Reclaiming the Nation through Public Murals

Abstract

In a nation that often silences them, Maya in Guatemala are increasingly expressing themselves through public murals. When teachers, artists, students, and other residents of San Juan Comalapa painted the history of their nation, town, and people, they portrayed resistance, accommodation, and collaboration. The persistence of Mayan markers throughout the images stands as a reminder that Maya-Kaqchikel are not simply reinventing a sense of nation with murals; rather, they have been reclaiming the nation at every step in its long, often harsh history. For the recent past, the images depict Guatemala's civil war (1960-96), the poverty and racism that were among its causes, and Kaqchikel responses to violence and economic injustice. Based on local Kaqchikel interpretations of history, the murals serve multiple purposes for Comalapenses: local historical representations of the past, critiques of the government and of themselves, expressions of community creativity, mobilizations of development aid funds, and a source of civic pride. This essay considers these multiple purposes: first, by culturally and historically contextualizing the murals as a distinct Comalapa tradition; and second, by placing the murals in dialogue with the state and with Comalapenses who think about the past and critique the murals themselves.

Viewing Gendered Violence in Guatemala Through Photovoice

“…Cooper and Yarbrough (2010) combined photovoice and focus groups in a health study in rural Guatemala. Carey and Little (2010) described how the Kaqchikel Maya painted memorials to recount their 500-year history of violence as a critique of invasion, oppression, and war. The importance of visual representation for meaning-making is highlighted in their work and through other visual memorials I have seen throughout the country.…”

“…Murals painted by Mayan people are seen throughout Guatemala. Carey and Little (2010) analyzed a series of these by the Kaqchikel that depict their history, the armed conflict, and the peace process. They noted that while there are problems with these depictions, including the perpetuation of gender inequality, it is one way people are reclaiming their nation and preserving historical memory in the hope that La Violencia does not ever reoccur.…”

Imagining Shared Space

“…From the murals of postrevolution, early-and mid-20th century Mexico (Indych-Lopez, 2009), to the Anti-Apartheid Movement of South Africa (Marschall, 2000), and the post-civil war period in Guatemala (Carey & Little, 2010), murals have been used for explicitly political objectives. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, for example, murals have been created by both Loyalists and Nationalists, not only to embellish their political arguments but also to claim space and make it part of the struggle (Brand, 2009;Rolston, 2004).…”

The Movement, the Mine and the Lake: New Forms of Maya Activism in Neoliberal Guatemala

“…Others, however, were linked to Maya advocacy groups, many of them openly anti-capitalist, as well as to a global indigenous movement and anti-globalization movements, such as the World Social Forum (see [66][67][68], the last of which is the Facebook page of the Council of Indigenous Youth). Some associations, however, were different kinds of groups: sports teams, garage bands, rave collectives and other clusters of youths interested in rapping, break dancing, painting (see [69]) and blogging. The confluence of historical forces seen in Sololá in the middle of the first decade of the first millennium had unfolded in a globalizing, yet still intensely local (see [70]) agro-urban Guatemala.…”