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Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala: Indigenous Responses to a Failing State

2014; Duke University Press; Volume: 94; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2641505

1527-1900

David Carey,

Politics and Society in Latin America

With these essays about insecurity and violence, the contributors to Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala: Indigenous Responses to a Failing State wade into a topic that has received disproportionate attention in the scholarly literature on Guatemala. The very proliferation of such studies is a reflection of the many manifestations of violence in that nation's recent past and present. Tragically, violent crime has increased since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords that ended the nation's 36-year civil war (1960–1996). As its title suggests, the volume under review here explores the ways in which the Guatemalan government's inability to maintain stability and security, let alone create conditions whereby the majority of its citizens can thrive, affects Mayas.One of the questions at the heart of this volume is how power and authority are exercised locally in the context of a weak national government. As other scholars have done, the authors argue that democratic reform and increased access to education and markets have eroded the traditional authority of Maya leaders (particularly elders and mayors) and decreased the state's ability to govern. The essay on lynching describes one consequence of the absence of state-centered governance (as the editors point out, social and ethnic elites have hijacked political control) and then explores (as do other contributors in their essays) other, more measured responses that have taken root. Faced with the government's inability to address such threats as increased gang activity and competition over scarce resources (mainly farm and forest land), community leaders developed legal procedures grounded in traditional justice systems to regain control of their communities. The Guatemalan judicial system, recently acclaimed internationally for being the first to try one of its own former heads of state for crimes against humanity, otherwise largely lacks legitimacy, particularly in light of the failure to arrest, let alone convict, murderers or femicide perpetrators. In this judicial abyss, the contributors find that indigenous-informed and locally determined approaches to law and punishment have created extralegal venues that are more adept at addressing community concerns than the state-sanctioned legal system.Even as the contributors celebrate the small ways in which midwives, youths, local leaders, and others carve out some autonomy and shape their fates, the essays support James McDonald and John Hawkins's conclusion that broader contemporary contexts have “further marginalized and impoverished the Maya masses” (p. 253). In this way, their findings are less optimistic than those of other scholars (such as Ted Fischer, Peter Benson, and Walter Little) who have asserted that some Mayas have minimized their disadvantages and even improved their lot amid pervasive violence and disempowering neoliberal economic reforms.With the long-standing anthropological practice of an ethnographer studying a single community over a long period seemingly a thing of the past, this volume demonstrates an intriguing alternative. The editors have worked closely with undergraduate students to conduct ethnographic research on various topics related to a unifying theme (governmentality). Set in Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala is the third collaborative student/faculty volume published by the editors. The trilogy provides a rich and eclectic description of those two communities. Deploying multiple researchers allows for a breadth of experiences, connections, and insights that would be nearly impossible for a single ethnographer to achieve. For example, although it forced her to cut her research stay short, Rebecca Edvalson's pregnancy facilitated an intimate connection to the midwives at the core of her study. Similarly, Tristan Call relates his own position and perspective as a young person to the indigenous youths he seeks to understand.Yet this strength is also a limitation. Given the diversity of experiences, worldviews, and realities among the 21 different linguistic Maya groups in Guatemala, generalizing information from any one particular community to the nation as a whole is perilous. For example, the assertion in the essay about forest management that “the strategies INAB [Instituto Nacional de Bosques (National Forest Institute)] must employ to deal with local specifics are generalizable throughout Guatemala” (p. 152) rings hollow when one considers that the different types of forests in Guatemala and the uses to which they are put are almost as diverse as the people who live in and around them.Readers of this journal will notice an ahistorical undercurrent throughout the volume, particularly where assertions tend toward idealizations of the past. For example, in the essay about how democratic elections undermined traditional Maya authority, the authors argue that, “until recently” (p. 77), indigenous mayors enjoyed the respect of their people and were largely free from corruption. Contentious relations with and accusations of corruption against Maya authorities noted in historical studies of Guatemala and Mexico suggest otherwise.Grounded in anthropological methods instead of documentary evidence (or oral histories) and focused on contemporary conditions with an eye toward the future, the volume may be less useful for historians than other scholars. Yet the collaborative approach and quality contributions by undergraduate students will make it a powerful teaching tool in courses about Guatemala and Latin America more broadly.