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25 - New/Old Indigenous Paradigms in Maya Women’s Literary Production

from Part III - Women Writers In-Between: Socialist, Modern, Developmentalists, and Liberal Democratic Ideals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2015

Ileana Rodríguez
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Mónica Szurmuk
Affiliation:
Instituto de Literatura Hispanoamericana, Argentina
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Summary

Contemporary Maya indigenous literature came into existence before one even knew it as Maya, or literature for that matter - long before it was written in a Maya language, certainly before Maya women writers appeared. Guatemalan Mayas contemporary identity can be traced to the Popol Wuj, the heart of the Mesoamerican cultural matrix. The Popol Wuj creates an alternative macronarrative to the Western Bible. It tells the story of creation in a fashion that conflates the origins of all Mesoamerican peoples in one foundational discourse. The Guatemalan thirty-seven-year civil war is dated from November 13, 1960, until peace was signed on December 28, 1996. It was mostly in the latter part of the conflict that a spontaneous insurrection in the Maya highlands took place, from 1979 to 1982. Starting in 1985, the well-known Maya public intellectual Demetrio Cojti Cuxil began to publish articles on the need to expand the use of Maya languages.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

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