Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World

by Garrett W. Cook, Thomas A. Offit, Rhonda Taube (Contribution by)

Overview

Based on more than thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork in Highland Guatemala, this study of Maya diviners, shamans, ritual dancers, and religious brotherhoods describes the radical changes in traditional Maya religious practice wrought by economic globalization and political turmoil. Focusing on the primary participants in the annual festival in the K’iche’ Maya village of Santiago Momostenango, the authors show how older religious traditionalists and the new generation of “cultural activist” religious practitioners interact within a single local community, and how their competing agendas for adapting Maya religiosity to a new and continually changing political economy are perpetuating and changing Maya religious traditions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826353191
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	06/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Garrett W. Cook is professor of anthropology at Baylor University. He is the author of Renewing the Maya World: Expressive Culture in a Highland Town.

Thomas A. Offit is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Baylor. He is the author of Conquistadores de la Calle: Child Street Labor in Guatemala City.

Rhonda Taube is an associate professor of art history at Riverside City College. With Christina Halperin, Katherine Faust, and Aurore Giguet, she is coeditor of Mesoamerican Figurines: Small-Scale Indices of Large-Scale Social Phenomena.

Table of Contents

Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Understanding Maya Religion in the New Millennium xiii

Chapter 1 The Fiesta Patronál in Historical Context: The Festival System and Anthropological Theory 1

Chapter 2 Santiago and the Cofradía: Reorganizing the Tradition 26

Chapter 3 The Monkeys Dance: Adjusting the Performance 55

Chapter 4 Foreign Characters: Visualizing Identity in the Guatemalan Highlands in the Twenty-First Century 96

Chapter 5 The Dynamics of Contemporary Maya Religious Tradition: Agency and Structure in Selected Case Studies 119

Conclusion: The Future of Village-Level Indigenous Religion 154

Notes 165

References 175

Index 189