Reclaiming the Nation Through Public Murals Maya Resistance and the Reinterpretation of History

Reclaiming the Nation through Public Murals Maya Resistance and the Reinterpretation of History David Carey Jr. and Walter E. Little After traversing the twenty-kilometer road that leads from the Pan American highway up into the central highland town of San Juan Comalapa (henceforth Comalapa) in Guatemala, one of the first breaks from the verdant scenery is a mural painted on the cemetery walls. In 2002, teachers, artists, students and other community members sketched and painted the history of their nation, town, and people; the result stands as a testament to Mayan resistance. For the recent past, it depicts Guatemala’s civil war (1960 – 96), the poverty and racism that were among its causes, and Maya-Kaqchikel responses to violence and economic injustice. But it also portrays pre-Hispanic life, the Spanish Invasion, and the colonial era. Because it would have elicited harsh and probably fatal retribution, a mural with such stark political and historical overtones in a Mayan community was unimaginable just twenty years ago. Across the street and down a few hundred meters, on the former military barracks on the outskirts of town, community members painted another mural in 2006 that more specifically decries the civil war that claimed over 200,000 lives and displaced over a million people. Throughout the war, Maya suffered more than 90 percent of the casualties. Both the United Nations and Guatemalan Catholic Church’s human rights reports identified genocide against Maya in the early 1980s.1 Perhaps in some ways, this more recent mural was in response to community mem- Radical History Review Issue 106 (Winter 2010) d o i 10.1215/01636545-2009-018 © 2010 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc. 5 6 Radical History Review bers who pointed out gaps in the historical trajectory and depth of the cemetery mural. But it is also an indication of the fundamental role visual culture plays in con- veying history in this town of about 20,000 people. In some of the outlying villages, Comalapa’s cemetery mural has inspired similar projects. Though photojournalists and artists have long protested the civil war and even the injustices of postwar Gua- temala through photography, murals such as these are among the first visual protests and expressions from Maya on these topics.2 In a nation that often silences them, this art form provides one of the few public voices for Maya. Though both murals represent a longer and broader historical expression than the thirty-six-year civil war, much of the content addresses violence (whether under colonial or national rule) and how local Maya adapted to such conditions. Read this way, the murals express Kaqchikel resistance, accommodation, and col- laboration. At the same time, the artists and historians do not obscure intracom- munal bloodshed; oppressors were not always outsiders. These visual representations provide a window into how Comalapenses remember their collective history. As manifestations of Comalapenses’ self-perspectives and self-perceptions (which residents still struggle to express verbally), the murals materialize Comalapenses’ ideas and attitudes.3 In this essay, we approach the Comalapa murals as local visual critiques of the past and present. As Fernando Coronil suggests for photographs, the paintings can be considered “documents [that] offer a sophisticated reading . by striking a productive balance between treating images as texts and analyzing the contexts of their production and circulation.”4 Unlike most other analyses of such visual media as paintings and photographs,5 we place the significance of the murals within the oral historical narratives and ethnographic contexts of the artists. In fact, the murals are not just windows into the past; they are public protests to the oppression Mayas have suffered for centuries.6 Hence, the murals serve multiple purposes for Coma- lapenses: 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; second, by placing the murals in dialogue with the state and with Comala- penses who reconceptualize the past and critique the murals themselves. Comalapa Artists Painting History and Culture As a form of artistic expression, painting is not new to Comalapenses. More than Western influences, their own tradition of painting informs the style of the murals. Around the mid-1920s, Andrés Curruchiche Cúmez (1891 – 1969) began painting images on the adobe walls of his home before anyone in the community had considered painting as a profession. Friends and family began to take notice of his talents, Carey and Little | Public Murals: Maya Resistance 7 and the local priest invited him to do some paintings in the Catholic Church.7 In the 1930s, he exhibited his paintings at the Guatemalan National Fair and sold them to international tourists. But in Comalapa, his neighbors, and especially his second wife, did not think that being an artist was an honorable profession. Despite this lack of support, Curruchiche persisted in his vision. Yet it was not until the 1950s that international art promoters discovered his works, which were subsequently exhibited in the country’s capital and abroad.8 His travels to exhibit his paintings in prestigious galleries throughout the United States and Europe were unprecedented for a Maya man or woman. That Curruchiche’s fame came at a time when Guate- mala and neighboring Mexico were trying to come to terms with and embrace their indigenous pasts is not coincidental. Yet he did not fit the indigenista intellectuals’ image of an idealized, docile “Indian.” In fact, Curruchiche maintains a hallowed place in Kaqchikel historical narratives precisely because he represented Maya by adhering to Kaqchikel epistemologies and worldviews. Perhaps more than any of his Mayan contemporaries who went against the grain of the indigenismo movement, Curruchiche celebrated autochthonous Mayan identities, perspectives, and realities that upset Ladino (nonindigenous Guatemalan) intellectuals’ portrayals of “good” Maya as those who maintained certain aspects of their culture but largely assimi- lated to national norms and state hegemony.9 Neither did Curruchiche adeptly navi- gate the world of galleries, art dealers, and critics. In many ways, his ethnic identity and themes distinguished him from his contemporaries in the art world. Walter Heil noted in 1958 in his catalog of a New York City exhibition, “The fact is, in com- parison with other ‘primitivists,’ who repeat an established formula, Curruchiche seems to furnish each painting with a new, and often extraordinary, vision.”10 Although his style became known as primitivista, to regard this form of painting as naive, untrained, simple, or even primitive is to misunderstand Curruchiche’s body of artistic work and that of the Maya artists who followed him. According to anthropologist Linda Asturias de Barrios, the style is local and “represents two distinct cultural visions from one pictorial style: the history of art within the western cultural context and that of Comalapa within the local Kaqchikel context.”11 His paintings are representations of Kaqchikel life as he interpreted it. They are simul- taneously ethnographic, reflexive, and critical. As Asturias de Barrios and Mónica Berger observe, the local concept of primitivismo helps mediate between “painted Comalapa” and “real Guatemala” because it captures the idealized imagined past and traditions, as well as the everyday — not always pretty — life of residents.12 To be clear, most Comalapenses conceive of primitivismo as a style that emphasizes past values and traditions that no longer exist. However, these renderings of the past are also critiques of contemporary life and statements of ongoing problems. One way of understanding Curruchiche’s works from the 1930s to the 1960s is as Gramscian “prison notebooks.”13 Like Antonio Gramsci, Curruchiche lived within a society that 8 Radical History Review discouraged its citizens from commenting critically on the government or even quo- tidian life. Curruchiche’s paintings brought Maya aesthetic sensibilities and little- known Maya beliefs to non-Maya Guatemala and to the world. Since he was not representing Comalapa and Kaqchikel Mayas in the idealized, pre-Columbian past as reenvisioned by the indigenistas, his paintings were subversive. By the 1960s, Curruchiche’s fame had reached such a pinnacle that Guate- malan president Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes visited Curruchiche at his home, and he liked the artist’s work so much that he invited him to give an exposition in the tour- isty town of Antigua. Although this may seem like small consolation for a man who was recognized in the international art world and had traveled widely, it remains rare even today for Mayas to show their art in government-sponsored exhibitions in Ladino-dominated cities and social spaces. Subsequently, Ydígoras Fuentes awarded Curruchiche one of Guatemala’s highest honors: the Order of the Quetzal.14 Cur- ruchiche’s legacy was to inspire a school of painters — men and women — who subsequently brought international recognition to Comalapa. As these artists devel- oped new locally based forms that were far more overt in their critiques of the government, harsh living conditions, contemporary violence, and gender disparities,

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