Home as a Place of Exhibition and Performance: Mayan Household Transformations in Guatemala
2000; University of Pittsburgh; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3773842
ISSN2160-3510
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Resumoby American, European, and Japanese aElcionados of indigenous article explores the use of households as sites for tourist perfor these public performances will also explain how in some househo are changings A well-known tourist destination, San Antonio Aguas Calientes is a relatively prosperous town located near Antigua, Guatemala, with an indigenous population of 6,262 out of 6,740 people (Rodriguez Rouanet 1996:172).Additionally, San Antonio was one of the favored sites for development in the 1970s because for over 50 years farmers there had aa reputation for being technically progressive, literate, and willing to innovate" (Annis 1987:44).Although economic development projects are not as common in San Antonio as in the past, in part because it is considered to be relatively developed, educated Antonecos, as managers and caseworkers, are a common presence in various development agencies operating throughout Guatemala.And farmers have not ceased being innovative, as in the case of one who turned a chance meeting in Antigua with an English traveler into an opportunity to surf the Internet and gather information on making organic fertilizer with earthworms.He now produces more fertilizer than he can use on his own flelds and sells the rest.Tourism has grown to be a part of the lives of nearly every person in San Antonio.Antonecos keep themselves informed of world events by listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, and especially by watching television, which they say allows them to gain insight into the practices of other peoples and cultures and thereby to help them figure out tourists.Increasingly more of them have cable television, which they use to watch programs in English, French, and German, in order to learn new words and strengthen their school knowledge of those languages.They also use it to follow teams in the National Basketball Association and the latest goings-on in Hollywood.Some Antonecos have traveled frequently to the United States and to Europe to visit family, conduct business, and vacation.These flows of people, media, ideas, and commodities in late-twentieth-century San Antonio Aguas Calientes are common aspects of life for many people in many places around the globe.They illustrate how people are part of and participants in what Appadurai (1996:49) characterizes as "global ethnoscapes" that deterritorialize geographic boundaries.He claims that the ''loosen1ng of the holds between people, wealth, and territories fundamentally alters the basis of cultural reproduction" (Appadurai 1996:49).That is, in the words of Kearney (1995:549), zglobalization entails a shift from two-dimensional Euclidian space with its centers and peripheries and sharp boundaries? to a multidimensional global space with unbounded, often discontinuous and interpenetrating sub-spaces."In recent years, scholars have studied and commented on these various flows (of ideas, people, commodities, etc.), specifically Morley and Robins (1995) on global media, Castaneda (1996) on anthropological inquiry and tourism MacCannell (1992) on tourists, and Garcia Canclini (1995, 1993), Nash (1993a), and Tice (1995) on crafts, to mention but a fewe Lile Nash (1993b) and Tice (1995), this article contributes to a better
Referência(s)