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| MAYA
RENAISSANCE IN GUATEMALA |
South
American politics seem to go largely unreported in the
Western media. But the re-emergence of the Mayan communities
and their drive for political recognition, if not self-control,
is one of the strong emerging trends in this continent.
On August 12, 1996, The New York Times reported that “On
a set of Maya ruins at the outskirts of this capital,
the Vice President of Guatemala last month swore in 21
Maya priests as members of a new Government-sponsored
Council of Elders. […] Two weeks ago came the traditional
festival marking the end of the Maya year. For the first
time in memory, those ceremonies, which invoke Maya gods
and for that reason have long been condemned by the Roman
Catholic Church, were not only celebrated publicly, but
also covered extensively by Guatemalan newspapers and
television stations. After five centuries of bitter repression,
Guatemala's Maya majority is beginning to flex its muscles.”
''For the first time, Mayas are speaking for themselves
about themselves,'' Demetrio Cojti, a social scientist
who is one of the country's leading Maya intellectuals,
explained. ''It is not that someone is speaking on our
behalf, defending us, but that we ourselves are developing
visions of our own identity and questioning everything,
from a colonialist church to our relationship with the
state.'' Richard Adams, an anthropologist from the United
States who has worked in Guatemala since 1950, said: ''It
really is a renaissance and a major time of change. Everything
is up for grabs.''
An estimated two-thirds
of Guatemala's 10.5 million people are of Indian descent,
the vast majority of them members of 21 linguistically distinct
groups descended from the Mayas. But since independence
from Spain was achieved, the country has been dominated
by an affluent Hispanicized minority, known as Ladinos,
which has discriminated against indigenous Guatemalans and
scorned their culture.
In 1995, the government and the leftist guerrillas of the
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity signed an ''Accord
on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples.'' In that
document, negotiated under United Nations auspices, the
government agreed to constitutional and other reforms so
far-reaching that as one diplomat put it, they will force
Guatemalans ''to redesign their entire society'' if the
changes are carried out by Congress. That is not only a
sign of a Renaissance, but should be seen as a genuine re-emergence
of the Mayan mind after several centuries of oppression.
Recently, when Alvaro Colom
was sworn in as president of Guatemala on January 14, 2008,
he vowed to empower the Mayans, who had voted overwhelmingly
for Colom, who is one of just three non-Mayas to be a Maya
priest and is known as "Sparrow Hawk." As if to
underline his alliance with the Mayan cause, his inaugural
speech stated that he would open Mirador, a major archaeological
site three times the size of Tikal, to tourism. Progress
for the Mayas remains slow, but is nevertheless steady –
and rapid, considering the centuries of oppression, both
politically and religiously, that has befallen them.
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