Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala (Interp Culture New Millennium) - Softcover

Kistler, S. Ashley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252079884 ISBN 13: 9780252079887

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2014

Synopsis

As cultural mediators, Chamelco's market women offer a model of contemporary Q'eqchi' identity grounded in the strength of the Maya historical legacy. Guatemala's Maya communities have faced nearly five hundred years of constant challenges to their culture, from colonial oppression to the instability of violent military dictatorships and the advent of new global technologies. In spite of this history, the people of San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, have effectively resisted significant changes to their cultural identities. Chamelco residents embrace new technologies, ideas, and resources to strengthen their indigenous identities and maintain Maya practice in the 21st century, a resilience that sets Chamelco apart from other Maya towns.

Unlike the region's other indigenous women, Chamelco's Q'eqchi' market women achieve both prominence and visibility as vendors, dominating social domains from religion to local politics. These women honor their families' legacies through continuation of the inherited, high-status marketing trade. In Maya Market Women, S. Ashley Kistler describes how market women gain social standing as mediators of sometimes conflicting realities, harnessing the forces of global capitalism to revitalize Chamelco's indigenous identity. Working at the intersections of globalization, kinship, gender, and memory, Kistler presents a firsthand look at Maya markets as a domain in which the values of capitalism and indigenous communities meet.

About this title

Book Description:

A study of resilient Q'eqchi'-Maya vendors using capitalism to preserve their traditional cultural identities

About the Author:

S. Ashley Kistler is an assistant professor of anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Rollins College.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0252079884
• ISBN 13: 9780252079887
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176