Brent Metz

An Expression of Cultural Change: Invisible Converts to Protestantism Among Highland Guatemala Mayas

The process of religious conversions to Protestantism is widespread and rapid in the underdeveloped world, and the numbers in Latin America are especially significant (Stoll 1990). It affects urban and rural peoples of varied cultural and ecological backgrounds. Often, major economic changes are either attributed or related to the significant ideological shift associated with religious conversion. The nature of the changes taking place as individuals or families convert is complex. In Latin America, and particularly in Guatemala, people may convert for reasons as varied as the popularity of a Protestant political leader (president Rios Mont), an earthquake, and the ongoing violence (Annis 1987). Nash (1960) found alcoholism to be one of the major reasons for conversions, and refers to Protestantism as the Alcoholics Anonymous of Maya Indians. Economic (Redfield 1962; Wasserstrom 1976; Brintnall 1979), political (Falla 1980), and social reasons (Reina and Schwartz 1974) have been cited as the basis for conversion to Protestantism in the area. Some scholars have pointed to the tendency of studies to provide limited attention to experience, discourse analysis, and other processes of identity change within which conversion may be understood (Heirich 1977; Snow and Machalek 1984; Taylor 1976). Historical accounts of Protestantisms introduction to Latin American countries (i.e., Garrard Burnett 1990; Stoll 1990; Rose and Brower 1990) elaborate on the type of discourse that different denominations use in their missionary enterprises, often through development or education projects. The association of economic development through progress and modernization with Protestantism has been explicit in the teachings of Protestant missionaries and writers (Dennis 1906) and the social and economic benefits of associating with Protestants is emphasized by numerous recent studies (e.g., Tapp 1989; Manning 1980; Green 1978). In the case of western Guatemala discussed below, the connections of trade, capitalization, and conversion are apparent. As suggested, the reasons for conversion are complex, and while their identification is important, so are the implications of the rapid change and the way in which it is taking place (Scotchmer 1986). The rate of religious change highlights the deeper changes that are taking place at all levels of society and may indirectly affect further changes. The impressive showing of Protestant candidates in the national elections of 1990 is significant, as it reflects the continuation of conservative trends within a framework of North American, free market, and modernization discourse in the midst of repression. The new political alliances often overlap with religious and economic interests that presently serve the interests of relatively few Mayan

Fertility Awareness Methods Are Not Modern Contraceptives: Defining Contraception to Reflect Our Priorities

A recent article in GHSP calls for classifying fertility awareness methods as “modern contraceptives” despite their inferiority. We believe in a rights-based approach, which considers the real-world conditions that many women face, including constrained sexual agency and low baseline reproductive health literacy. We must demonstrate true commitment to increasing access to the most effective and reliable contraceptive methods. A recent article in GHSP calls for classifying fertility awareness methods as “modern contraceptives” despite their inferiority. We believe in a rights-based approach, which considers the real-world conditions that many women face, including constrained sexual agency and low baseline reproductive health literacy. We must demonstrate true commitment to increasing access to the most effective and reliable contraceptive methods.

Historical Sediments of Competing Gender Models in Indigenous Guatemala

It has become a cliche to see the Maya as residing in closed corporate communities (Wolf 1957). While these highland Mayan communities were never as closed as imagined, they are, without doubt, more open than ever. Development projects, tourism, foreign researchers, and international migration have exposed Mayans to foreign bodies and foreign ways of doing things at an accelerated pace. Given past predictions of Guatemala’s national ethnic homogenization (ladinoization), one might think that such exposure is eliminating local Mayan cultures and identities, but the dynamic is more complicated. On one hand, an ethnically tinged civil war, discrimination, state marginalization, and inadequate subsistence agriculture have weakened semi-subsistent farmers’ sense of ethnic righteousness. On the other, the Maya Movement has provided an avenue for modernization without ladinoization, at least in terms of identity, while foreigners continue to appreciate Mayans for their “Mayaness,” both real and imagined. For young men in particular, who are most likely to migrate to Mexico and the United States, the transition from a semi-subsistence world to a full wage labor among foreigners leads to what Gutmann—using Gramsci—refers to as contradictory consciousness about their roles, responsibilities, expectations, habits, and tastes. Resting on the historical sediments of collective memory, which includes both conscious and subconscious reproduction of routines, spaces, objects, and emotions, is a new topsoil of foreign experience and culture (Laclau 1990; Thompson. American Ethnologist, 30(3), 418–438, 2003). Contacts with foreigners have challenged the righteousness of which food to eat, who prepares it, and when, where, and how to eat it. It has also changed tastes and possibilities about matrimonial and sexual partnerships, all of which stretches if not tears the social fabric of their home communities. Kaqchikels and Ch’orti’s are experiencing and managing these changes somewhat differently. Among the Kaqchikel, the absence of fathers, husbands, and sons challenges established gender roles back home, including pushing women to take on men’s tasks under the traditional surveillance of community gossip, envy, sorcery, and other forms of social control. Thus, while they are becoming attracted to men who travel, they also experience frustration and vulnerability after partnering with them. The migrating men, in the meantime, find themselves shouldering ‘feminine’ tasks like cooking and cleaning and being exposed more to women in power. Still, they still maintain a strong sense of “home” and their social bonds there. In the past 20 years, many Ch’orti’s have gone from seeing Gringos as cannibals and sexually monstrous to the conceivability of marrying them, although they battle incessantly with an inferiority complex in a Ladino region. Due to their extreme poverty and experience of discrimination, those Ch’orti’ young men who manage to make it to the U.S. continue to send money home, but most have no spouses or children and thus may never return “home.” Both Kaqchikel and Ch’orti’ migrants have a newfound preference for English over their native languages, but their maintenance of community contacts, sharing of collective memory, and experience of social exclusion abroad may motivate them to maintain an distinctive identity.

Mayan People Within and Beyond Boundaries: Social Categories and Lived Identity in Yucatán

There is no doubt that kinship studies have, since the 1970s, progressively lost their importance, not only as a ® eld of ethnographic investigation but also for anthropological theory as a whole. An emphasis on the pragmatic aspects of cultural (and discursive) construction, under the in ̄ uence of scholars such as Derrida, Foucault, and Bourdieu, led to a sometimes obsessional contextualisation and even individualisation of social phenomena. This trend away from structure and towards agency lent kinship studies the appearance of a residue of coarse comparativism, linear evolutionism, or formalism that was no longer capable of accounting for social reality and diversity. Uniting a number of papers presented at a 1993 round-table organised by Maurice Godelier in Paris, this book has as its thematic focus the transformation of kinship systems, but the contributions also underline the importance of kinship studies for our understanding of contemporary and past societies. Framed within an introduction by Godelier, Trautmann and Tjon Sie Fat, and an afterword by Godelier, the volume contains two s̀tage-setting’ articles which de® ne general concepts used throughout the book: the ® rst, by Trautmann and Barnes, proposes de® nitions of the different bifurcate-merging type of kinclassi® cation; the second, by Franklin Tjon Sie Fat, is an algebraic analysis of these distinctions. Then follow twelve other articles, grouped according to geographical area (Northern America, Southern America, and Asia), and a comparative and generalising ® nal section. This last section would perhaps be of greatest interest to Australianists, since none of the geographically centred papers concerns this continent; however, most of the articles propose parallels and employ theoretical tools that are either relevant, or may be extrapolated, to Australian Aboriginal kinship systems. (Australianists, however, will regret the lack of a clear distinction between kinship and sociocentric terminologies, especially for Australia, though they may not be surprised that some of the contributors still discuss and analyse sections as `marriage classes’ .) In this section, Allen asks how Dravidian systems may have evolved and develops the idea of a t̀etradic’ theory, which summarises the most economic and primitive form of a bifurcate-merging system expressed by four basic terms which, in fact, conform to the Australian section system. Allen’s theory is questioned by another contributor, Viveiros de Castro, who suggests that it contradicts historical fact in that the `local formula’ (Dravidian and Iroquois types) precedes the `global formula’ (the tetradic model and sections). Viveiros de Castro, among others, shows that relations expressed in ego’s parent’s generation are constitutive for the de® nition of consanguinity and af® nity in ego’s generation, and that this principle is the uniting and structural basis of all bifurcate-merging type kinship systems. After presenting formal aspects of Dravidian, Kariera and Iroquois terminologies,This is the authors accepted manuscript. The publishers version is available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664670050006767

Community-Based Participatory Approaches for Addressing the Social, Environmental and Cultural Challenges of Development

The developing world is littered with failed projects. There are countless examples where overly sophisticated equipment has been introduced into developing communities only to break down and sit idle because the communities were not educated in operation and maintenance, did not have the finances or materials for repairs, or simply because they did not understand the importance of ‘development’. Despite the good intentions of well-meaning individuals, these projects have not been sustained, and often cause more problems than they solve, because project planners, engineers, social scientists, and the target communities frequently misunderstand or disrespect each other’s perspectives. To try and take a more holistic approach to development, this case study reviews a community-based participatory approach that elicits emic perspectives through photography and participant interviews to try and determine the most pressing health needs of a small, peri-urban community in eastern Guatemala.