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“The Only True People” Linking Maya Identities Past and Present “The Only True People”

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“The Only True People” Linking Maya Identities Past and Present “The Only True People” EDITED BY Bethany J. Beyyette AND Lisa J. LeCount “the only true people” Linking Maya Identities Past and Present “the only true people” “the only true people” Linking Maya Identities Past and Present EDITED BY Bethany J. Beyyette AND Lisa J. LeCount UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO Boulder © 2017 by University Press of Colorado Published by University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The niversityU Press of Colorado is a proud member of The Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University. ∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). ISBN: 978-1-60732-566-6 (cloth) ISBN: 978-1-60732-567-3 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beyyette, Bethany J., editor. | LeCount, Lisa J. (Lisa Jeanne), 1955– editor. Title: "The only true people" : linking Maya identities past and present / edited by Bethany J. Beyyette, Lisa J. LeCount. Description: Boulder : University Press of Colorado, [2017] Identifiers: LCCN 2016040704| ISBN 9781607325666 (cloth) | ISBN 9781607325673 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mayas—Ethnic identity. Classification: LCC F1435.3.E72 O55 2017 | DDC 305.89742—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040704 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open access ISBN for the PDF version of this book is 978-1-60732-699-1; for the ePUB version the open access ISBN is 978-1- 60732-721-9. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Front cover illustrations, top to bottom: Motul Dictionary (courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library); Mount Maloney type bowl from Actuncan (photo by Lisa LeCount); Caste War defense work in Iturbide (photo by Ute Schüren); Creation Tablet from Palenque (rubbing by Merle Greene Robertson); Caste War fortifications in Bacalar (photo by Ute Schüren); Talking Cross in Felipe Carrillo Puerto (photo by Wolfgang Gabbert) Contents List of Figures vii List of Maps ix List of Tables xi Foreword Jonathan D. Hill xiii Chapter 1. Introduction: On Constructing a Shared Understanding of Historical Pasts and Nearing Futures Bethany J. Beyyette 3 Part I: Maya Identities of the Present and the Ethnographic Past Chapter 2. Reimaging the World: Maya Religious Practices and the Construction of Ethnicity in a Mesoamerican Frame C. Mathews Samson 27 Chapter 3. Ethnoexodus: Escaping Mayaland Juan Castillo Cocom, Timoteo Rodriguez, and McCale Ashenbrener 47 v vi Contents Chapter 4. Itzaj and Mopan Identities in Petén, Guatemala Charles Andrew Hofling 73 Chapter 5. Maya Ethnogenesis and Group Identity in Yucatán, 1500–1900 Matthew Restall and Wolfgang Gabbert 91 Chapter 6. Differentiation among Mayan Speakers: Evidence from Comparative Linguistics and Hieroglyphic Texts Martha J. Macri 131 Part II: Archaeological Explorations of Identity Construction Chapter 7. Establishing the Preconditions for Ethnogenesis among the Classic Maya of the Upper Belize River Valley Lisa J. LeCount 157 Chapter 8. He’s Maya, but He’s Not My Brother: Exploring the Place of Ethnicity in Classic Maya Social Organization Damien B. Marken, Stanley P. Guenter, and David A. Freidel 187 Chapter 9. Considering the Edge Effect: Ethnogenesis and Classic Period Society in the Southeastern Maya Area Marcello A. Canuto and Ellen E. Bell 219 Chapter 10. Copán, Honduras: A Multiethnic Melting Pot during the Late Classic? Rebecca Storey 243 Chapter 11. Conclusion: Identity, Networks, and Ethnicity Edward Schortman 265 List of Contributors 279 Index 281 Figures 2.1 Mural painted by Marcello Jiménez, plaza of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo 29 3.1. The Quincunx 54 4.1. Yukatekan branch of the Mayan language family 74 5.1. Motul Dictionary 95 5.2. Chilam Balam of Chumayel 96 5.3. Caste War defense work in Iturbide 114 5.4. Caste War fortifications in Bacalar 115 5.5. Talking Cross in Felipe Carrillo Puerto 117 6.1. Mayan languages of the Yukatekan and Greater Tzeltalan subfamilies 133 6.2. a–b. Four spellings of yotoch ‘house’; glyphs for ‘fire’ 140 6.3. Creation Tablet from Palenque 141 6.4. a–b. Glyphs for Calakmul with AA1 ka; Kan B’ahlam’s name with AA1 ka 142 6.5. a–b. Glyphs ba’-ka-b’a spelling the title b’akab’; glyphs te-ku-yu spelling the title tekuy(u) 143 vii viii Figures 6.6. a–c. Graphemes for ti: 3M2.1, 3M2.2, BV3; d–j. Graphemes for ta: 3M3, 1B1.2, 1B1.1, 1B1.3, XQB, YM2, ZS1 145 6.7. Naranjo, Stele 24, front 148 6.8. Naranjo, Stela 24, back, D4–D7 149 6.9. Chichén Itzá, Las Monjas, Lintel 2aA C1 151 7.1. Mount Maloney Type bowl from Actuncan 173 7.2. Upper Belize River valley burial practices at Actuncan Group 1 174 8.1. Schematic of vertical and horizontal interaction networks operating across the Maya region 191 8.2. Temple plans at Palenque through time: Temple Olvidado, Temple V, Temple XVII, Temple XII, Temple XXI 196 8.3. Perspective cross-section of Temple of the Sun, Palenque, showing interior symbolic sweatbath 197 8.4. Early attestation of the –wan suffix from Palenque’s Temple of the Inscriptions East Tablet, in a passage relating the accession of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal I 199 8.5. Early attestation of –wan suffix from Dos Pilas Stela 8 200 8.6. Two Palenque emblem glyphs from the Palace Tablet 201 10.1. Dental measures taken on Maya skeletal samples 249 Maps 4.1. Lowland Mayan languages, ad 1500 75 4.2. Mayan languages after 1700 76 7.1. Upper Belize River valley and sites mentioned in the text 168 7.2. Site of Actuncan 171 9.1. Southeast Maya area 224 9.2. Settlement in the El Paraíso Valley, western Honduras 226 9.3. El Paraíso site map 227 9.4. El Cafetal site map 229 ix Tables 4.1. Contact with Q’eqchi’ 81 4.2. Contact with Eastern Ch’olan 81 4.3. Reconstructable for Proto-Yukatekan 82 4.4. Southern versus Northern Yukatekan 82 4.5. Lexicon only in Mopan and Itzaj 83 4.6. Lexicon unique to Mopan 84 5.1. Uses of the term Maya in Colonial Mayan–language sources 93 5.2. Maya terms of self-description containing possible ethnic implications 103 5.3. Ethnic diversity of Mesoamericans brought into Yucatán in the 1540s 107 6.1. Person markers of Greater Tzeltalan and Yukatekan languages 134 6.2. Person markers grouped person markers according to similar source patterns 137 8.1. Common archaeological measures to distinguish class 193 10.1. Copán 9N-8 Compound skeletal sample polar teeth measures 252 10.2. Copán rural skeletal sample polar teeth measures 253 10.3. K’axob skeletal sample polar teeth measures 254 10.4. Comparison of mortuary treatment in Late Classic Copán 259 xi Foreword Jonathan D. Hill In “The Only True People”: Linking Maya Identities Past and Present, Bethany Beyyette and Lisa LeCount have assembled the works of ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists to critically rethink the complex interrelations between contempo- rary Maya identities and those known through archaeological studies of ancient Mayan sites. In the waning years of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century, indigenous Mayan peoples have shown a remarkable abil- ity to embrace new technologies and create new forms of political organization for representing their interests among themselves and at state, regional, national, and global levels. These indigenous forms of political and cultural creativity are unfold- ing today in contexts of the globalizing nation-states of Latin America and across the long-term historical processes of Colonial and national state expansion as well as associated traumatic losses of life, autonomy, land, and other resources. Rapid intergenerational shifts are unfolding in villages, towns, and cities across Mesoamerica and the rest of Latin America as indigenous peoples move from oral traditions to literacy and from word of mouth to the Internet in a matter of years. Researching these contemporary transformations and the emergence of new forms of identity politics has become a rich field of study for ethnologists and historians (see, e.g., Warren and Jackson 2002; Ramos 1998). Because of their concern for doc- umenting ethnogenesis and other long-term historical processes, including not only socio-cultural and historical but also linguistic and archaeological lines of inquiry, the essays that make up “The Only True People” are directly relevant to the rapidly DOI: 10.5876/9781607325673.c000 xiii xiv Jonathan D. HILL changing cultural politics of indigeneity in Mesoamerica. The past lives on in the present in a diversity of ways, and the struggles of today’s Mayan peoples to create new political and cultural spaces for persisting within the globalizing nation-states of Mesoamerica are both shaped by and give new form and meaning to cultural transformations that have been under way in the region for at least two millennia. As wrong as it would be to ignore the momentous historical events and forces of Colonial and national state expansions in Latin America while trying to under- stand contemporary indigenous forms of creativity and identity, it would be just as incorrect to assert that these contemporary practices have little or no relevance for understanding long-term processes that have been unfolding in Mesoamerica for at least two millennia and that “pre-contact” Mayan peoples lived in some pristine, “prehistoric” state of nature.
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