“We Are <i>Not</i> Indigenous!”: An Introduction to the Maya Identity of Yucatan

Castañeda, Quetzil E.

doi:10.1525/jlca.2004.9.1.36

Cited by 94 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Scholars like Gabbert (2004a) and Castañeda (1996Castañeda ( , 2004 have built on earlier literature of ethnicity in Yucatan by introducing models of ethnicity that account for change over time as well as structures of power that maintain a social hierarchy based on ethnic discrimination. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, literature in Maya studies began to call into question academic understandings of 'Maya' as an analytical category.…”

Section: Critical Approaches To Maya Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Grieving formestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan, Mexico

Reyes‐Foster

2012

Identities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of 'Maya' identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, 'Claudina', committed to its wards, to argue that being 'in-between' categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story -mestizaje and elegancia -represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.But there is an elegance that comes from being a professional, and another that comes from mestizaje. My grandmother is a great wise woman, who has always taught me how things should be done in order to do them well.

show abstract

Section: Critical Approaches To Maya Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Grieving formestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan, Mexico

Reyes‐Foster

2012

Identities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Today, Yucatan's inhabitants generally reject indigenous identities (Castañeda 2004;Eiss 2008aEiss , 2008bWantanabe and Fischer 2004), and the historical evidence is slim for a postcolonial Maya ethnogenesis or for the long-term maintenance of a traditional Maya identity from the time of the Spanish invasion (Gabbert 2004;Hervik 2001;Restall 2004). Place, rather than language, class, or ethnicity, is the idiom for expressing sociocultural identity in Yucatan, as it is in other Mesoamerican regions (Berdan et al 2008).…”

Section: Archaeology Place and Materials Expressions Of Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Prohibido Tocar Este Cenote: The Archaeological Basis for the Titles of Ebtun

Alexander

2012

Int J Histor Archaeol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ebtun, Kaua, Cuncunul, Tekom, and Tixcacalcupul are a group of related communities on the Yucatán peninsula described in the corpus of Maya-language documents known as The Titles of Ebtun. In this paper I explore transformations in agrarian practice and material expressions of identity after the Spanish invasion by analyzing archaeological variation in the life histories of places over the last 500 years. As new plants, animals, and technologies were adopted, landscape organization changed, and locales took on new meanings. Ebtun's landscape reflects a historically contingent process that has transformed place and identity, fostering autonomy of cultural practice and renewal of tradition.

show abstract

“…There is a distant kind of contact, or engagement here. The irony is that not only the tourists, but also the hotel owners, FONATUR, the Bank of Mexico, and those involved in the maintenance of Cancun's economy often fail to recognize that the contemporary Maya do not always self‐identify with the Pre‐Hispanic Maya, the pyramid builders (Castañeda ; Fernández Souza, this volume; Hervik ; Magnoni et al :356; Sullivan ). Magnoni, Ardren and Hutson (:359) point out that “Yucatec Maya people generally do not consider themselves the descendants of the builders of the ruins…they do not see themselves as survivors of a lost civilization, but rather as modern people in a modern nation.” The Maya agriculturalist that makes milpa today, and the hotel zone worker required to wear traditional Maya clothing at work, also wear Levi's, listen to iPods, check their e‐mail on a tablet, and communicate by texting—but this Cancun Maya legacy is not recognized within the Cancunlandia imaginary.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

7 Sun, Sand, and… Sacred Pyramids: The Mayanization of Cancun's Tourist Imaginary

Muñoz-Fernández

2015

Archaeological Papers of the American

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

From its construction in the early 1970s, Cancun has gone through a rapid demographic change accompanied by a transformation in the tourism industry, from having 117 inhabitants in 1969 to over 734,000 in 2014, being visited by more than 3.3 million tourists per year. As a result, Cancun has had to offer up something other than its original Caribbean advertising of "sun, sand, and sex," now it is offering its Maya heritage. This paper analyzes the origin, development, and evolution of the "Mayanization" of Cancun-the use of Maya imagery and iconography in advertisements, architecture and souvenirs-and the promotion of a "Maya imaginary" through the laborers who fuel the tourism industry, turning cultural, archaeological, and historical patrimony into a commodity. [Cancun, Maya, tourism industry, Mayanization, archaeology]

show abstract

“We Are Not Indigenous!”: An Introduction to the Maya Identity of Yucatan

Abstract: osea-the open school of ethnography and anthropology seat tle, usa and mer ida, yucatan, mexico

Cited by 94 publications

References 32 publications

Grieving formestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan, Mexico

Grieving formestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan, Mexico

Prohibido Tocar Este Cenote: The Archaeological Basis for the Titles of Ebtun

7 Sun, Sand, and… Sacred Pyramids: The Mayanization of Cancun's Tourist Imaginary

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About