Table of Contents

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………....iv

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter One: Publishing and Nationalism in the Maya and Guatemalan Context……….7 Maya Experiences with Literacy The Maya Movement & Pan-Mayanism Publishing in Guatemala Nationalism and Mayan Publishing

Chapter Two: Organizational Strategies in Mayan Publishing……………………….…26 Governmental Bodies Universities Non-Profit Organizations Commercial Publishing Companies

Chapter Three: Books in Mayan Languages……………………………………….……44 Literary Analysis Dictionaries Children’s Literature

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….……60

Appendix……………………………………………………………………………...….62 A. Monthly financial report of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala B. Front covers of Mayan language dictionaries

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..……66

iii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Definition for “ajnum” in Rusoltzij ri Kaqchikel (2007).……………….. 49

Figure 2. Illustrations from Ko kuyu’wej hej stz’ib’al jab’xub’al Popti’! (2000) …55

iv

1

Introduction

In 1983, a book was published that changed the course of international politics and academic debates. The publication of Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú y Así Me Nació la Consciencia, and the English translation, I, Rigoberta Menchú are watershed moments in the development of a global consciousness of indigenous rights in Guatemala and elsewhere. In a single book, written by Elizabeth Burgos from interviews given in exile by Rigoberta Menchú, the threads of globalization, indigenous rights, the violent repression of minority groups, and the very nature of truth and narrative collided.

Rigoberta Menchú’s subsequent rise to fame, her position as a delegate to the United

Nations and her receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 (a deeply symbolic quincentenary year for the Americas) mirrored the growing international condemnation of the actions of the Guatemalan government, and ushered in the peace accords signed in

1996.

While in the ensuing decades the book has come to signify so much more than its narrative, especially after the publication of David Stoll’s Rigoberta Menchú and the

Story of All Poor Guatemalans in 1999 and the ensuing debate detailed in Arturo Arias and Stoll’s The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy (2001), on a basic level it is a story of indigenous lives marked by state violence. Beyond the systemic oppression of Maya1

1 Throughout this work I will use “Mayan” to refer only to languages, and “Maya” to describe people, culture, etc. This allows a distinction between Maya publishing (publishing directed by or otherwise

2 people that kept most of the population in a state of poverty and without access to education, the book depicts scenes of the genocide perpetrated on Maya communities in

Guatemala during the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, many of the same issues that marked

Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonio also touched entire generations of Maya in Guatemala, as well as sparking the urge to fight for the rights of Maya community. Specters of extreme state violence and access to international actors also shaped the Maya Movement within

Guatemala during the last decades of the 20th century, and have made a mark on the

Guatemalan political landscape. In the ensuing years and under changing state policies, the books that have been written in Mayan languages (unlike Menchú’s testimonio, which was given in Spanish even though Menchú reportedly did not speak the language fluently) have grappled in different ways with similar issues of repression, perceptions of legitimacy, and globalization. While Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú represents the incredible reach one book can have, an entire body of work in Mayan languages has been produced that remains largely unexamined.

As a way to bridge the gap between the relatively well-trodden paths of literary analysis of Maya texts and social anthropology of the Maya Movement, I examine the mechanism and outcomes of publishing books in Mayan languages in Guatemala in a politicized linguistic context. To this end, I look to the emerging interdisciplinary field of

Book Studies that treats the book as not only a material object of study, but also as social and symbolic. Following this lead, I will examine the book in Mayan languages in

Guatemala from three different angles: as part of a history of publishing in Guatemala, as a product of diverse publishing institutions and funding sources, and as a series of design

associated with Maya people or culture) and Mayan publishing (the publishing of works written in Mayan languages).

3 and editorial choices. Throughout these chapters, I will consider the book as a symbol and product of Maya cultural activism in Guatemala. Stepanova (2007) writes that the field of Book Studies is generally divided between the study of book history and book arts. This work leans more towards the framework of book history, although Chapter 3 makes some moves towards a study of books from a more physical and aesthetic viewpoint.

As Jonathon Rose writes: “Books make history, and history makes books” (2003,

11). While Rose believes that Book Studies should use a broad definition of book to include most forms of written text that serve to transmit culture (11), for the purposes of this study I have limited my research to the production of monographs in Mayan languages. I readily admit that the study of these books is only one facet of the Mayan language corpus, which has also featured print journalism, a history of oral tradition, and environmental print as studied by Mary Holbrock (2017), not to mention efforts to produce film, television programs and music in Mayan languages. Books are usually a more durable text than a newspaper or flyer, and they represent a more laborious process of writing, editing, and printing. My aim is to investigate how these decisions take place.

Moreover, books (and codices) have long been a potent symbol of culture and power both among the Spanish colonizers and the pre-conquest Maya. Even despite high rates of illiteracy in Mayan languages, speakers of those languages view books as more than the information they contain, but as symbols of the value of Maya culture. As Sergio

Romero (2016) writes of books in K’ichee’:

Although most K’ichee’ speakers are unable to read these works with comfort, they construe them as ethnic emblems. The very existence of such textual artifacts falsifies common prejudices such as the claim that Mayan languages are inferior to Spanish, lacking a ‘grammar’, a substantial ‘literature’ or the capacity to

4

express complex thoughts (Warren 1997; French 2010). Printed texts—Bibles, textbooks, and poetry—are iconized; as material artifacts, they are meant to be seen and touched rather than read, acting as ritual objects with the power of exorcizing prejudices and virtually elevating indigenous languages to the same functional heights as Spanish. (Romero 157)

This iconization demonstrates the power of the book and written Mayan languages to evoke contemporary Maya resistance to colonization and the hegemony of Spanish, and makes the production of books in Mayan languages a rich field for analysis.

I have limited my research to the Mayan languages of Guatemala as currently recognized by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG). The 2002 census recorded that over 3.1 million, or 30.8%, Guatemalans spoke a Mayan language as their first language (República de Guatemala INE 2003). Although Mayan languages are also spoken in Mexico, Honduras and Belize in areas where Maya populations lived pre-

Conquest (as well as parts of the Unites States and other regions with heavy migration from Central America), the narratives of Mayan language writing and publishing that I explore depend heavily on recent Maya relations with the national government. In recent decades, Maya groups in Southern Mexico, for example, have organized politically and related with the federal government in very different ways than Maya groups in

Guatemala, and analyzing both the Zapatista uprising of 1994 and the Guatemalan peace accords of 1996 and their respective impacts on publishing organizations is outside the scope of this study.

The publishing industry for Mayan language books in Guatemala is an understudied wing of Maya cultural activism, and can be viewed as a manifestation of the movement’s goals and accomplishments. Through the investigation of publishing organizations and books in Mayan languages, ideologies as well as practical tactics are

5 made manifest. These ideologies include a conception of indigenous linguistic support and valorizations based in education and pan-Mayanism. They also occur within a context of recent state violence, centuries of racism against indigenous populations, as well as a contradictory embrace of indigenous symbolism by the ladino government in the creation of a Guatemalan national identity.

In my first chapter, I will theorize Mayan language publishing in Guatemala and nationalisms using the work of Benedict Anderson and Victor Montejo. I will show how

Anderson’s writing on the importance of print culture to the development of the nation state in Europe is not suited to the case of Mayan languages in Guatemala by drawing on the writing of Maya scholars. This chapter will address the issues of pan-Mayanism and the recent experiences of mass violence to show how the political and historical context of Mayan languages has steered the intention of production and publication. In my second chapter, I will explore the variety of organizations that have grown out of this history to become involved in publishing books in the Mayan languages of Guatemala over the past three decades. The variety of these types of organizations show the various strategies that Maya linguists and activists have developed in order to balance autonomy with the need for outside funding.

In the third chapter, I consider the output of these organizations, and the academic work that has followed them. I explore the work that has been done on Maya fiction by scholars such as Arturo Arias and Gaspar Pedro González, and argue that this view of

Maya writing is overly restrictive, and does not reflect the technical aspect of linguistic training that has characterized the surge of Mayan language legislation and publishing.

To present an alternative view of Maya literature and output, I analyze examples of

6 children’s literature and dictionaries written in K’ichee’, Kaqchikel, Ixhil, Q’anjob’al and

Popti’2. Although these works often lack the prestige assigned to novels and poetry by academics investigating questions of national identities, their contents as well as illustrations, covers, formats and other design elements are testaments to the values of

Maya publishers, educators, activists and writers. Finally, I will present future avenues for research, including more complete bibliography of specific Mayan languages, and more extensive organizational histories of institutions like the ALMG and Proyecto

Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) that have negotiated the shift to Maya leadership in relationship to the state, as well as Maya-led publishing houses.

2 In the spelling of these names I have used the most current spellings preferred by each linguistic community. The titles of some works cited use alternative spellings (e.g. “Ixil” for “Ixhil”) as well as “Jakalteko” instead of the ethnonym “Popti’” used here.

7

Chapter One: Publishing and Nationalism in the Maya and Guatemalan Context

While indigenous groups throughout Latin America and around the globe are engaged in struggles to maintain their languages, producing works in Mayan languages in

Guatemala evokes a particular history and faces particular challenges. Like many indigenous groups, the Maya have faced cultural persecution since European contact.

While Spanish colonizers destroyed written works and material culture, the Maya are relatively unique among indigenous groups of the Americas for the extent of their pre-

Columbian writing systems. This tradition of writing with a glyphic script dating back to as early as 400 BCE in Guatemala (Saturno et al. 1281) lends a sense of historical depth, continuity and reclamation to contemporary Maya writing. Appeals to this past continue to fuel efforts for Maya cultural and linguistic revitalization.

The historical and linguistic context for Mayan languages in Guatemala also shapes the realities of producing books in those languages. The repressive regimes of the second half of the 20th century in Guatemala as well as the Maya movement for justice and representation, created an environment in which indigenous Guatemalans today live with more legislative support for indigenous culture than ever before, but also with the task of fighting for full implementation of that legislation, a heavy burden of ongoing racism and experiences of recent ethnic violence. The diversity of Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala also complicates the situation. The Guatemalan government currently recognizes 22 different Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala today, as well as

8 two non-Mayan indigenous languages, Xinka and Garifuna. The sheer number of Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala presents difficulties in education and publishing, while vast differences in sizes of speaker bases and access to resources exacerbates the issue.

The number of Mayan languages has also threatened to fragment efforts to promote Maya culture through language, and proponents must carefully balance senses of pan-Maya cultural cohesion (often drawing on prominent systems like the calendar) with recognition of linguistic and regional difference within officially recognized linguistic groups.

A brief history of the publishing industry in Guatemala provides a context for writers and publishers of works in Mayan languages in that country. In terms of publishing, Guatemala does not participate at a high level among Latin American countries (CERLALC 2017). In a country with a weak overall publishing system, the accomplishments of publishers who focus on indigenous language production in

Guatemala are even more impressive.

I use Benedict Anderson’s (1983) theories on print culture as key to building nationalism (as put forward in Imagined Communities) as a jumping off point to examine the political impact of a Mayan language publishing industry in contemporary

Guatemala. While Anderson argued that national print languages and circulation of materials aided the rise of nation-states in Europe and Latin America, I examine the relevance of his theory to Mayan languages in Guatemala. I draw on Victor Montejo’s

(2005) articulation of Maya cultural resurgence to show how publishing in Mayan languages in Guatemala has in some instances rejected nationalism in favor of the

9 language of linguistic and ethnic plurality popular with other indigenous movements throughout Latin America.

Maya experiences with literacy

The history of Maya literacy spans about two thousand years (Saturno et al.

1281), and has been marked sharply (although never destroyed) by Spanish colonization and repression. In an iconic act of colonization after the Spanish conquest, Bishop Diego de Landa oversaw the burning of books written in Maya hieroglyphs in Yucatán, judging them to be “nothing but the superstitions and falsehoods of the devil” (Montejo 40), but also providing a description of the Maya writing system in his writings. The existence and destruction of the books of the Guatemalan highlands is less documented, leaving the history of literacy in that region dependent on stone carvings. The destruction of Maya books was so thorough that only three remain, having been sent to Europe1. While the destruction of material texts effectively ended Maya use of hieroglyphs as a writing system, in some cases the texts themselves survived, as in cases where the Roman alphabet was adapted to recreate texts like the Popol Vuh. Given this history, the colonial repression of the Maya is shot through with the destruction of the written word.

Prior to the conquest, the Maya writing system was the most complex in the

Americas. The Maya writing system uses hieroglyphs that combine phonemic markers with logograms in a way that completely represents the spoken word, unlike the more pictorial systems of the Aztecs or the quipu of the Inka Empire (Houston 34). In his 2010 study of Maya literature before and after Spanish conquest, Tedlock notes how the

1 A possible fourth (the Grolier Codex) was discovered in the 20th century, and its authenticity is still the source of debate.

10 phonetic qualities of Maya glyphs have been denied or diminished by Western academics:

Among those who guard the gates of Western civilization, there is still some resistance to the news that Mayan writing is capable of recording sounds of spoken language. The possession of phonetic writing has long occupied a place near the top of the list of cultural properties that supposedly made the European domination of the New World not only possible but inevitable. This interpretation of history is so strongly entrenched that the European authors of several recent books comparing writing systems have seen no need to inquire into the status of research on the Mayan script. Instead, they have made out-of-date claims that it has yet to be deciphered or that its phonetic aspect is somehow rudimentary. (25)

This ongoing denial of the value of Maya glyphs in comparison to Western writing systems (and by association, culture) shows how literacy has continued to be an active arena for racism and colonization by the West.

While Maya hieroglyphs developed in ways that indicated an increasing readership over time, with production peaking in the Classic period that spanned 250-900

AD, it is still hard to know how broad a segment of pre-Columbian Maya society could read, and how many could write (Houston 35). While writing is assumed to have been an elite skill and was not distributed equally throughout Maya territory (with some regions producing many codices and others producing none) the sheer number of manuscripts and stelae and ceramic vessels with hieroglyphic script produced indicates that writing was an important part of Maya life. The existing Maya codices consist of a single sheet of paper made from the inner bark of a tree, which is then folded like a screen. Writing and illustration were normally done in black and red ink, with yellow, green and blue inks sometimes present. The surviving legible Maya codices all date from the thirteenth century or later and were collected in Chiapas and Yucatán (Tedlock 146). The codices contain almanacs, and also chart astronomical occurrences over various periods of time

11 and serve as divinatory texts. The wealth of texts left on more durable surfaces such as stone and ceramic as well as texts like the Popol Vuh suggest that books on different topics once existed, and did not survive Spanish colonization (Houston 38).

In the colonial period, writing became a tool of both oppression and contestation.

After de Landa’s destruction of books written in glyphs, there is evidence that Mayas wrote to the Spanish government in Nahuatl (the language of communication between indigenous groups and the Spanish) to protest brutal treatment of the Maya people under regional Spanish authorities. In the parallel system of Repúblicas de Indios in Yucatán, legal documents such as wills were produced for indigenous elites in Yucatec Maya by

Maya scribes who worked as local notaries (Rappaport 117). Rappaport argues that this imposition of alphabetic writing and legal formats on indigenous people was a form of colonization and hierarchy-building that the Spanish employed throughout the Americas.

It was also, therefore, a major site for intercultural exchange and indigenous contestation of new hierarchies, and especially of legal procedures. Matsumoto (2016) argues that the títulos created by the Highland Maya in the colonial era are a hybrid document created to

“(re) affirm their particular claims and the broader community’s need for novel points of reference, past and present, to construct a collective identity” (470). Written in Mayan languages, these documents expanded the role of the traditional Spanish título to as a document meant to verify land claims, claims of nobility and proof of legal veracity while drawing on indigenous documentary forms (Matsumoto 469-470).

Several pieces of Maya literature were written (or rewritten) in the early colonial period. One of the seminal texts of Maya literature and tradition, the Popol Vuh, was written as we know it after the conquest. The Popol Vuh, which narrates the creation of

12 the world and the K’ichee’ people, and political history of the K’ichee’ through Spanish colonization, is the most studied Mesoamerican text (Quiroa 467). Although it was dictated by one or more K’ichee’ persons to a Dominican friar who transcribed the book in K’ichee’ and translated it into Spanish in 1701, it is considered as a text that preserves the pre-Columbian indigenous voice. Other works were also produced during this time in different Mayan languages, including the Annals of the Kaqchikels. Although written in

K’ichee’ and Kaqchikel, these manuscripts used the de Parra script, which adapts the

Roman alphabet to represent K’ich’ean languages (with the exception of vowel length).

Adapting the Roman alphabet to the needs of Mayan languages has long been a project of linguists in Guatemala, and a standardized alphabet in use today was ratified by the

Guatemalan government following the Segundo Congreso Nacional del Alfabeto in 1986.

In the broader Latin American context, the Maya history of writing is exceptional.

Whereas many indigenous languages of Latin America have a mostly or entirely oral tradition, the Maya tradition of writing spans Spanish conquest and writing systems. In contrast to the more pictorial writing systems of the Mixtec and Zapotec to the west of

Maya territory, the phonetic qualities of glyphs align them more closely to alphabetic writing. Pre-Columbian Maya writing was often associated with power, detailing political dynasties as well as spiritual matters. In the immediate post-Conquest period, alphabetized writing in Mayan languages served as a way to preserve some power of the indigenous elite in the form of títulos. Today, using Mayan languages in professional and public domains can be seen as a refutation of the neocolonial state as well as the ethnic violence of the Guatemalan civil war. While other forms of literacy and traditions are

13 important to the Maya cultural revitalization, the long history of Maya literacy and power lends a special potency to the reclamation of writing in Mayan languages today.

The Maya Movement & Pan-Mayanism

Beyond the construction of a Maya identity, the Maya Movement of the 1970s also undertook the construction of a pan-Maya consciousness. While the term “Maya

Movement” initially seems to present the group as a monolith, the Maya in Guatemala are linguistically and culturally diverse. Even within the twenty-two Mayan languages currently recognized today by the ALMG, there exist regional variations in vocabulary and grammar that resist easy delineations of linguistic groups. The creation of a movement that aimed to promote the well-being and culture for all Maya groups in

Guatemala also had to recognize the heterogeneity of that group. To address this issue,

Maya leaders undertook a standardization process that sought to establish a universal alphabet to be used for all Mayan languages, as well as grammars and dictionaries of each language that would address issues of regional variation while honoring linguistic diversity. Both of these processes were linguistically technical and politically fraught, and exemplify how the choice to use written language as a vehicle for cultural revitalization necessitated a negotiation across Mayan linguistic communities.

Designating a unified alphabet that would become the standard for all Mayan languages in Guatemala was a major milestone for Mayan linguists prior to the creation of the ALMG as a government body in 1990. Prior to 1987, many different organizations including the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and the Proyecto Lingüístico

Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) had been working parallel to each other, creating resources

14 in Mayan languages but using different alphabets. If literacy were to be a primary point of education and movement-building, it was of paramount importance that the newly literate population would have materials available in an alphabet they could read. In 1987 the Unified Alphabet that closely resembled the alphabet used by the PLFM was ratified by the Guatemalan congress, and is used today to write, teach and publish Mayan languages in Guatemala.

As England (1992) notes, Mayas have long been aware that linguistics in

Guatemala is a political matter. She recalls that in 1985 “it was perhaps a shock to some linguists, as it was to me, to realize that goodwill and good relations with the individual collaborators in our past research, and even instruction in literacy and linguistics on the part of many of us were not enough to avoid rather severe criticism of our role in Mayan linguistics” (29). Instead, Maya academics like Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil asked that the study of Mayan linguistics be guided by principles set by Maya linguists, such as not promoting words borrowed from Spanish, and supporting and respecting Maya participation in the field2. This awareness that Mayan linguistics exists in a sensitive political reality, and also within transnational systems of funding and academia is a framework that also extends to the field of publishing in Mayan languages.

While the Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala are related to varying degrees, a commitment to provide materials in twenty-two languages at once is unrealistic, and resources must be distributed unevenly. The “big four” Mayan languages—K’ichee’,

Mam, Kaqchikel, and Q’eqchi’—are designated as such due to their higher numbers of

2 A complete list of the questions posed by Maya to foreign linguists at the 1989 Maya Linguistics Workshop can be found as an appendix in Kay Warren’s Indigenous Movements and their Critics (1998).

15 speakers, and were early recipients of government attention. Nonetheless, the commitment to providing materials in all Mayan languages of Guatemala by organizations like the ALMG is a nod to pan-Mayanism and a refusal to privilege some

Mayan linguistic communities over others, in policy if not in immediate practice.

The specter of state violence prompted a pan-Maya resistance to oppression that manifested through the promotion of Mayan languages and the centering of Maya linguists. The role of language, and especially written language following alphabet and orthography standardization, as an arena to gain state recognition and support of the demands of Guatemala’s indigenous people makes publishing in Mayan languages an essentially political act. This social and historical context of recent Maya organizing informs the Maya publishing world today.

Publishing in Guatemala

To tease apart the political implications of Mayan language publishing in

Guatemala, it is vital to understand the history of Spanish-language publishing in

Guatemala and its relationship to nation-building. In 1660, decades after the destruction of Mayan texts during Spanish conquest, the first printing press was brought to

Guatemala by the Spanish typographer José de Pineda Ibarra (Diaz 9). This press was used mainly for religious texts, although included among the sermons, accounts of the lives of saints and descriptions of the funerals of kings, bishops and archbishops requested by the church were “gramáticas con dialectos de indios” (Diaz 13). Through the

18th century printed materials remained scarce, as ink and paper were imported from

Spain. Diaz names Guatemalan independence in 1821 as an especially powerful moment

16 for the printed word in that country, as competing weekly newspapers run by royalists and those supporting independence brought print materials into people’s lives through political contention. In the decades following independence new publishing companies flourished in Guatemala, including a slow but steady expansion into departments outside the former capital of Antigua Guatemala and the current capital, Guatemala City.

Guatemala is exceptional in the history of printing in colonial Latin America for the early date at which printing arrived. The first presses would not reach Bogotá or

Buenos Aires until 1736 and 1780 respectively, cities which are both major centers of publishing in Latin America today (Calvo 278). Scholarship on colonial books in Latin

America has focused mainly on the history of presses and the availability of books imported from Spain to spread European ideas in the colonies. While Latin American scholarship in the late 19th century blamed colonial laws banning the export of books to

Spanish America, scholars in the 20th century, including Irving Leonard in his seminal

Books of the Brave (first published in 1949), proved that books arrived in New Spain regardless of legal restrictions. The production and circulation of books in colonial Latin

America, and particularly New Spain, has therefore been a part of larger historical debates for scholars in and of Latin America for nearly two hundred years.

In his investigation of the state of publishing in Guatemala in 1967, Ricardo

Serrano Córdoba notes that the bulk of books were issued either from government publishing houses (primarily the Department of Education) or private publishing companies. He notes that the high cost of printing materials (such as paper, ink, thread and binding as well as machine parts) locally, high taxes on importing those same materials, and outdated machinery limited production and raised the prices of books,

17 making them less accessible to a general public (35). Issues of low production and availability of books continue to plague the Guatemalan publishing industry today.

Within Latin America, Guatemala is not a major publishing market. According to the report for 2016 by the Centro Regional para el Fomento del Libro en América Latina y el

Caribe (CERLALC), a branch of the United Nations that gathers information on publishing and communicates with ministers of culture and education in 19 member countries in Latin America, in 2016 189,857 new ISBNs were registered across Latin

America. Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina were responsible for registering 82% of those titles, and only 959 were registered in Guatemala, ranking it fourth lowest above

Paraguay, Nicaragua and Honduras (CERLALC 2017).

But although the recent reality of publishing in Guatemala is not exceptional within the Latin American context, early publishing maintains an important part of the mythology of Guatemala. The printing press brought to Guatemala in 1660 was the fourth established in Latin America, and the farthest from a colonial seat of power (the others being located in Lima, Mexico City and Puebla). Pride in this accomplishment is still present in the image of the Guatemalan nation today. In 2017 the national newspaper

Prensa Libre published an article marking the anniversary of the day the printing press was brought to Guatemala (Hemeroteca PL). The operator of that press, José de Pineda

Ibarra, lent his name to the Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, a press run by the Guatemalan

Ministry of Education from 1949 until 2005. A replica of his printing press stands in the

Museo del Libro Antiguo in Antigua, Guatemala, in a building bordering the main square, a major tourist hub. Founded in 1956 by two Guatemalan writers and run by the

Ministry of Culture and Sports (also home to many of the services for indigenous

18 culture), the museum, which houses a copy of the first book printed in Guatemala and aims to preserve the “patrimonio bibliográfico del país”. Since the 1879 Ley de

Propiedad Literaria publishers have been legally required to remit copies of every new book published to national entities including the national library (and others further defined in the Ley de Imprenta under the Ubico government and Ley de Emisión del

Pensamiento of 1966). Serrano Córdoba notes that as of 1967 participation in this system of legal deposit was spotty at best, but the continued interest of the state in the memorializing the print production of the country suggests a patriotic pride in books. In

2000 the Tipografía Nacional founded its own museum centered on the history of printing in Guatemala, featuring a variety of printing machinery that has been declared cultural patrimony (Diario de Centro América 2014).

This celebration of printing culture in Guatemala (usually by the national government) has been present throughout the 20th century, but is concentrated at midcentury and focuses almost entirely on colonial production. This coincides with the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first press, but also with the period of political conservatism and unrest after the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and the end of a decade of socially progressive democracy. A large part of the bibliography on

Guatemalan printing was produced during this time from the Editorial José Pineda Ibarra, sometimes as part of larger celebrations of print culture. Víctor Miguel Díaz writes in his

Historia de la Imprenta en Guatemala (1960) that the work was written to commemorate the dedication of the Tipografía Nacional’s new building. While the history itself is fairly monotonous, mainly consisting of short entries listing the names and dates of operation of various printing companies over the years, Díaz conveys senses of Guatemalan glory

19

(being among the first nations in Latin America to have a press), religion (as many early documents were linked to the church) and ideas of education and worldliness tied to printing. It’s conceivable that this line of nationalism would be appealing to a conservative government trying to re-establish power after the end of period of democratic opening.

The history of Spanish-language publishing in Guatemala has been cast by the state as a source of national pride and identity, and in this capacity it also serves to characterize Guatemala as a monolingual Spanish-speaking state. In the centuries since

Spanish contact, the projects of nation building and linguistic homogenization in

Guatemala have been intertwined. The idea that the construction and maintenance of a nation-state requires a homogenous governed body remains a driving force in the treatment of Maya people by the government (French 2010). The continued use of (and production of texts in) Mayan languages in Guatemala is a resistance to this homogenizing and colonizing force. Furthermore, the recognition of diversity within

Mayan languages resists colonization by breaking down the ladino-indigenous binary that mestizo society is built on, even as it denies indigenous influence. Since language and linguistic ideologies have become a central part of Maya resistance against an oppressive state and dominant ladino ethnic group, it is important to acknowledge the symbolism of the Spanish press in Guatemala and its associations with a homogenous Spanish-speaking and ladino state.

Nationalism and Mayan Publishing

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, originally published in 1983, is a key work on nationalism that explores the ways in which nations are created and

20 sustained as social constructs. One key factor in Anderson’s theory of nation-building in

Europe is the development of a national language and accompanying print culture. In

Europe, once mass production was feasible, books became a commodity and after the demand for books in Latin was filled, the “vernacular revolution” took place to reach the rest of the market. The shared language and culture created by this print capitalism then forms the community that will become the basis for a nation state. While Anderson’s theory has been thoroughly critiqued in the following decades and does not take into account modern day global languages such as English, its impact on academia is undeniable. His analysis of print and oral cultures centers the nation as the unit of analysis and reflects Western language ideologies that associate print with “cognition, universalism, monolingualism and permanent memory, whereas orality is paired up with its opposites: emotion, particularism, multilingualism and transience” (Wogan 404). As with all theories based in Western experiences of society, it is important to show how non-Western indigenous languages fit into the picture.

While Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities does contain a chapter dedicated to characterizing the development of nationalism and nations in Latin America republics, his analysis rests on the importance of newspapers and the exclusive control of the elite in the development of the nation. Anderson’s views of Latin America have been critiqued and the exclusion of indigenous people in development of Latin American republics has been challenged by authors such as Mallon (1995) and Thurner (1997).

Anderson did not frame indigenous languages in Latin America as threats to nation building or linguistic homogeneity. Instead he writes that in contrast to the European nationalist movements of the early 20th century that pitted vernaculars like Ukrainian and

21

Czech against imperial languages of regional authority like German and Russian,

“Spanish and English were never issues in the revolutionary Americas” (67).

In fact, the present day situation of the Maya seems more similar Anderson’s characterization of the European vernaculars that were soon to become national print languages. Anderson uses Seton-Watson’s description of Finnish to illustrate how vernaculars gained power in Europe: “the study of folklore and the rediscovery and piecing together of popular epic poetry went together with the publication of grammars and dictionaries, and led to the appearance of periodicals which served to standardize

Finnish literary [i.e. print-] language, on behalf of which stronger political demands could be made” (Anderson 75). This progression mirrors the interest in Mayan oral traditions and works like the Popol Vuh, as well as the production of grammars and dictionaries in

Mayan languages and standardization efforts to support reading and writing in an era of increased political claims on the state for cultural recognition. But although Anderson’s chapter on Latin America refers repeatedly to “Indians” as a sector of the population, he does not theorize their languages as vernaculars similar to Europe’s, and in fact does not theorize them at all.

Anderson’s seminal text on nationalism is also limited mainly to the initial development of nationalisms and nations, and not to the constant reification of that nation. Globalization and rapid technological development as well as local social and political events and natural disasters pose threats to nationalism today. The movement towards recognizing and valuing Mayan languages is a challenge to the traditional construction of a Guatemalan nation-state, which has always postulated a homogenous,

Spanish-speaking ladino culture. In examining the Mayan language publishing industry, I

22 aim to show how indigenous language publishing engages with ideas of nationalism, or how it intentionally does not.

The movement to revitalize and empower Maya communities in Guatemala has steered clear of the language of nations that other indigenous movements in the region have used. In Ecuador, for instance, the current constitution adopted in 2008 added a definition of Ecuador as a plurinational state (Constitución de la República del Ecuador,

Título 1 capítulo primero, art. 1) and government documents outlining bilingual intercultural education practices refer to indigenous languages as the “lengua de la nacionalidad”, with Spanish usually referred to as the “lengua de relación intercultural”

(Ministerio de Educación 8). In contrast, the intellectuals as well as the legislation of the

Maya Movement have mostly avoided this sort of verbiage that challenges the traditional relation to the state and can suggest political autonomy. Victor Montejo (2005), a Maya journalist and academic, outright rejects the idea of a Maya nation-state or Maya nationalism as “unviable, perhaps even dangerous, concepts”, instead preferring to advocate for a pluralist state where Maya are recognized as equals and given access to the creation of the state, stating that “if Guatemala wants to continue proclaiming its unique character as a nation by using Maya elements and symbols, then it must recognize the active role of Maya people and culture as integral to the construction of the nation-state”

(31). Raxche’ Demetrio Rodríguez Guaján (1996), founder of Mayan publishing companies including Cholsamaj, states that pluralism is the only way forward for

Guatemala (83).

A major exception to this case for plurality comes from Demetrio Cojtí, who in

2007 published an article entitled “Indigenous Nations in Guatemalan Democracy”,

23 defining the Maya of Guatemala as a nation made up of distinct linguistic communities

(125). This shift to the word nation appears to stem from frustration with the implementation of legislation for indigenous rights, as he states:

In their political discourse, non-indigenous politicians proclaim that Guatemala is multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, and multi-lingual. Although these statements may be viewed as positive in that they define national identity in a way that includes the Maya, Xinka, and Garifuna nations, it would be more productive to translate rhetoric into action. (125)

Cojtí suggests here that recognition of Guatemala as a multinational state instead of multiethnic and pluricultural would result in more concrete advances for indigenous people in Guatemala, giving the formulation of “nation” more political power. Cojtí has long supported this formulation, using it in 1997 to advocate for the cultural autonomy and “relative” political autonomy of Maya people in Guatemala (69).

Indeed, Maya cultural symbolism has more often been co-opted by ladinos to promote Guatemalan nationalism. In the early national period in Latin America new republics often used indigenous histories to build a national narrative that differentiated themselves from Spain or other neighboring countries. In her book examining this phenomenon, Rebecca Earle cites the example of Francisco de Paula García Peláez’s

1852 history of Guatemala entitled Memoirs for the History of the Ancient Kingdom of

Guatemala, which describes the ancient Maya cities in Guatemala as greater than the pre-

Columbian monuments in Mexico (Earle 133). This claim was meant to promote pride in

Guatemala and define it in opposition to Mexico during a period in which the two countries were engaged in border disputes. Tellingly, García Peláez’s history also distanced the pre-Columbian achievements of Guatemala’s indigenous population from the contemporary Maya, claiming that they could only be two different ethnic groups, a

24 perfect example of the use of Maya culture as symbols to build Guatemalan nationalism while maintaining the oppression of the Maya people.

Building a national identity centered on a single language has been a project of the Guatemalan state and Spanish-language press. Arising from a group that has long experienced disenfranchisement and oppression from that expression of statehood,

Mayan language publishing stands for something else. The diversity of Mayan languages lends itself well to Montejo’s vision of plurality within a multiethnic and equal

Guatemalan state. Montejo views the multitude of Mayan languages and communities as an asset, even though (and perhaps because) they are in direct opposition to the traditional form of a nation as defined by Anderson, with one national language and a homogenous culture reinforced by printed materials. As Mayan language publishing aims to develop materials in 22 different languages and empower a traditionally oppressed segment of Guatemalans, the Maya are using this moment to build a more diverse and pluralist vision of a community than Anderson imagined.

Publishing in Mayan languages in Guatemala today is a political act. The history of Mayan literacy interrupted by centuries of oppression under Spanish colonialism, enduring racism and the mass murders of Maya communities of the 1980s forms a context in which Maya cultural activism is highly politicized. The nationalizing and homogenizing government narrative of the Spanish-language press in Guatemala as well as the focus on linguistic revitalization in the Maya Movement make publishing in

Mayan languages a site of this political project. Mayan language publishing in Guatemala represents a challenge to the national project of Guatemala, coopting some of the same

25 symbolism (printing presses and books) used to build the national identity that excludes them. At the same time, the essentially pluralist nature of Mayan language publishing provides an alternative structure for national identities within Guatemala. In the following chapter, I will examine the key organizations that engage in this project by publishing books in Mayan languages in Guatemala, and how they navigate this political context.

26

Chapter Two: Organizational Strategies in Mayan Publishing

The major players in Mayan language publishing are diverse, including public, private and religious organizations. Edward Fischer cites ladino reluctance to publish works in Mayan languages as a major influence on the emergence of separate organizations to publish Mayan language material in Guatemala (Fischer 2000, 242).

Additional challenges included finding or training editors and proofreaders who could appropriately edit content as well as adhere to the new writing conventions and unified alphabet of the ALMG. While independent commercial or nonprofit publishing companies exist that are dedicated to printing materials in Mayan languages, the actual production of printed materials in Mayan languages is spread across a variety of organizations. In this chapter I examine the types of organizations producing materials in

Mayan languages in Guatemala, including government, nonprofit, university and commercial publishing organizations to investigate how Maya control over publishing has been negotiated. By analyzing management structures and funding sources where possible, it becomes clear that publishing in Mayan languages is often a transnational venture.

This exploration of organizations producing materials is by no means exhaustive.

Notably absent is an analysis of religious organizations like the Summer Institute of

Linguistics (SIL). SIL played an important role in the development of corpora written in

Latinate alphabets for several Mayan languages in the first half of the twentieth century.

27

This work began with descriptive grammars and translations of the New Testament

(French 44), although SIL linguists and translators later expanded their repertoire with contracts from the Guatemalan government, who supported SIL’s assimilation strategy of using Mayan language texts to draw Maya closer to the state through Christianity and bilingual literacy (Stoll 85). As their position of broker between Maya populations and the state was challenged by a wave of Maya linguists starting in the 1970s, SIL resisted the change to the unified alphabet ratified by the Congreso de la República, and sought to remain more closely aligned with the Guatemalan state than Maya linguists and academics (French 54). Given this history, I have turned my focus elsewhere.

In the following sections I explore the structure and history of major players in state organizations, nonprofits, university presses and publishing companies. While ultimately these categories may be more permeable than they seem, sharing resources or staff, they emphasize the different ways that Maya activists have addressed a central question: how to fund projects without compromising Maya leadership.

Governmental Bodies

Prominent government organizations involved in printing materials in Mayan languages in Guatemala include the Ministry of Education and the Academia de Lenguas

Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG). Both operating at the national level, the creation of the

ALMG and the involvement of the Ministry of Education in Mayan language education are results of Maya activism during the second half of the twentieth century. Editorial

Cultura, a publishing wing of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, also produces materials in Mayan languages, although not on the same scale. The national bilingual intercultural education programs of the Ministry of Education, the Programa Nacional de Educación

28

Bilingüe Bilcultural (PRONEBI), since 1995 reformed as the Dirección de Educación

Bilingüe Intercultural (DIGEBI) are also major publishers of text books and learning materials in Mayan languages.

The ALMG is an important source of support for Mayan language literacy and has been considered both a triumph of cultural legislation and a quagmire of government bureaucracy. As an official semi-autonomous government body established in 1990, the

ALMG maintains a Maya board of directors as well as locations in each Mayan linguistic community in Guatemala. Montejo emphasizes the importance of the official status of the

ALMG as an autonomous state entity, characterizing this autonomy from the central government as essential to its work (32). In his analysis of indigeneity and the

Guatemalan government, Demetrio Cojtí (2007) notes that out of 16 government bodies with indigenous directors, the ALMG was one of only three that is not overseen by a ladino administration that could restrict its autonomy (137). He also notes that the racism of ladinos within government and budget issues often keep these public offices from fulfilling their purposes, writing “state funds are not used to help them, nor are they allowed to operate with funds from international organizations, and thus the state maintains these public indigenous offices as ignorant and submissive, propagating its internal racism” (139). Term limits of four years in president and board positions in

ALMG offices can also cause a lack of institutional coherence, especially in regions with fewer trained linguists (Holbrock 100).

The ALMG is engaged in a number of activities to support Mayan languages in

Guatemala, including creating and supporting education centers in Mayan languages throughout the country, translating laws and other government materials into Mayan

29 languages, training of Maya community members to research and teach their languages, supporting bilingual education programs as well as programs that promote the studies of

Mayan languages at the university level (Atribuciones de la Institución 2018). Among these responsibilities (which are the same in 2018 as they were in the Ley de la Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala in 1990), the ALMG also produces materials in

Mayan languages in a broad range of categories. These books include textbooks on reading and writing, Maya numbers, dictionaries, grammars, lists of neologisms, translations of laws, editions of colonial era texts such as Kiwujil Kaqchikela’ (2001) or translations of the Popol Wuj into other Mayan languages (Pop Un (2011) and Pop Hum

(2001)).

Beyond these official duties, as a Maya-governed body within the Guatemalan government, the ALMG also necessarily deals with issues of representation. Montejo notes that in 1992 a traditional Maya ceremony performed in honor of incoming board members of the ALMG was a moment in which Maya spiritual practices were reclaimed by a government body (152). On a monthly fiscal report submitted to the Public Finance

Commission in February of 2018 (Appendix A), the letterhead of the ALMG lists the title

“K’ulb’il Yol Twitz Paxil” above and in larger print than “Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala.” Down the left side of the report run the names of the twenty-two regional branches (each in their language without Spanish translation) and their cities of location.

The date of the report is listed first in the Maya calendar (using only Maya numerals), and the page also includes a greeting in Uspanteko referencing Maya spirituality as well as a short mission statement at the foot on the page in Mam and Spanish. This use of

30

Mayan languages (some untranslated) and dates in government documents disrupts the hegemony of Spanish in state domains.

The Programa Nacional de Educación Bilingüe (PRONEBI) was established in

1984 by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education following the replacement of President

Rios Montt by Mejía Victores, a reaction to international pressure to recognize human right abuses of the Guatemalan government. PRONEBI had been preceded by bilingual education efforts such as Castillanización Bilingüe instituted in 1965 that specifically aimed at achieving literacy in Spanish by first teaching students to read and write in their vernacular (Richards & Richards 211). These projects had operated in forty pilot schools with materials in K’ichee’, Mam, Kaqchikel and Q’eqchi’. Richards and Richards report that in 1996 PRONEBI had expanded to offering programs in an additional 1,200 schools with bilingual programs offered through fourth grade in the original four languages as well as preprimary programs in Q’anjob’al, Ixhil, Poqomchi’, and Tz’utujil (214). As part of this educational initiative, PRONEBI was also tasked with producing teaching materials in those Mayan languages (214).

Government involvement through organizations such as PRONEBI has been criticized as essentially assimilationist by Maya intellectuals such as Demetrio Cojtí and

Raxche’ Rodriguéz (1996). Although Richards & Richards find that “at present,

PRONEBI is firmly ensconced within an ethos of ethnic unification and linguistic fortification” (216), the critiques of the program both practically (in terms of number of children and communities reached, and teachers able or willing to teach the material) and ideologically are many. There is still substantial resistance to the government-controlled model of bilingual education in favor of a more community-controlled model that may

31 focus more on Mayan languages and culture rather than use them as a vehicle for Spanish literacy and Western ideologies.

While state organizations have provided some of the most stable sources of funding for publication of books in Mayan languages, they have also grappled with the challenges of representing minority languages within a state system that still perpetuates racist and colonialist ideas. While the ALMG’s broad aims make it more flexible in what it can publish, PRONEBI and DIGEBI are limited to textbooks and educational materials.

The national scope of these organizations also means they are charged with attending to all twenty-two Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, plus Garifuna and Xinka in the case of DIGEBI. The issue of representation and which languages get attended to first (as

PRONEBI originally focused on the four languages with the most speakers, rather than languages in danger of losing ground) is especially strong.

Universities

Notable among universities in Guatemala is the Universidad Rafael Landívar, and in particular their Instituto de Lingüística1, which along with the Universidad de San

Carlos produces some works in Mayan languages. Both institutions are located in

Guatemala City, but have divergent histories. While the Universidad de San Carlos is a public university founded in 1676 and is the oldest university in the country, the

Universidad Rafael Landívar is a private university founded in 1962 and named after a colonial Guatemalan Jesuit priest and poet. While the Editorial Universitaria at the

Universidad de San Carlos has one of the largest budgets of a university press in Central

1 Which has also been the Instituto de Lingüística y Educación and is currently officially the Instituto de Lingüística e Interculturalidad.

32

America, with a budget of $337,000 USD in 2002, the Universidad de Rafael Landívar produces comparable number of titles, and focuses much more in the publication of

Mayan language texts (Rama et al. 138). University presses such as these have the benefit of publishing texts based on their academic value rather than marketability. In his reflection on editing at university presses in Mexico and Colombia, Jesús Anaya Rosique posits that university presses, instead of responding purely to popular demand, exist in order to make academic research available, making the contribution of the university and its researchers known while also filling a gap left by commercial presses (16). Still, in order to keep costs low, university presses in Latin America (and increasingly in the

United States) release academic publications in paperback editions only rather than the more expensive hardcover editions favored by academic libraries, trading cost for durability and prestige (32). University presses are also often characterized by short runs of books that may only spend 3-5 years in the catalog before going out of print (Anaya

Rosique 38). In 2006 in Guatemala the average run at a university press was 1353 books, while the regional average for Central America was 945 (Rama et al. 141). This suggests the relative strength of Guatemalan university presses.

The Instituto de Lingüística at the Universidad Rafael Landívar was founded in

1986 as a response to the 1985 constitution that recognized linguistic and cultural diversity in Guatemala (Verdugo de Lima 132). The Instituto de Lingüística aimed to increase the study of Mayan languages as well as train Maya linguists and produce materials in Mayan languages for students. These materials began with a series of grammars that the Instituto produced in coordination with the Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’

Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA) in order to “transmitir a los estudiantes mayas la comprensión de la

33 estructura gramatical de su idioma materno, para que desde ahí pudieran conocer y practicar formas de pensamiento, de afectividad y de actuación de su pueblo, fundamentalmente en la valoración de su propia identidad” (Verdugo de Lima 136).

Since then, the Instituto has published illustrated bilingual dictionaries for children, collections of stories adapted form oral traditions, texts for reading and writing Mayan languages and teachers manuals for bilingual education, among others. In 2011, the

Instituto published a Kaqchikel translation of Antoine de Saint-Exúpery’s The Little

Prince titled Ri Ch’uti’ Ajpop. Additionally, 197 titles in 13 different Mayan languages are available to view for free online or download as a PDF through the Universidad de

Rafael Landívar website2. These titles span the 1980s to the present decade.

In 2009 Lucía Verdugo de Lima, the director of the Instituto wrote that more than

1000 titles had been published by the Instituto de Lingüística, with the majority being in

Mayan languages (137). She conceptualizes this work as part of an initiative to support

Maya communities within Guatemala and valorize indigenous culture in order to fight discrimination and racism against Maya people through the use of applied linguistics and bilingual education. More recently, the Instituto has expanded its reach from education to other domains, including publishing glossaries of legal terms for courtroom translators in

22 Mayan languages (140). The work of the Instituto places the private university at the center of the nexus between training Maya as linguists and working with state systems, such as PRONEBI/DIGEBI and the ALMG. While Verdugo de Lima voices some of the same aims as the PLFM, training Mayan speakers in their languages, it is with the goal

2 Found at www.url.edu.gt/publicacionesurl/

34 that these professionals can then serve in the new state organizations designed to support

Mayan languages and culture.

Funding for the Instituto’s publications can also come from sources as diverse as the government of the Netherlands, MISERIOR (the German Catholic Bishops’

Organization for Development Cooperation), USAID and UNICEF, and many titles rely on this supplemental funding for their development or printing costs. The variety of foreign governments and aid organizations funding projects at a private Guatemalan institution shows how wide international support (from Europe, the US and Canada) for

Mayan language revitalization is. The fact that this funding is funneled through the linguistics research institute at a private university is proof of how embedded academia is in the production of Mayan language texts.

Non-Profit Organizations

Non-profits involved in the publication of Mayan language books include the

Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM), Proyecto de Desarrollo Santiago

(PRODESSA) and the Asociación de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala of

Quetzaltenango, who trace their history back to the 1980s and many of whose founding members were victims of state violence. These organizations have been essential to promoting the involvement of indigenous scholars in the study and promotion of Mayan languages in Guatemala, and groups like the PLFM continue to be an important network in Guatemala today.

The development of the PLFM in particular exemplifies the coexistence of religious and secular North American influence and Maya self-determination before the intensification of violence in the 1980s. In the early 1970s the PLFM was transferred

35 from two US priests to a group of young North American academics and volunteers with the goal of training Maya students from rural communities without access to higher education as linguists. Kay Warren’s description of the early days cites an unpublished manuscript written by the founding members as well as Warren’s own experience as a volunteer at PLFM in 1970 and 1971. Warren argues that the PLFM deserves a prominent place in the history of the movement for Maya cultural resurgence, highlighting especially the push to turn the project over to Maya control within five years, the volume of Maya linguists trained, and the funding strategy of the PLFM.

In order to fund their efforts, the PLFM offered Spanish classes for tourists in

Antigua. This funding structure chosen by the PLFM allowed Maya linguists to undergo training by North American linguists and carry out projects while a group of mainly ladino teachers funded the organization by teaching classes to foreigners. Although not without its flaws (as some teachers left to start competing schools in Antigua) this strategy allows for relative autonomy and independence from grants, as well as subverting the dominant language hierarchy in Guatemala by using interest in Spanish language skills to fund the promotion of Mayan languages. The PLFM still maintains a

Spanish school in Antigua today.

Warren notes that although the organization of PLFM worked to place decision making in Maya hands, the North American associations from the early 1970s may have hurt the organization long-term. Although she writes that the PLFM stopped training linguists after 1990 and didn't retain its central place in Maya organizing after the blossoming of pan-Maya organizations in the mid to late 1980s, she does note that many of those organizations involved linguists trained at the PLFM. OKMA was established by

36 linguists trained at the PLFM, and early PLFM linguists such as Narciso Cojtí and Martín

Chacach also went on to represent Maya causes with positions in the national government.

The June 1986 issue of Winak Boletín Intercultural3 published descriptions the editors had solicited from institutions involved in the research and use of Mayan linguistics, including the PLFM. In the unattributed description, the author notes that from 1980, the PLFM had focused on fewer Mayan languages, reducing the languages it actively worked in from 13 to seven (38). The article also notes a collaboration with

PRONEBI, using PLFM data to improve the quality of PRONEBI publications. The languages addressed in this collaboration are listed as “cakchiquel, mam, y quiché, en su orden de prioridad” (38). So although the work of the PLFM focused on rural Maya communities in diverse languages, it appears that coordination with the national government program pushed them to devote more time to three linguistic communities with larger speaker bases.

Commercial Publishing Companies

Commercial publishing companies include Editorial Cholsamaj. Technically a non-profit but with a for-profit wing, Editorial Maya’ Wuj, under the ownership of

Raxche’ Rodríguez Guaján (who has published on the Maya Movement as well as books on Maya culture), Cholsamaj has been the most stable and enduring commercial publisher of books in Mayan languages in Guatemala. Based in Guatemala City

3 Winak Boletín Intercultural was a publication of the Universidad Mariano Gálvez, whose linguistics department was funded by the SIL. The spelling of the word “Winak” and of other Mayan words used in the magazine follow SIL writing conventions, and exemplify the resistance to conform to the alphabet recommended at the Congreso Nacional del Alfabeto.

37

(traditionally Kaqchikel or Poqom territory, although now a magnet for immigration from across the country), Kaqchikel is spoken in the office (TV Maya 2011), and Maya clothing is encouraged in the workplace as well (AVANCSO 2016a). In this way

Cholsamaj is not only producing materials that support cultural revitalization, but also creating a business environment in Guatemala City that values outward expressions of

Maya identity in a professional context (and indeed bilingualism or multilingualism is essential to the job).

One of the initial challenges cited in the 2011 TV Maya interview by Ulmil

Mejilla, Coordinador Editorial at Cholsamaj, was design and technology. Cholsamaj included elements of Maya culture, such as glyphs and Maya numerals in their books, including creating fonts that included Maya numbers as early as 1998 in spite of being told by various engineers that it was not possible (AVANCSO 2016b). The inclusion of culturally relevant design elements is also an issue that Anita Heiss addresses in her writing on indigenous publishing in Australia, citing the experience of an Aboriginal designer within a publishing house that produced indigenous texts (and particularly children’s books) who states that “the integrity of utilizing designs, colours, symbols and language in a culturally appropriate way is paramount” (55). The designer also cited technology as a major obstacle in creating indigenous books, and noted that their accomplishments as a company were more impressive considering the lack of formal experience in publishing, poorer access to technology, and the disregard of mainstream publishers. These experiences show how indigenous-led efforts in publishing face many societal and technological obstacles not seen in mainstream publishing.

38

In a panel on Mayan publishing houses at the Feria Internacional del Libro en

Guatemala (Filgua), held in Guatemala City in 2016, while representing Maya’ Wuj

Raxche’ Rodríguez cites a lack of publishers capable of handling manuscripts in Mayan languages as the motivation to start a publishing company:

Bueno, primero empezó por escribir. Este es el tema, digamos como sistematizar la cultura maya, como quitarle toda esa carga ideológica de que los mayas desaparecieron, que los mayas ya no existen, que los idiomas mayas no se pueden expresar cualquier tema. Entonces allí empezó sistematizando la cultura. Yo he escrito varios libros y uno de ellos es sobre los números, por ejemplo…. Pero a la hora de publicarlos, ¿en dónde? Cuando está escrito en idiomas mayas entonces nos dificultaba llevar nuestro trabajo a una editorial y de levantar el texto letra por letra con todas las implicaciones que tenía. El costo se incrementaba enormemente. Desde allí vino la idea de la editorial. (AVANCSO 2016b)

This narrative shows how the publishing of books in Mayan languages comes directly out of the movement for cultural representation and revitalization, as well as the unwillingness of ladinos in the mainstream press to adapt to needs of indigenous texts.

Rodríguez also notes that while traditionally publishing companies (or editoriales) in Guatemala are charged with preparing a books for print as well as marketing and distributing the book after print, separate organizations, imprentas, printed the books. This is not true of organizations like Maya’ Wuj, who act as both publisher and printer:

También en la época … una imprenta cobraba diez mil quetzales por reproducir un libro con características de tantas páginas, tantos ejemplares, cuando vio los originales en idioma maya, le subió 20%. Sin ninguna razón. Por qué? Entonces lo que hicieron fue explicarnos que lo que pasa es que va a desprestigiar mi imprenta si yo reproduzco este libro. Por imprimir en idiomas mayas, se va degradar… desde ese entonces empezamos a tener imprenta. (AVANCSO 2016a)

This story of ladino bias frames the development of a parallel Mayan language publishing industry as a necessity in order to disengage with a racist system as much as possible and avoid inflated costs. Even beyond printing and publishing, Maya’ Wuj maintains a

39 bookstore, Nawal Wuj, in Guatemala City to provide access to their production as well as books by other presses.

Besides Editorial Cholsamaj and Editorial Maya’ Wuj, many smaller publishing companies with a focus on Mayan materials have sprung up across the country, including

Editorial Junajpu in Antigua. These publishing companies are largely Maya-owned and operated, and besides producing materials in Mayan languages also provide a space for employment that valorizes fluency in Mayan languages alongside Spanish. In recent years Catafixia Editorial, a small independent poetry press in Guatemala City, has begun including bilingual books of poetry in their collection, including Xik’ej k’al xe’ej/Alas y raíces by Sabino Esteban Francisco (2013). In this book the poems appear in Q’anjob’al first and then in Spanish.

Yax Te’ Books (previously Ediciones Yax Te’ or Fundación Yax Te’), currently based at Temple University in Philadelphia, is a small publishing company begun by

Fernando Peñalosa. Based in the United States, the company responded to a surge of interest in Maya studies in the US following the Guatemalan civil war, an interest that has since waned (Hana Muzika Kahn personal communication). Yax Te’ Books maintains a small catalog, and the books that are published in Mayan languages are usually bi- or trilingual in Spanish and English. They also trended towards works of fiction or recordings of traditional stories, instead of instructional textbooks or grammars, providing reading material in Mayan languages instead of aiming at creating a reading public. Additionally, many of the books published by Yax Te’ are written in Q’anjob’al,

Popti’ or Chuj, which are not among the “big four” Mayan languages. Yax Te’ Books’

40 online store has also served as a distribution point for Mayan language books by other publishers (Fischer 2000, 242).

Yax Te’ Books is also the publisher for Gaspar Pedro González’s book La otra cara, published first in Spanish in 1992 and then in Q’anjob’al (bilingually with Spanish) in 1996 as Sb’eyb’al jun naq maya’ q’anjob’al. The book is sometimes viewed as the first

Maya novel4, and has been the subject of literary criticism since its publication. While

England (1996) writes that González had initially written the novel in Q’anjob’al, she credits the later publication date with problems of standardization and editing: “González had had no experience writing in his own language and basically made up his own alphabet and writing conventions as he went, but he has now given the novel to a

Q’anjob’al expert in writing and issues of standardization for complete editing” (190).

This account, written before the Q’anjob’al edition had been released, implies that translating the entire work into Spanish was initially easier than editing the text in

Q’anjob’al. England’s phrasing of “a Q’anjob’al expert” suggests that the editing should be done by a Maya (and specifically Q’anjob’al) professional5, and that this category of person perhaps hadn’t been available when González first sought publication. Beyond issues of spelling and writing conventions, finding indigenous editors for indigenous work is an effort that Anita Heiss addresses in her 2003 study of indigenous publishing in

Australia. Even as publishing houses in that country began to include indigenous representation, Heiss and her sources in the publishing world note that it is important to have all-indigenous control over the document at the publishing level (51).

4 In the prologue to González’ 1997 book of literary criticism, Fernando Peñalosa refers to La otra cara as “la primera novela maya y la obra literaria maya más extensa que existe” (5). 5 The Q’anjob’al edition cites Rudy Camposeco, Ruperto Montejo, Fernando Peñalosa and the author as proofreaders and Fernando Peñalosa as typesetter and editor.

41

Yax Te’ Books’ location in the United States also shows the connections of Maya intellectuals and the Maya movement to US academic institutions, even though the same movement has historically been deeply wary of foreign academics. Maya linguists and academics of other disciplines often travel to the United States to earn their degrees.

Universities in the United States fund travel for students and faculty and the US

Department of Education furnishes grants for US citizens to travel to Guatemala to learn

Mayan languages, and in turn Maya academics (as well as Guatemalan scholars like

Arturo Arias who has published extensively on Maya literature) find their homes temporarily or permanently within US academia. Through these mechanisms, the ties between US academic institutions and the Maya movement remain strong.

The independent publishing houses that produce books in Mayan languages are rich resources for future research. They reflect most directly the Maya-directed efforts to create materials that reflect their culture, and highlight the multiple levels of challenges that such an endeavor creates. From issues of language and proofreading to design and page numbers to the outright racism of ladino printers, even before a book in a Mayan language hits the shelf it has surpassed a series of obstacles that aim to retain a ladino and

Spanish-speaking hierarchy in Guatemala. Organizations like Editorial Cholsamaj and

Editorial Maya’ Wuj in Guatemala and Yax Te’ Books in the United States are examples of Maya answers to the obstacles, and the willingness to build a parallel system and engage in industries previously dominated by ladinos (such as editing or building fonts, and directing these enterprises), or to take advantage of US academic institutions as temporary homes for Maya enterprises outside of Guatemala.

42

Funding for publishing projects is an ongoing issue. In relating a discussion with a man in search of financing for a manuscript in Tz’utujil, Mary Holbrock shows that the status quo for Mayan publishing is one of outside grants from NGOs funding the book instead of sales, and most copies are distributed for free to regional schools and community organizations (101). Funds for these projects can come from foreign sources, as in the case of Redd Barna, the Norwegian branch of the organization Save the Children that has funded several children’s books in Ixhil. Alternatively, Yax Te’ Books used a flagship product in English, Gaspar Pedro González’ A Mayan Life, to fund donations of

Mayan language texts to institutions in Guatemala, including donating 700 copies of the

Q’anjob’al Spanish edition of the same book to schools and Maya organizations in

Huehuetenango in 1996 (99). State-funded bodies such as the ALMG have more stable sources of income, without relying on sales. Developing a customer base for books in

Mayan languages is not just an issue of literacy, but also of development and addressing broader socioeconomic inequalities that affect indigenous communities in Guatemala.

Many of these organizations have educational aims, reflecting a particular challenge of the Mayan publishing industry: addressing the low literacy rate among indigenous people in Guatemala to create a readership base. While titles of organizations promoting Mayan languages mostly avoid references to specific Maya ethnic groups, nonprofits and private publishers are likely to focus on a few Mayan languages, if only for ease of employing editors fluent in those languages. Groups who choose names in a

Mayan language, such as OKMA, necessarily highlight one language in their title, although their work is multilingual. Although organizations like Cholsamaj foster spaces that privilege Mayan languages in the workplace, Spanish remains the lingua franca in

43 the commercial and political realms (as well as the only official language) of Guatemala.

Still, efforts to create a base of readers in Mayan languages in Guatemala have faced the challenge of linguistic diversity head on, with a rhetoric and practice of developing materials in multiple Mayan languages.

The variety of types and sizes of organizations producing books in Mayan languages in Guatemala shows the grassroots nature of the movement. From the Ministry of Education to longstanding nonprofits like the PLFM to small publishing houses in departmental capitals, Maya activists have organized at different levels and with varying degrees of dependence on the state, which makes the industry more flexible and hopefully more stable in the face of economic or political fluctuations. It also reflects the challenges of representing a pan-Maya interest while producing materials for distinct groups. The diversity of organizations involved in publishing books in Mayan languages is indicative of the strategies employed by Maya organizations to balance a need for autonomy with a lack of funds in the absence of a viable market for Mayan-language texts.

44

Chapter Three: Books in Mayan Languages

Outside of the phenomenon of I, Rigoberta Menchú and the resulting academic skirmish prompted by David Stoll, academic studies of books written by Guatemalan

Maya authors have mostly centered on literary analysis. While there is value in the study of pre-colonial and colonial Maya narratives, and analysis of contemporary fiction and poetry by Maya authors and poetry, the majority of it is not published in Mayan languages. While narrative writing and poetry may receive more critical attention, international readership and theorization, the bulk of books published in Mayan languages do not fall within those categories. For the purpose of considering the corpus of Mayan language materials as a whole, it is also worthwhile to look at different genres, and from different angles. In this chapter, I will examine children’s literature and dictionaries published in K’ichee’, Kaqchikel, Q’anjob’al, Popti’, and Ixhil to begin to explore what these texts have to offer us.

In contrast to an analysis of Mayan fiction and poetry, children’s literature and dictionaries give us insights into the intention behind Maya-organized publishing. While

Arias attempts to make decolonial interventions a focus of his studies of indigenous literature in Central America, the study itself plays into the narrative of the novel as a signifier of national or regional identity, giving it power beyond its immediate context. In the 19th century, following independence movements, the construction of a national literary canon became a major concern for Latin American historians (Calvo 280).

45

Novels were especially prized as signifiers of national identity and proof of the presence of a distinct culture capable of producing artistic works to rival those of Spain. In some ways the scholarly imbalance that places emphasis on Maya fiction echoes that anxiety, which places novels and poetry at the apex of culture and prestige. However, children’s literature and dictionaries, which far outnumber novels and books of poetry, reflect the educational and linguistic focus of the Maya Movement that produced them. More than analyzing the text of these books, the stylistic choices of authors, editors and illustrators give us insight into other decolonial interventions possible within the publishing industry.

Literary Analysis

Arturo Arias has used Maya literature as a door into cultural analysis. He analyzes recent works of Maya literature (published in Spanish) as well as the Popol Vuh, and sets them within the context of ladino or mestizo literature in Central America to characterize cultural currents that inform the political situation in Guatemala (Arias 2007). Arias situates Maya cultural and literary traditions (specifically the Popol Vuh) as the basis for

Central American literature as a whole, and tracks Maya tropes through ladino literature before delving into the emergence of the Maya novel. Taking Luis de Lion’s El Tiempo

Principia en Xibalba, Montejo’s Las Aventuras de Mr. Puttinson entre los Maya and

González’ La Otra Cara, (works very different in style and all written by men identifying as Maya, although not all published in Mayan languages), Arias posits that “Maya textuality enables subaltern actors to reacquire an actualized sense of their world from within the confines of literature” (78), which can be used as a method of processing trauma or recognizing the violence of race relations within Guatemalan society. Arias

46 also finds Maya literature of the 1990s political where ladino literature is not. Speaking of the challenge to ladino hegemony over production of knowledge implicit in the Maya novel, Arias writes:

This overall process also evidences that a new geopolitics of knowledge is emerging, one that blends grassroots knowledge with political activism. And a newly energized literary production is a part of it. This also implies that these forms of knowledge can—and, in effect, do—become operative for contemporary social movements. It also illustrates a community’s ability to multiply the points of entry through which they can insert themselves within globalized textures, building self-controlled parallel spaces within foreign bodies. (80)

While Arias here acknowledges political potential for Maya literary production, his evocation of parallel spaces within foreign bodies may not fully reflect the rhetoric of some of the authors that he analyzes. Moreover, literary and cultural critics such as Arias are also in the position of only being able to read the works published in Spanish, and not those intended for a Mayan-language audience.

Poetry in particular has been a rich area of creative production in Mayan languages. As short works, poems are easier to present bilingually, as most editions of poems in Mayan languages are published. Poets such as Humberto Ak’ab’al are thus able to gain national and international recognition for works written in Mayan languages (in

Ak’ab’al’s case, K’ichee’). Bilingual books of poems have also been published in

Kaqchikel (Rub’is Jun Mayab’ by Kaqjay Juan Yool Gómez), Q’anjob’al (Xik’ej K’al

Xe’ej by Sabino Esteban Francisco, Sq’anej maya’ by Gaspar Pedro González), and

Popti’ (Raices de Esperanza/Tzetet B’ay Xhkawxi ko K’ul by Santos Alfredo García

Domingo), and besides Humberto Ak’ab’al, poets with works published in K’ichee’ include Alberto Baten Ajanel and Otto Raúl González. Poets often act as their own

47 translators for bilingual editions of works of poetry (Yool Gómez 1994, Francisco 2013,

Ak’abal 2006).

Gaspar Pedro González, the author of La Otra Cara, also takes on literary analysis in Kotz’ib’: Nuestra Literatura Maya (1997). In 140 pages, González covers the entire history of Maya literature, dividing his analysis between precolonial, colonial and contemporary Maya literature. When writing of contemporary literature, he restricts his view to “literatura creativa”, although he acknowledges that many of the earliest examples of Mayan writing served functional rather than narrative purposes as records or calendars (7 2007). He intends the book partially as proof that Maya culture still exists in

Mesoamerica today, and that its contemporary literary expressions (both written and oral) are descended from colonial and precolonial Maya literature. His analysis of contemporary writing cites mainly poems (the exception being an excerpt from his novel,

La Otra Cara), and he seems concerned with representing production from as many linguistic groups as space allows. Throughout the book González argues that oral literary traditions have been the thread that ties present written literature to the past, and proposes a taxonomy of different oral genres that influence Maya literature (105). He also states that Maya literature cannot always be adequately examined within the Western canon and notes that the definition of a “Mayan writer” is not yet solidified (110).

Both Arias and González emphasize the connection of present day literature to a distant literate Maya past, although Arias also invokes works like the Popol Vuh in the shaping of ladino literature of Latin America. In different ways, both authors use fiction and poetry to make a case for Maya culture as valuable, influential, and alive, and grapple with its place in a field largely defined by the Western canon.

48

Dictionaries

Dictionaries carry a heavy symbolic weight as well as fulfilling practical purposes. When I was growing up, the library in my elementary school library had an enormous dictionary that was always open on a stand and could never be moved or closed because it was so big that it defied book binding techniques, and the librarians worried that normal use would break its spine. The image of a language so large and rich that it can hardly be contained by the physical form of a book is one of the ways that dictionaries have shaped my linguistic identity as an English speaker. As symbols of a language they can signify many things, including richness, complexity, prestige and history (such as the Oxford English Dictionary), or official formality and rigidity (as in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española). Dictionaries of Mayan languages are rich texts in themselves as products as well as generators of linguistic ideologies. In this section I will examine the directionality and usability of dictionaries as well as the design aspects and production quality. To make a claim across the corpus of Mayan language dictionaries and without detailed knowledge of several Mayan languages, I will focus on stylistic elements that impact their use and their symbolic properties.

This analysis largely leaves the issues of lexicography and the treatment of regional variations within language groups, the most obvious uses of the dictionary, to trained linguists. However, it is worth noting that the dictionaries published in this context have the ability to influence the standardization and overall use of Mayan languages. Strategies include creating dictionaries for the language of a certain region, such as the Diccionario Ixil de San Gaspar Chajul (1998) often employed by SIL but

49 also occasionally by the PLFM. This strategy reflects both the SIL’s unwillingness to cooperate with umbrella organizations like the ALMG, as well as the PLFM’s strategy of training linguists to study and support their own communities. Negotiation of standardization and regional variation is technically a role of the ALMG and their regional offices, so it is not surprising that their dictionaries take a less regional stance.

Figure 1. Definition for “ajnum” in Rusoltzij ri Kaqchikel (2007). This definition also includes pronunciation and part of speech.

Most commonly, dictionaries of Mayan language give the headword in the Mayan language, followed by the definition in Spanish, (often, but not always) followed by an example sentence in the Mayan language and a translation in Spanish. Sometimes variants or related forms of the word are given before the Spanish definition. These dictionaries may also include a short glossary in the back of the book using Spanish headwords and Mayan glosses, but they are clearly meant to be used to give descriptions in Spanish of Mayan words. This directionality assumes that the user of the dictionary is fluent in Spanish, which not all Mayan language speakers are. It also seems to imply that

Mayan languages lack the ability to define words, or express complex or abstract ideas.

One monolingual dictionary, K’ichee’ Choltzij by Florentino Pedro Ajpacajá Túm

(2001), has been published in K’ichee’, and another in Popti’, Tihtzoti’ yet ab’xub’al

Popti’ by the Comunidad Lingüística Maya and the ALMG (2013), has followed a similar format using minimal Spanish. In these dictionaries, a speaker of those languages

50 can look up a word and find its definition given entirely in the same language, with an example sentence. These dictionaries are also larger than most bilingual dictionaries, both in page count and size of the book (a textbook rather than trade size). The two dictionaries give parts of speech in Mayan languages (although the Popti’ does give a short definition in Spanish before the longer Popti’ entry and example sentences in

Popti’). The K’ichee’ dictionary has no glossary and contains 880 pages of definitions, while the monolingual Popti’ dictionary contains 392 pages of definitions in Popti’ and

97 pages of Spanish-Popti’ glossary (although the glossary would be almost impossible to use since the entries are alphabetical by the Popti’ gloss instead of the Spanish headword). Both of these books are paperback, and the pages are divided into two columns with page numbers given in Maya and Arabic numerals.

The writers of Mayan language dictionaries are often explicit in their goals. The final page of the Jit’il q’anej yet Q’anjob’al (2003) states simply and without translation into Q’anjob’al “se espera que este vocabulario pueda fortalecer el léxico de los hablantes del idioma Maya Q’anjob’al” (348), while an introduction in the same dictionary (given first in Q’anjob’al and then in Spanish) also states the book’s intended purpose of standardization and normalization, methodology, and the users the authors imagined— speakers of Q’anjob’al, researchers, and bilingual educators. The back cover of the

Diccionario del Idioma Ixil de Santa Mariá Nebaj also intends to impart a strong sense of pride and responsibility to speakers of Ixhil, making reference to the glory of the pre- conquest Maya whose descendants “conservan todavía intacta la pureza de su idioma, sus costumbres, y su cosmovisión” (emphasis mine). This phrase draws strongly on notions of cultural purity as well as pride in Maya civilization before the advent of

51

Spanish colonization. A separate text box highlighted in yellow reads “es responsabilidad de cada maya-hablante apreciar, conservar esta herencia y demostrar al mundo la importancia que representa.”

An appendix at the back of the Diccionario del Idioma Jakalteko (1996) published by the PLFM contains Popti’ neologisms meant to replace common Spanish loanwords. An introduction to the section names Spanish loanwords as damaging to the

Popti’ language and implores readers to avoid them: “Se debe hacer consciencia y tratar de evitar que continúe el deterioro de este idioma maya, para conservar la herencia tan valiosa que nuestros antepasados nos legaron” (336). This outright appeal, as well as drawing attention to the words by presenting them in a separate section of the dictionary, foregrounds the idea of anticolonialism by asking readers to respect the legacy of their ancestors by discontinuing the damaging use of Spanish words in Popti’. While the passage includes the reader through references to “nuestros antepasados” (emphasis mine), it is presented only in Spanish, suggesting that the intended audience speaks mostly Spanish.

Woven patterns and glyphs are common themes of the covers of dictionaries starting in the 2000s, many published by the ALMG (Appendix B). Some of these dictionaries use both1, with glyphs imposed over a woven background. The glyphs on the cover of Stzotib’al Popti’, while emerald green and digitally designed, have been designed to look cracked, giving them the impression of stone carvings. The cover of

Jit’il Q’anej yet Q’anjob’al has cartoon-like glyphs in a rainbow of different gradient colors, set on a green background that upon closer inspection is a photograph of finely

1 As in Jit’il Q’anej yet Q’anjob’al (2003) and Stzotib’al Popti’ (2001)

52 woven cloth with a faint diamond pattern. The ALMG logo features prominently on both.

The cover of the monolingual K’ichee’ dictionary (published by Cholsamaj) features a mottled reddish brown color reminiscent of an antique manuscript, with a worn-looking illustration of two seated figures. The overall effect is of a codex, although a strip of brightly colored weaving runs along the bottom edge of the cover. Instead of weaving or codex imagery, the cover of the monolingual Popti’ dictionary uses a background of a petate (woven reed mat), with a glyph-inspired face in profile. From the figure’s mouth a comma-shape usually representing breath, but in this case is used as a speech bubble, containing the words “Tihtzoti’: ab’, b’ejtanh.” Other glyphs showing a date are in the upper left hand corner of the cover, and bands of geometric woven patterns border the glyph face and the bottom edge of the cover. These motifs of glyphs and weaving are used to evoke the pre-Columbian Maya cultural legacy that is appealed to in the rhetoric of linguistic purity and pride used in introductions and covers. The imagery could also be read as a suggestion that these books are a gateway to a time before the Spanish colonization.

Five hardcover dictionaries2 from the 1990s published by the PLFM, SIL and the

Programa de Rescate Cultural Maya-Ixil have simple cover designs that feature sketches of Maya people, a sketch of a stela, and photographs of Maya women in traditional dress.

The people depicted on the covers of these dictionaries are overwhelmingly women (with one man as part of a couple and one child). In the absence of advanced graphics, these covers appeal to ideas of ancientness (as with the sketch of a stela and the unfailing

2 Diccionario del Idioma Jakalteko (1996), Diccionario Ixil de San Gaspar Chajul (1998), Diccionario del Idioma Ixil de Santa María Nebaj (1999), Aqb’al Elu’l Yol Vatzsaj (1995, Ixil), and A’ U U’ Uva’a Uva’ Molel Ca Ink’a Kuyolb’al Atz Tuch’ Yolb’al Castiiya (1996, Ixil)

53 inclusion of traditional dress), and also frame the woman as the bearer of the language, reflecting the higher rates of fluency in Mayan languages among women.

While dictionaries of Mayan languages are still majority bilingual, there is recent movement towards the creation of monolingual dictionaries that even provide abbreviations for parts of speech in Mayan languages. The strong rhetoric of responsibility to value and protect the Maya linguistic inheritance as well as the imagery of women, weaving, and glyphs form a sense of continuity with pre-Columbian Maya culture. When combined, these elements suggest that the creators of Mayan-language dictionaries are assigning value to Mayan languages based on their relation to a prestigious pre-Columbian culture, and in direct opposition to Spanish.

Children’s Literature

Compared to novels and books of poetry, children’s literature written in Mayan languages is abundant. A 2015 report on children’s books written in Guatemala produced by the Ministry of Culture and Sports is organized by language, listing first the 22 Mayan languages followed by Spanish, Xinka, Garifuna and English. In total, the catalog lists

254 books, although none are found in Uspanteko, Sipakapense, and Itza’, and a further ten Mayan languages3 count with less than five books. Production of the books included in the catalogue peaks in the period from 1990-1999, with a total of 122 books in 10 languages. The period of 2000-2009 lagged in number of books but represented an increase in diversity, with 89 books across 17 Mayan languages. At the time the report was produced, the 2010s were seeing a dip in both diversity and volume, with 26 books

3 Achi, Akateko, Awakateko, Chalchiteko, Chorti’, Chuj, Mopan, Poqomam, Sakapulteko and Tekiteko.

54 in 13 languages, but all these decades represented a huge increase from the 1980s and decades before.

Besides being more prevalent than the literature that gains the attention of academics, children’s books in Mayan languages also more directly represent the work of

Maya Movement. While children’s literature bears less of a burden of academic analysis, it would be wrong to think it is less representative of the politics of Maya cultural revival.

Besides being an important aspect of early literacy projects, children’s literature communicates culture and social values, as well as providing Maya children with positive representations of lives that may resemble theirs. Through the foregrounding of non- dominant languages, the representation of indigenous lifeways, and the representation of place and cultural identity, indigenous children’s literature can use forms of dominant culture (from common tropes such as the alphabet book to larger systems such as primary education) to validate and support colonized populations (Bradford 275). A survey of children’s books in K’ichee’, Kaqchikel, Q’anjob’al, Ixhil and Popti’ held at Tulane’s

Latin American Library illustrates the way in which these tactics are deployed in Mayan language children’s books.

Bradford describes how alphabet books that use culturally relevant words and pictures to teach children sounds and letters re-center indigenous languages. Entering the child’s life at a time when they are just starting to associate written letters and words with images and the world around them, “the alphabet books and counting books published by indigenous authors and artists over the last decade adopt tactics of interpolation by exploiting the possibilities of a form deeply implicated in the production and reproduction of the values of dominant cultures, a form directed to the youngest children

55 engaged in building repertoires of knowledge, values, and affect” (Bradford 275). The

Popti’ alphabet book Ko kuyu’wej hej stz’ib’al jab’xub’al Popti’! uses culturally relevant examples to engage young readers. The book uses illustrations of a metate (stone for grinding corn, Figure 3) and a drinking gourd to illustrate the sounds “k” and “tz” and the words “ka’” and “tzuh”. Plants and animals are used throughout the book. The illustrations are simple black and white line drawings (by Mauricio Xulú Sincal), that reflect knowledge of the culture, including what a typical house or drinking vessel might look like to a Maya child, as well as the ability to differentiate between the two types of baskets (Xuk and motx) used to illustrate the sounds “k” and “tx” at the end of a word.

Figure 2. Illustrations from Ko kuyu’wej hej stz’ib’al jab’xub’al Popti’! (2000)

This is in contrast to a book published bilingually in Popti’ by SIL in 1976, which tells the story of a visit to the zoo. Written for slightly more advanced readers, the text of

Yet jilnihan no nok’ bey xek’ak’/Cuando vimos a los animales en Guatemala is printed first in its entirety in Popti’, and then in Spanish. Instead of situating itself within daily

56 activities and natural environments that might be familiar to its readers as the alphabet book aims to do, the narrative is a visit to the zoo in Guatemala City, describing the exotic animals, their activities, diets and cages. In the Popti’ text, most of the names of the animals (lion, elephant, porcupine, peacock) are given in Spanish. While this book fulfills its aim of providing reading material in Popti’, it does not supply the reader with

Popti’ words to describe the focus of the narrative. The experience of going to the zoo is also essentially an urban leisure activity, most likely not available to many of its readers.

This type of text makes Popti’ seem ill-suited to modern cosmopolitan activities (going to the zoo, naming foreign animals), even though the names of some of the animals may be equally as foreign in Spanish.

The Popti’ alphabet book also partially bucks Western norms by dividing the letters into groups before listing them (for the most part) alphabetically. The vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are listed first, followed by consonants (h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, x, y, ‘, b’, k’, q’, t’, ch, nh, tx, tz, xh, ch’, tx’, tz’). In addition, instead of each page featuring one word

(and accompanying image) that begins with the target letter. Ko kuyu’wej hej stz’ib’al jab’xub’al Popti’! gives examples of words that begin with and contain vowels (ak and pat for a) and words that begin, contain and end with each consonant (sajchi, has, and asun for s). Each of these example words is accompanied by an illustration, as well as four other unillustrated example words.

Illustrations are an important aspect of children’s literature, and Heiss has argued that having appropriate images and illustrations is essential to the production of indigenous literature. The illustrator for many books in Mayan languages is Mayra Fong

Rodriguez, who has been providing illustrations for the Universidad Rafael Landívar and

57 others since at least 1991. In the Ixhil children’s book U tal q’u’q’ (1991 by Maximiliano

Poma S.) her illustrations consist of line drawings of people, towns and plants of the

Maya world. Women and girls wear traditional huipiles and cortes with woven belts, sandals and sometimes elaborate braids while men and boys wear long pants, collared button-up shirts, sandals and hats. While their clothing can be detailed, the faces of the people in the illustrations are minimalist, often merely two dots for eyes and a line of a smile. The illustration is done in black and white with no shading, so skin color is undifferentiated. This allows the Mayanness of her characters to come from the signifiers of clothing, language, activities and surroundings rather than physical appearance or skin color. The elegant simplicity of the drawings also lends itself well to black and white printing, while the front and back covers are in color with the same line drawings filled in in a watercolor style.

The quality of the materials used in printing the books varies, but most are lower- cost paperback books bound with staples. These books are especially susceptible to water damage, which threatens their utility. Many of the books in Tulane’s collection have been rebound in order to preserve them, and some that have suffered water damage are very delicate. The covers in particular of the Universidad Rafael Landívar series seem prone to disintegrate, the pages sometimes stick together and discolor. Since many of these books were printed in runs of 1,000 and are meant to be used by children, their delicacy is unfortunate. Many of the children’s books are part of series printed by the Universidad

Rafael Landívar and are aimed at the early literacy era. This reflects the focus on bilingual intercultural education policy that starts with early schooling, while the government and other organizations work on building further years.

58

Many of the childrens’ books focus on Maya culture, the natural world, and narratives taken from oral tradition. A project by the Asociación de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala in 1993 transcribed stories told by children in Spanish and Mam,

Kaqchikel and K’ichee’. These projects center children and reward them for speaking

Mayan languages, while also reflecting the oral tradition that forms an important part of

Mayan narrative tradition.

While some books are bilingual, many are monolingual in Mayan languages.

Bilingual texts can take many forms. In the Q’anjob’al and Spanish edition of El niño jaguar by Adán López Morales (2006), the entire text is given first in Spanish, and then presented in Q’anjob’al almost as a separate book inside the same binding with its own cover, marking a complete separation of the texts. In the Kaqchikel and Spanish version of the same text published in 2011, the Kaqchikel and Spanish texts run in side-by-side columns on the same page, allowing readers to compare and also allowing Spanish and

Kaqchikel speakers to move through the book in the same way, instead of sending non-

Spanish speakers directly to the back. Both books contain the same prologue from the director of Helvetas Guatemala (a branch of the Swiss Association for International

Cooperation) acknowledging the need for bilingual texts.

Traditional weaving and clothing is again a strong trope throughout the books that is used to mark Maya culture. While some books include illustrations of Maya children in traditional dress, a series of books for children published by Cholsamaj incorporates weaving into the design of the pages and covers of several books, using full color photographs of woven designs to edge pages or as the background of covers. These books are also hardcover, with full color illustrations.

59

This is far from the first time that weaving has been used in Guatemalan books. A collection of José Milla’s works published from 1935-1937 is bound entirely in cloth woven in the Maya style. José Milla is famous for his novelas costumbristas, depicting life in colonial Guatemala, and his character Juan Chapín, Milla’s idea of the prototypical

(ladino) Guatemalan. Binding the volumes in cloth meant to evoke Maya culture for a prestige edition of these works casts Maya culture and people as part of a Guatemalan national culture in which indigenous people are viewed as subordinate and culture is appropriated for symbolic purposes. The use of weaving motifs in children’s books and dictionaries reclaims this history and symbol, reorienting relationships between the government and Maya people in Guatemala. The illustrations of Maya people in traditional clothing also depict these cultural symbols in use in the present day as part of a modern Maya lifestyle. This combats the early ladino nationalist strategy of using indigenous symbols while claiming that the pre-conquest cultures they belong to are no longer extant, and bear no relationship to contemporary indigenous people, as well as the co-existing national project of homogenization that urges Maya people to integrate into ladino society linguistically and culturally.

60

Conclusion

This preliminary analysis of Mayan publishing in Guatemala provides a window into the progression of that country’s movement for Maya cultural and linguistic revitalization. Although opinions among Maya leaders may vary, regional variation may pose a challenge to the standardization of Mayan languages, and the lackluster government support may lead to issues of implementation for legislative victories, among all the uncertainty books continue to be produced. Books in Mayan languages arise out of a context in which they are immediately in opposition to the status quo. Publishing and bibliography have long been sources of ladino national identity in Guatemala, an identity which has historically depended on the exclusion of indigenous peoples. Books published in Mayan languages in the last thirty years are largely the product of a social movement born out of extreme state oppression and shaped by discourses of culture and linguistics as well as a pan-Mayanism that demands negotiations of unity and difference between

Mayan linguistic groups.

Faced with the problem of creating materials for a market that does not yet exist in force (Maya comfortable in their languages and with the economic means and access to purchase books), partially in order to create that market, the diverse organizations that publish books in Mayan languages create strategies that balance autonomy with funding.

While some of these strategies involve the state, others opt to skip over the national government and appeal to international governments and foundations. Still others rely on side-businesses to cover their expenses.

61

Finally, the books published in Mayan languages are valuable as symbols as well.

The editorial and stylistic choices leading up to publication as well as introductory text in dictionaries and children’s books show how Maya authors and publishers are reclaiming

Maya symbols of pre-Columbian Maya culture. These same symbols have been used to forge the ladino national Guatemalan identity, but in denial of contemporary indigenous groups. The use of glyphs and weaving motifs in Maya dictionaries, however, rejects the ladino formulation by drawing on a strong sense of continuity in Mayan language and culture that fosters connection as well as responsibility to past generations reaching back to the Maya empire. The abundance and rhetorical strength of books like dictionaries and children’s books compared to fiction and poetry mark a difference in the corpus-building priorities of the Guatemalan state and the Maya.

This project opens several avenues for future research. A more complete bibliography of one or several Mayan languages could be a valuable resource for Mayan language speakers and learners, and could shed more light on the differences in the development of corpora among Mayan languages with varying speaker bases or access to resources. A comparative study of publishing in Yucatec Maya or Tzotzil in Mexico with one or more Mayan language spoken in Guatemala could yield additional strategies for the production and diffusion of materials in Mayan languages, and highlight unique qualities of the Guatemalan context. Oral histories of certain key organizations in Mayan publishing, such as the ALMG, PLFM and Cholsamaj could also delve deeper into the organizational qualities of this offshoot of the Maya Movement.

62

Appendix

Appendix A. Monthly financial report of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala

63

64

Appendix B. Front covers of Mayan language dictionaries

Cover of Stzotib’al popti’ (2001).

Cover of Jit’il q’anej yet q’anjob’al (2003)

65

Cover of K’ichee’ choltziij (2001)

Cover of Tihtzoti’ yet ab’uxb’al popti’ (2013)

66

Bibliography

Ajpacajá Túm, Pedro Florentino. K’ichee’ choltziij. Guatemala, Cholsamaj, 2001. Ak’abal, Humberto. Ri upalaj ri kaq’ik’: aqajtzil : cha’on bix. Caracas, Venezuela, Monte Ávila Editores Latinoamericana, 2006. Anaya Rosique, Jesús. Editar en la universidad: paradojas y retros. Medellín, Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006. Arias, Arturo. Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Arias, Arturo, and David Stoll. The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Asicona Ramírez, Lucas. Diccionario ixil de San Gaspar Chajul: ixil-español. Antigua Guatemala, Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín, 1998. Asociación de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala. Guatemala, Cuentos infantiles k’iche’. Asociación de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala, 1993. AVANCSO Guatemala. Editoriales Mayas y Filgua 1. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH2hdq5Jz_Q. Uploaded July 26, 2016. AVANCSO Guatemala. Editoriales Mayas y Filgua 2. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elc05sqnT9Y. Uploaded July 26, 2016. AVANCSO Guatemala. Editoriales Mayas y Filgua 3. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xstegb3-Dk&t=554s. Uploaded July 26, 2016. Bradford, Clare. “Children’s Literature in a Global Age: Transnational and Local Identities.” Global Studies of Childhood, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2011. Calvo, Hortensia. “The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America.” Book History, vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277–305. Cedillo Chel, Antonio. Diccionario ixil. Antigua Guatemala, Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín, 1999. Centro Educativo y Cultural Maya. Runa’oj ri k’amöl b’ey Seattle = La carta del Jefe Seattle. Guatemala C. A., Cholsamaj, 1996. CERLALC. “El libro en cifras: boletín estadístico del libro en Iberoamérica.” UNESCO. August 2017. Cojtí Cuxil, Demetrio. Ri Maya’ moloj pa iximulew = El movimiento maya (en Guatemala). Guatemala, Cholsamaj, 1997. Cojtí Cuxil, Demetrio. “Indigenous Nations in Guatemalan Democracy and the State: A Tentative Assessment.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, vol. 51, no. 2, July 2007, pp. 124–147. Comunidad Lingüística Q’anjob’al. Jit’il q’anej yet q’anjob’al. Guatemala, Kʼulbʼil Yol Twitz Paxil, 2003.

67

Constitución de la República del Ecuador. 4 October 2008. Asamblea Nacional http://www.asambleanacional.gov.ec/documentos/constitucion_de_bolsillo.pdf Diario de Centro América. Documental Museo de La Tipografía Nacional. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odwjim03bIg&t=134s. Uploaded July 23, 2014. Díaz, Víctor Miguel. Historia de La Imprenta En Guatemala Desde Los Tiempos de La Colonia, Hasta La Época Actual. Guatemala C.A., Tipografía Nacional, 1930. Earle, Rebecca. The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810-1930. Duke University Press, 2007. England, Nora C. “Doing Mayan Linguistics in Guatemala.” Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 68, no. 1, 1992, pp. 29–35. England, Nora C. “The Role of Language Standardization in Revitalization.” In Edward R. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (Eds.) Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala (pp. 178-194). University of Texas Press/Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996. Fischer, Edward F. “Documenting Maya Resurgence: Trends in Maya Scholarship and Publishing.” In Richard F. Phillips (Ed.). Documenting Movements, Identity and Popular Culture in Latin America (pp. 236-243). Austin, TX: SALALM, 2000. Francisco, Sabino Esteban. Xik’ej k’al xe’ej = Alas y raíces. Ciudad de Guatemala, Catafixia Editorial, 2013. French, Brigittine M. Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity. University of Arizona Press, 2010. García Domingo, Santos Alfredo. Raíces de esperanza = Tzetet b’ay xhkawxi ko k’ul. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, Fundación Yax Te’, 2000. González, Gaspar Pedro. Kotz’ib’, Nuestra Literatura Maya. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, Fundación Yax Te’, 1997. González, Gaspar Pedro. Sq’anej maya’ = palabras mayas: poemas en maya q’anjob’al y español. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, Fundación Yax Te’, 1998. Heiss, Anita. Dhuuluu-Yala: To Talk Straight: Publishing Indigenous Literature. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2003. Hemeroteca PL. “1660: La Primera Imprenta Viene a Guatemala.” Prensa Libre, 15 July 2017. Accessed online. Holbrock, Mary J. Mayan Literacy Reinvention in Guatemala. University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Houston, Steven. Literacy Among the Pre-Columbian Maya: A Comparative Perspective. In Elizabeth Hill Boone Walter Mignolo (Eds.). Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes (pp. 27-49). Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. Hurtado Montejo, Aurelio Domingo. Ko kuyu’wej hej stzoti’b’al jab’xub’al Popti’! Guatemala, Universidad Rafael Landívar, Instituto de Lingüística y Educación, 2000. Jewett, Dwight David. A’ u u’ uva’a uva’ molel ca ink’a kuyolb’al atz tuch’ yolb’al castiiya = Diccionario ixil de Chajul-español, español-ixil de Chajul. Guatemala, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1996. “La Asociación ‘Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín’ (PLFM).” Winak Boletín Intercultural vol. 2 no. 1, June 1986, pp. 36-39. López Morales, Adán. El niño jaguar: leyendas mayas. Guatemala, Editorial Maya Nojib’sa, 2006.

68

López Morales, Adán. El niño jaguar: leyendas mayas = Ri b’alam ak’wal : ri taq mayab’ rutzijol. Guatemala, Editorial Maya Nojib’sa, 2011. Mallon, Florencia E. Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. University of California Press, 1995. Matsumoto, Mallory E. “Recording Territory, Recording History: Negotiating the Sociopolitical Landscape in Colonial Highland Maya Títulos.” Ethnohistory, vol. 63, no. 3, July 2016, p. 469. Maxwell, Judith. Ownership of Indigenous Languages: A Case Study from Guatemala. In Mary Riley (Ed.). Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights: Legal Obstacles and Innovative Solutions (pp. 173-217). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004. Medina Toma, Miguel. Poesías en idioma Ixil de San Juan Cotzal. Guatemala, Instituto Linguistico de Verano, 1985. Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador. Educación Intercultural Bilingüe. Modelo Del Sistema De Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (MOSEIB). 2013. PDF. Montejo, Victor. Maya Intellectual Renaissance: Identity, Representation, and Leadership. University of Texas Press, 2005. Patal Majzul Lolmay, Filiberto. Rusoltzij ri Kaqchikel: diccionario estándar bilingüe Kaqchikel-Español. Guateamala, Cholsamaj : OKMA, 2007. Poma S., Maximiliano. U tal q’u’q’. Guatemala, Universidad Rafael Landívar, Instituto de Lingüística, 1991. Quiroa, Néstor. “The Popol Vuh and the Dominican Religious Extirpation in Highland Guatemala: Prologues and Annotations of Fr. Francisco Ximénez.” The Americas, Apr. 2011. Rama, Claudio, Richard Uribe & de Sagastiazábal, Leandro. Las editoriales universitarias en América Latina. CERLALC. 2006. PDF. Ramírez Felipe, Alonzo. Yet jilnihan̈ no nok’ bey xek’ak’ = Cuando vimos a los animales en Guatemala. Guatemala C. A., Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1976. Ramírez Pérez, José. Diccionario del idioma jakalteko. Antigua Guatemala, Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín, 1996. Rappaport, Joanne. Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Duke University Press, 2012. República de Guatemala Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). Censos Nacionales XI de Población y VI de Habitación: Características de la Población y de los Locales de Habitación Censados. Guatemala, INE, 2003. Richards, Julia Becker & Michael Richards. “Maya Education: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis of Mayan Language Education Policy” In Edward R. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (Eds.) Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala (pp. 208-221). University of Texas Press/Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996. Rodríguez Guaján, Raxche’ Demetrio. “Maya Culture and the Politics of Development.” In Edward R. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (Eds.) Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala (pp. 178-194). University of Texas Press/Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996. Rodríguez Sánchez, Juan, and Programa de Rescate Cultural Maya-Ixil. Aq’b’al elu’l yol vatzsaj = Diccionario ixil. San Juan Cotzal, Guatemala, El Programa, 1995.

69

Romero, Sergio. “Bill Gates Speaks K’ichee’! The Corporatization of Linguistic Revitalization in Guatemala.” Language and Communication, vol. 47, 2016, pp. 154–166. Rose, Jonathan. “The Horizon of a New Discipline: Inventing Book Studies.” Publishing Research Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1, 2003, pp. 11–19. Saturno, William A., et al. “Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala.” Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 311, no. 5765, Mar. 2006, pp. 1281–83. Serrano Córdoba, Ricardo. La producción del libro en Guatemala en 1967. Guatemala, Escuela de Bibliotecología, Departamento de Historia, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1969. Silvestre, Antonio Quiñónez, et al. Tihtzoti’ yet ab’xub’al popti’. Jacaltenango, Guatemala, Skonhob’ Ab’xub’al Popti’ = Comunidad Lingüística Popti’ : ALMG, Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala = Kuyb’al Ab’xub’al Mayab’ yet Xe’q’aq’, 2013. Stepanova, Masha. “Disciplinary Duality: The Contested Terrain of Book Studies.” Publishing Research Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2, 2007, pp. 105–115. Sucuc, Cecilio Tuyuc, and Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala. Stzotib’al popti’ = Vocabulario jakalteko (popti’): popt’-ab’xub’al wes, ab’xub’al wes-popti’. Ciudad de Guatemala, Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, Comunidad Lingüística Popti’, 2001. Stoll, David. “The Summer Institute of Linguistics and Indigenous Movements.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 9, no. 2, 1982, pp. 84–99 Tedlock, Dennis. 2000 Years of Mayan Literature. University of California Press, 2010. Thurner, Mark. From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru. Duke University Press, 1997. TV Maya. Batz Editorial Cholsamaj. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEPma1ZGNb0. Uploaded November 22, 2011. Verdugo de Lima, Lucía. “El Instituto de Lingüística y Educación: La Respuesta Landivariana a Un País Multiétnico, Pluricultural y Multilingüe.” Revista Cultura de Guatemala, vol. 30, no. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 131–41. Warren, Kay B. Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala. Princeton University Press, 1998. Wogan, Peter. “Imagined Communities Reconsidered: Is Print-Capitalism What We Think It Is?” Anthropological Theory, vol. 1, no. 4, Dec. 2001, pp. 403–18. Yool Gómez, Kaqjay Juan. Rub’is jun mayab’ = Tristeza de un maya. Antigua Guatemala, Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín, 1994.

70

Biography

Sara Kittleson was born in Salem, Oregon and received a B. A. in Anthropology from Grinnell College in 2008.