THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: LADINO AND INDIGENOUS PAGEANTRY IN NEOCOLONIAL GUATEMALA by Jillian L. Kite A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL August 2014 Copyright by Jillian L. Kite 2014 ii iii ABSTRACT Author: Jillian L. Kite Title: The Eye of the Beholder: Ladino and Indigenous Pageantry in Neocolonial Guatemala Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Co-Advisors: Dr. Josephine Beoku-Betts and Dr. Mark Harvey Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2014 In this thesis I utilize a feminist case study method to explore gender, race, authenticity, and nationalism in the context of globalization. Each year, Guatemala conducts two ethno-racially distinct pageants – one indigenous, the other ladina. The indigenous pageant prides itself on the authentic display of indigenous culture and physiognomies. On the contrary, during the westernized ladina pageant, contestants strive to adhere to western beauty ideals beauty and cultural norms engendered by discourses of whiteness. However, when the winner advances to the Miss World Pageant, they misappropriate elements of Mayan culture to express an authentic national identity in a way that is digestible to an international audience. In the study that follows, I examine the ways in which national and international pageants are reflective of their iv respective levels of social and political conflict and how they serve as mechanisms of manipulation by the elite at the national and global levels. v THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: LADINO AND INDIGENOUS PAGEANTRY IN NEOCOLONIAL GUATEMALA I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................ 9 Placing Pageants in Global Context: Race, Gender, Nations, and the White World System ........................................................................................................................... 10 Beauty Pageants ............................................................................................................ 12 Authenticity and Exploitation ....................................................................................... 14 Pageants in the Post-Colonial Global South ................................................................. 18 The Miss World Pageant ............................................................................................... 21 Beauty, Race, and Nation in Guatemala ....................................................................... 22 The Ladina Pageants .................................................................................................. 24 “Mayan” Identity and the Rabín Ahau Pageant ......................................................... 25 III. METHODS AND DATA ...................................................................................... 31 Feminist Methods .......................................................................................................... 31 Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 37 Content Analysis ........................................................................................................... 40 IV. GUATEMALA: FROM COLONIALISM TO NEOCOLONIALISM ................. 42 Spanish Rule .................................................................................................................. 42 The United States and the United Fruit Company ........................................................ 45 Government Brutality and The Panzós Massacre ......................................................... 47 Multicultural Politics ..................................................................................................... 50 Insertion into a Transnational Economy ....................................................................... 51 V. THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: VISUAL NARRATIVES OF GUATEMALAN PAGEANTRY IN A TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMY ................................................. 54 Indigenous Identity and Authenticity ............................................................................ 54 Audience .................................................................................................................... 55 Appearance ................................................................................................................ 61 Nationalism and Sisterhood .......................................................................................... 68 The Construction of National Culture ....................................................................... 68 Contestant Interaction ................................................................................................ 70 vi Transnational Influence and the International Gaze ..................................................... 77 Corporate Sponsorship .............................................................................................. 78 Western Female Beauty ............................................................................................. 81 VI. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 87 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 100 vii I. INTRODUCTION Scholarship on beauty demonstrates that rather than something timeless and objective, images of beauty are historically and culturally specific (Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje). In the modern world, feminine beauty is socially constructed through the intersection of gender, race, and nation, and as such, beauty is implicated with power (Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 6). These factors are ritually put on display in beauty pageants which, scholars argue, represent the institutionalized engagement of concepts of beauty with politics, morality, and group values (Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 2). As venues in which images of beauty, morality, and national identity are both reflected and produced, national and international pageants present a site for analyzing the intersecting power systems in the era of globalization. The modern beauty pageant was born in 1920 in the United States with the Miss America competition. Following WWII, national and regional pageants began to appear across the globe. In 1952, the Miss America Corporation created the Miss World pageant (Hoad 59). According to Wilk, Miss World features a “collision between local standards of beauty, deeply embedded in cultural constructs of gender and sexuality, and international standards which are widely believed to be those of the dominant white nations of the north” (127). Analysis of this collision has shed light on the role of pageants at two spatial-political scales, 1) in the construction of post-colonial nationalisms and 2) in the broader regime of post-war-U.S. political, economic, and cultural hegemony (Balogun). Banet-Weiser argues that analysis of pageants must be 1 conducted with attention to cultural imperialism, namely that of western culture (190). Both Banet-Weiser and Hoad believe that this imperialism has resulted in conformity to one western formula of femininity and feminine beauty. On the other hand, Wilk posits that there is not one unified version of femininity that nations display in international pageants, but rather that all nations display their differences in one unified way. Analyses of beauty pageants at these different spatial-political levels and their interactions have yielded important findings regarding the role of pageants in the construction of post-colonial gendered and racialized identities and their links to political-economic regimes. Regarding the former, scholars have examined the role of beauty pageants in constructing coherent national identities out of fragmented ethnic and racial groups. In constructing what Benedict Anderson argues are “imagined communities,” post-colonial leaders must strive to create an authentic national identity, proving that they have indeed left their colonial legacy behind. In the context of analyzing issues of authenticity in Guatemalan pageantry and nationalist efforts, it is important to survey the various scholarly positions that have been taken in regards to authenticity itself, along with issues of exploitation that may undercut displays of “authentic” culture. The exploitation of neocolonial folk culture belonging to the previously sovereign indigenous population in Guatemala to construct an “authentic” national culture for both internal and external audiences lacks adequate attention. Similar issues of the presentation of an authentic, cohesive national identity have been examined in former British colonies, but former Spanish colonies such as Guatemala have escaped significant scholarly research. Guatemala’s involvement with the neocolonial intervention of the 2 United States make it an even more compellingly unique case study, reflective of the complex nature of the transnational economy and a globalized world. In this thesis, I examine how beauty pageants represent institutionalized engagements with social politics, morality, and group values in neocolonial Guatemala and what the case of Guatemala tell us about these processes. Guatemala presents an excellent case for extending