Urban Indigeneity: Constructing and Mediating an Indigenous Identity in Guatemala City
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18113/P8ik359883Keywords:
Indigeneity, Governmentality, Maya, Identity, Empowerment, Superación, Neoliberalism, Mestizaje, Resistance, GuatemalaAbstract
This paper examines how development provides a site for particular performances of indigeneity in Guatemala. It explores the product of NGO (non-governmental organization) governmentality amongst a group of indigenous students participating in private scholarship programs in Guatemala City. The article draws on existing literature and ethnographic material to analyze three different outcomes when indigenous students engage with development NGOs that are trying to "empower" them and enable them to superarse, or overcome their conditions. First, an example of Hale's "indio permitido" (permitted Indian); second, one of the erasure of indigenous identity, where success means assimilation into mainstream white/non-indigenous society; finally, a "third space" where indigenous actors become agents of their own development.
References
Alcantara, Manuel. 2005. "Politics and Society in Latin America at the Start of the New Millennium." Social Forces83(4): 1659-1670.
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.New York: Verso Books.
Bhabha, Homi. 1990. "The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha." InIdentity: Community, Culture, Difference. Rutherford, Jonathan, ed. Pp. 207–221.
Blaser, Mario. 2010. Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond. New Hampshire: Duke University Press.
Blaser, Mario, Harvey A. Feit, and Glenn McRae. 2004. In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization. London: IDRC and Zed Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Language and Symbolic Power. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Vol. 16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Casallas, Diego A., and Juliana Padilla Pedrahita. 2004. "Antropología forense en el conflicto latinoamericano. Estudio comparativo Argentina, Guatemala, Perú y Colombia." Maguaré18: 293-310.
Cayzac, Hugo. 2001.Guatemala, Proyecto Inconcluso: La Multiculturalidad, un Paso Hacia la Democracia.Guatemala City: FLACSO.
Cody, Francis. 2009. "Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India." Cultural Anthropology24(3): 347-380.
Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta. 2002. "Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality." American Ethnologist29(4): 981-1002. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805165.
Foucault, Michel. 1997. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.Vintage Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grandin, Greg. 2000. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Hale, Charles R. 2006.Más que un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala. New Mexico:School of American Research.
Hale, CharlesR. 2004. "Rethinking Indigenous Politics in the Era of the 'Indio Permitido.'" NACLA Report on the Americas. Report on Race, Part 1: 16-21.
Hale, Charles R. 2002. "Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala." Journal of Latin American Studies34(3): 485-524.
Hale, Charles R. 1997. "Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America."Annual Review of Anthropology: 567-590.
Hale, Charles, and Rosamel Millamán. 2006. "Cultural Agency and Political Strugglein the Era of the Indio Permitido." Cultural agency in the Americas: 281-304.
Lara, Julio F.2014."El 2013 cerró con 5,259 homicidios." Prensa Libre, January 2.
Lemus, Silvia. 2015. "Crece seguridad privada illegal." Prensa Libre,July 17. http://www.prensalibre.com/hemeroteca/crece-seguridad-privada-ilegal.
Li, Tania Murray. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics.North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Merry, Sally Engle. 2003. "Human Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture (And Anthropology Along the Way)." Polar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.26(1): 55-76.
Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social (MSPAS), Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), ICF International. 2017. "Informe Final." Encuesta Nacional de Salud Materno Infantil 2014-2015. Guatemala:MSPAS/INE/ICF.
Nelson, Diane M. 1999. A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala.Oakland, California: University of California Press.
Postero, Nancy. "Wedding the Nation: Spectacles of Indigeneity in Plurinational Bolivia."Lecture.
Radcliffe, Sarah A. 2015. Dilemmas of Difference: Indigenous Women and the Limits of Postcolonial Development Policy. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Radcliffe, Sarah A. 2010. "Rechazan la solicitud de amnistía al ex general golpista Ríos Montt."España: El Mundo.http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2015/10/ 08/5616e52222601da84f8b4634.html.
Rose, Nikolas. 1996. "Governing Advanced Liberal Democracies." Foucault and Political Reason, Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds. Pp. 37–64. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. "The Primacy of the Ethical. Propositions for a Militant Anthropology." Current Anthropology36 (3): 409-420.
Similox Salazar, Vitalnio. 2005. Ri Maya' Amaq' pa Champomal: La Participación y Representación Política de los Pueblos Mayas.Guatemala: Rukemik Na'ojil.
Smith-Oka, Vania. 2013. Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico.Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Smith, Carol A. 1991. "Maya Nationalism." NACLA Report on the Americas. Washington D.C.: NACLA.
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. 2002. "Indigenous Peoples and the State in Latin America: An Ongoing Debate."Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy.Rachel Sieder, ed. Pp. 24-44.
Stephenson, Marcia. 1999. Gender and Modernity in Andean Bolivia. University of Texas Press.
Stevenson, Lisa. 2014. Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. University of California Press.
Wolf, Michaela. 2000. "The Third Spacein Postcolonial Representation." Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Sherry Simon and Paul St-Pierre, eds. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Further distribution of the work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published work's title, journal citation, and DOI (digital object identifier).
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- The work does not infringe any copyright; violate any other right of any third parties; contain any scandalous, libelous, or unlawful matter; or make any improper invasion of the privacy of any person. The author(s) agrees to indemnify and hold harmless The Pennsylvania State University against any claim or proceeding undertaken on any of the aforementioned grounds.
