 1912 article promoting tourism to Guatemalans and foreigners, San Antonio Aguas Calientes is described as one of the towns most frequently visited by tourists for its beautiful panoramas. With descriptions of clothing? occupations, and community traditions, it highlights women as an attraction by noting that when they are zon the street they use colorful and clean outfits.-The article also calls attention to the economic links Antonecos have with Antigua and Guatemala City, where they go to buy thread for weaving and to sell produce and other items such as mats. The article encapsulates aspects of life in San Antonio Aguas nalientes which are still present; cultural and economic exchanges with tourists, economic ties outside the community, and the differences between indigenous people and Ladinos. The links to the nation-state and to global economic and cultural phenomena are further strengthened when it is recognized that San Antonio was one of the flrst indigenous towns in Guatemala to be missionized by Protestants. Reportedly, a school was founded by U.S. missionaries in 1874 (Brown 1998:3). By 1909, the Central American Mission established a permanent clinic and nurse training program (Garrard-Burnett 1998:34), and in 1917, Cameron Townsend, the founder of the Summer Institute of Linguistics/Wycliffe Bible Translators, arrived in San Antonio, where over the next twelve years he translated the First Testament into Kaqchikel Maya (Stoll 1982:33; Garrard-Burnett 1998:53). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, tourism and missionary activity have intensified. Much has been written regarding the relationship between tourism, craft production and religion (e.g.

No abstract

Resumen La seguridad es una preocupación creciente tanto de los residentes locales y turistas internacionales en Antigua, Guatemala. La ciudad no estaba preparada para el aumento de los delitos relacionados con el turismo y el tráfico de drogas. Representaciones locales y nacionales de la Antigua como un tranquilo pueblo colonial español han estado fuera de sincronía con la realidad. La respuesta del Estado a la delincuencia se ha producido en relación con el estado de Antigua como un sitio del Patrimonio Mundial. Basándose en el concepto de Taussig del “sistema nervioso” y la teoría de Agamben de “estado de excepción”, muestro los límites de Debord “sociedad del espectáculo”, en un contexto turístico transnacional en el que los residentes están preocupados por la delincuencia. Al centrar la atención etnográfica sobre la policía, le explico Antiguëños ‘y las actitudes de los mayas acerca de la policía es ambigua y se refieren a las opiniones acerca de los roles de seguridad y la policía. Mi análisis pone de relieve cómo el turismo gafas jugar a cabo en relación a la labor policial.