Indigenous Studies in the Americas: Highlights from our Collection: Indigenous Works from Latin America

The great cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar will end in 2012. How does the story end? Do the oceans collapse? Does the sky fall as the last tree is cut? The remote homelands of the present day Maya in Mexico and Guatemala present a perfect microcosm to show how unhindered globalization is already destroying the Earth and indigenous cultures. The stories and the cosmovision of six young Maya are juxtaposed with our shortsighted exploitation of the Earth in this film.

In the mid-1990s, Patricia Foxen traveled back and forth between the Guatemalan highlands and Providence, Rhode Island, to understand the migration paths of K'iche' Mayan Indians who had fled the Guatemalan civil war to work in the factories and fisheries of New England. More than two decades later, many Mayans are still migrating to the US, today part of the "border crisis" that prompted the Trump administration's ruthless immigration and asylum policy backlash. As Foxen argues, the recent surge in Mayan border crossings must be contextualized within both the longer history of violence, marginality, and exclusion that has long led Guatemala's Indigenous populations to be "survivors on the move," as well as contemporary push factors such as climate change and growing inequality that have forced people from their communities. And yet one of the most significant drivers of continued emigration today, ironically, is the very culture of migration (described in the book) that has accelerated social change within many Indigenous communities, setting in motion a complex series of economic and cultural shifts that have compelled a continuous movement of people and generations to the US. Reading this story in 2020--at a time of massive growth in flows of irregular migrations around the world--can help us better understand the highly complex set of factors that propel long-term migrations and that shape transnational communities on both sides of the border. In Search of Providence offers a layered, historically grounded perspective that speaks to the local specificity behind the migration experience in order to point to the universal themes and contradictions of contemporary global displacements.

Maya and Spanish bilingual short stories collection.

Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija'ib' K'iche' Títulos is a careful analysis and translation of five Highland Maya títulos composed in the sixteenth century by the Nija'ib' K'iche' of Guatemala. The Spanish conquest of Highland Guatemala entailed a series of sweeping changes to indigenous society, not the least of which were the introduction of the Roman alphabet and the imposition of a European system of colonial government. Introducing the history of these documents and placing them within the context of colonial-era Guatemala, this volume provides valuable information concerning colonial period orthographic practice, the K'iche' language, and language contact in Highland Guatemala. For each text, author Mallory E. Matsumoto provides a photographic copy of the original document, a transliteration of its sixteenth-century modified Latin script, a transcription into modern orthography, an extensive morphologic analysis, and a line-by-line translation into English, as well as separate prose versions of the transcription and translation. No complete English translation of this set of manuscripts has been available before, nor has any Highland Maya título previously received such extensive analytical treatment. Offering insight into the reality of indigenous Highland communities during this period, Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija'ib' K'iche' Títulos is an important primary source for linguists, historians, and experts in comparative literature. It will also be of significant interest to students and scholars of ethnohistory, linguistics, Latin American studies, anthropology, and archaeology.

Maya and Spanish bilingual short stories collection.

Aymara Indians are a geographically isolated, indigenous people living in the Andes Mountains near Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the most arid regions of the world. As rapid economic growth in the area has begun to divert scarce water to hydroelectric and agricultural projects, the Aymara struggle to maintain their sustainable and traditional systems of water use, agriculture, and pastoralism. In Aymara Indian Perspectives on Development in the Andes, Amy Eisenberg provides a detailed exploration of the ethnoecological dimensions of the tension between the Aymara, whose economic, spiritual, and social life are inextricably tied to land and water, and three major challenges: the paving of Chile Highway 11, the diversion of the Altiplano waters of the Río Lauca for irrigation and power-generation, and Chilean national park policies regarding Aymara communities, their natural resources, and cultural properties within Parque Nacional Lauca, the International Biosphere Reserve.  Pursuing collaborative research, Eisenberg performed ethnographic interviews with Aymara people in more than sixteen Andean villages, some at altitudes of 4,600 meters. Drawing upon botany, agriculture, natural history, physical and cultural geography, history, archaeology, and social and environmental impact assessment, she presents deep, multifaceted insights from the Aymara's point of view. Illustrated with maps and dramatic photographs by John Amato, Aymara Indian Perspectives on Development in the Andes provides an account of indigenous perspectives and concerns related to economic development that will be invaluable to scholars and policy-makers in the fields of natural and cultural resource preservation in and beyond Chile.

Part One. Beginnings -- Cuñadasgo and conquistador polygamists, 1530s-1550s -- Institutionalizing kinship: the encomienda and Franciscan reducciones, 1550s-1640s -- Embodied borders: conflict and convergence in Guairá, 1570s-1630s -- Part Two. Challenges -- Resplendent prophets and vengeful warriors: Guaraní rejection of colonial rule -- Indios fronterizos and the Spanish-Guaraní militias -- Part Three. Communities -- Beyond the missions: Guaraní reducciones in Asunción's orbit -- The other reducción: Asunción's indios -- Beyond mestizos: Afro-Guaraní relations

Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past is a critical, annotated anthology of indigenous-authored texts, including the Nahua, Quechua, and Spanish originals, through which native peoples and Spaniards were able to convey their own perspectives on Spanish colonial order. It is the first volume to bring together native testimonies from two different areas of Spanish expansion in the Americas to examine comparatively these geographically and culturally distant realities of indigenous elites in the colonial period.   In each chapter a particular document is transcribed exactly as it appears in the original manuscript or colonial printed document, with the editor placing it in historical context and considering the degree of European influence. These texts show the nobility through documents they themselves produced or caused to be produced--such as wills, land deeds, and petitions--and prioritize indigenous ways of expression, perspectives, and concepts. Together, the chapters demonstrate that native elites were independent actors as well as agents of social change and indigenous sustainability in colonial society. Additionally, the volume diversifies the commonly homogenous term "cacique" and recognizes the differences in elites throughout Mesoamerica and the Andes.   Showcasing important and varied colonial genres of indigenous writing, Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past reveals some of the realities, needs, strategies, behaviors, and attitudes associated with the lives of the elites. Each document and its accompanying commentary provide additional insight into how the nobility negotiated everyday life. The book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Mesoamerican and Andean history, as well as those interested in indigenous colonial societies in the Spanish Empire.   Contributors: Agnieszka Brylak, Maria Castañeda de la Paz, Katarzyna Granicka, Gregory Haimovich, Anastasia Kalyuta, Julia Madajczak, Patrycja Prz'dka-Giersz  

Based on years of fieldwork, this ethnography of the Bolivian Aymara trading system and its networks and economic strategies examines one of the most up-and-coming forms of indigenous entrepreneurship on the American continent, in a region where the indigenous population is still stigmatizedfor being associated with poverty and backward ways. In doing so, it illuminates a critical dynamic of globalization that is taking place behind the scenes. By analyzing Aymara economic institutions and networks and their concepts and practices of business management, The Native World-Systemdescribes a system in which indigenous sociopolitical structures and religious values and beliefs are interwoven with an advanced economic practice, specialized technological know-how, and global networks.The Native World-System is a volume in the ISSUES OF GLOBALIZATION: CASE STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY series, which examines the experiences of individual communities in our contemporary world. Each volume offers a brief and engaging exploration of a particular issue arising fromglobalization and its cultural, political, and economic effects on certain peoples or groups.

El vivir bien en el Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia -- El debate conceptual sobre el vivir bien -- Estudios de casos : nueva ganadería comunitaria y vida buena guaraní -- Entre la teoría y la práctica de la vida buena guarani.