Subverting authenticity: Reinas indígenas and the Guatemalan State, 1978

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 89, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 41-72

  Konefal, Betsy ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65849498035     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2008-044     Document Type: Review

References (66)

1. See also Maxine Leeds Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), for an examination of race, beauty, and politics in U.S. pageantry;
2. and Rick López, "The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture," HAHR 82, no. 2 (May 2002): 291-328, for a discussion of the relevance of that contest to changing ideas of Indianness in Mexican nationalism.
3. See Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala: Memoria del silencio, 12 vols. (Guatemala: UNOPS, 1999), "Conclusiones y recomendaciones," par. 1 and 82.
4. On the massacre, see CEH, Memoria del silencio, 6:13-23.
5. See also Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004);
6. and Victoria Sanford, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). National press coverage was extensive.
7. See Guatemalan newspapers El Gráfico, La Nación, La Tarde, El Imparcial, and Diario de Centro América, 1-4 June 1978.
8. Violence reached its height in the early 1980s. All told, the Guatemalan army destroyed 626 indigenous communities in "scorched earth" massacres. For discussion of "acts of genocide," see CEH, Memoria del silencio, 5:48-51.
9. Marco Aurelio Alonzo, "Los objetivos del Festival Folklórico," unpublished. Interview with Marco Aurelio Alonzo by the author, Cobán, 25 Jan. 2002.
10. "Rabín Ahau" means "Daughter of the King" in the Q'eqchi' language.
11. For a fascinating discussion of the Rabín Ahau contest, see Carlota McAllister, "Authenticity and Guatemala's Maya Queen," in Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje, Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, 105-24.
12. Jennifer Schirmer, "'Those Who Die for Life Cannot Be Called Dead': Women and Human Rights Protest in Latin America," Human Rights Yearbook, vol. 1 (1988): 45.
13. Almost all of the former reinas stayed in their original communities, and residents could often tell me the names of the reinas indígenas of the 1970s in a sequence of two or three. The reina indígena contests of the era may have been "play" or make-believe, as Robert Lavenda suggests in his study of Minnesota pageants, but the fact that people remember them reflects the intensity of that politicized moment. Robert Lavenda, "'It's Not a Beauty Pageant!' Hybrid Ideology in Minnesota Community Queen Pageants," in Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje, Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, 44.
14. The few studies of Maya political engagement published in the 1970s and early 1980s seemed to share the left's frustration with Mayas who called attention to indigenous identity. A focus on cultural or ethnic issues was generally construed as counterrevolutionary. See Ricardo Falla, "El movimiento indígena," Estudios Centroamericanos 23, no. 356/357 (June/July 1978): 437-61;
15. and Arturo Arias, "El movimiento indígena en Guatemala: 1970-1983," in Rafael Menjívar and Daniel Camacho, eds., Movimientos populares en Centroamérica (Costa Rica: FLACSO, 1985), 62-119. Due to repression, fieldwork examining political differentiation among indígenas was virtually impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s, and studies of the violence rested on assumptions of Mayas as homogeneous and apolitical.
16. For portrayals of Mayas' civil war experiences of violence and terror, see Robert M. Carmack, ed., Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1988);
17. and Carol A. Smith, ed., Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540-1988 (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1990).
18. For the view that Mayas wanted nothing to do with either state forces or the insurgency, see David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1993). During the 1990s peace process, scholars chronicled the rise of a culturally focused indigenous rights movement but raised few questions about more diverse organizing by Mayas, connections between cultural concerns and demands for socioeconomic change, or the roots of current indigenous struggles.
19. See Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil, Políticas para la reivindicación de los Mayas de hoy: Fundamento de los derechos especificos de pueblo Maya (Guatemala City: Editorial Cholsamaj, 1994);
20. Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown, Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1996);
21. Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1999);
22. and Kay B. Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998). Recently, scholarship has begun to focus more fully on Maya participation in political life during the civil war.
23. See Carlota McAllister, The Good Road: Conscience and Consciousness in a Postrevolutionary Guatemalan Village (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, forthcoming);
24. and Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre.
25. See also Greg Grandin's Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000) and "To End with All These Evils: Ethnic Transformation and Community Mobilization in Guatemala's Western Highlands, 1954-1980," Latin American Perspectives 24, no. 2 (Mar. 1997): 7-34. Santiago Bastos and Manuela Camus chronicle Guatemalan indigenous movements from 1986 to 2001, with attention to the historical development of organizing by Mayas and diversity among them.
26. See Bastos and Camus, Quebrando el silencio: Organizaciones del Pueblo Maya y sus demandas, 1986-1992 (Guatemala City: FLACSO, 1993);
27. Bastos and Camus, Abriendo caminos: Las organizaciones Mayas desde el Nobel hasta el Acuerdo de Derechos Indígenas (Guatemala City: FLACSO, 1995);
28. and Bastos and Camus, Entre el mecapal y el cielo: Desarrollo del movimiento maya en Guatemala (Guatemala City: FLACSO, 2003).
29. For a description of the changes in indigenous communities brought by Catholic Action, see Douglas E. Brintnall, Revolt against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979);
30. and Kay B. Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1978).
31. See Grandin, "To End with All These Evils," for a discussion of ethnic identity within CUC. Examination of connections between ethnic and class identities among activist indígenas in Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador can offer important comparisons to the Guatemalan case.
32. See Jan Rus, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannan L. Mattiace, eds., Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003);
33. and Shannan L. Mattiace, To See with Two Eyes: Peasant Activism and Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2003 ).
34. For the Andes, see Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000);
35. and Laura Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880-1952 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2007).
36. As military violence reached genocidal levels in the early 1980s, such alliances among diverse Mayas did break down, their differences seemingly irreconcilable. For a detailed examination of pan-community organizing among Guatemalan Mayas, see Betsy Konefal, A History of Activism by Mayas in Guatemala, 1960-1990 (working title), forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press.
37. A few exceptions exist. Some men in communities such as Sololá, Santiago Atitlán, and Todos Santos and within a new class of urban professionals wear traditional and "neotraditional" clothing. See Carol Elaine Hendrickson, Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1995). Representations of indigeneity are not limited to traje, though it is the most visible marker. Language is also important, and many Mayas claim that certain traditions, values, and worldviews also denote Mayanness.
38. In Quetzaltenango, the first reina indígena was elected in 1934 due to efforts by the indigenous Sociedad El Adelanto. The 1934 naming of the reina indígena of Quetzaltenango was "the first time the pueblo indígena of Xelajú [Quetzaltenango] was permitted to take part directly in the fair." Gloria Virginia Tzunun M. and Olegario Obispo Nimatuj I., 1934-1984: Historial del certamen de la belleza indígena de Quetzaltenango (Quetzaltenango: Casa Publicitaria "GOF," 1985), n.p.
39. We see similar parallel pageants established in other locations, including neighboring Belize in the 1940s. Richard Wilk explains that "tall, charming, beautiful and dignified Honduran beauties" competed for the title of Queen of the Bay, while Garifunas held a Queen of the Settlement contest emphasizing native dances and indigenous languages and culture. Richard Wilk, "Connections and Contradictions: From the Crooked Tree Cashew Queen to Miss World Belize," in Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje, Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, 220-21.
40. Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, 4.
41. Interview by the author with Ricardo Cajas Mejía, Quetzaltenango, 21 Feb. 2002.
42. "Reina Indígena de Quetzaltenango electa el 12 de agosto," Ixim: Notas Indigenas 1, no. 11 (Aug. 1978).
43. See Grandin's Blood of Guatemala, "Conclusions" and "Epilogue," for a discussion of widening divisions among indígenas in Quetzaltenango at this time, as "indigenous elites lost the ability to fulfill their historical role as brokers," 223. Similar divisions developed in other communities and show themselves again and again.
44. Marco Aurelio Alonzo, "Los objetivos del Festival Folklórico." Interview by the author with Marco Aurelio Alonzo, Cobán, 25 Jan. 2002.
45. An official Día del Aborígen was first celebrated in 1959, and in 1960, a day honoring Tecún Umán was established. For more on this figure and indigenous resistance to nationalist myth, see Irma Otzoy, "Tekum Umam: From Nationalism to Maya Resistance" (PhD diss., Univ. of California, Davis, 1999).
46. See Carlota McAllister, "This Pageant Which Is Not Won: The Rabín Ahau, Maya Women, and the Guatemalan Nation" (MA thesis, Univ. of Arizona, 1994), 79-80.
47. In stark contrast to the Guatemalan case, Rick López writes that people in Mexico in 1987 "remembered" (mistakenly) that the India Bonita of 1921 was the first Miss Mexico. While those two categories had been "incompatible" in the 1920s, by 1987 such racial boundaries had been dropped from national memory. López, "India Bonita Contest," 292. It is doubtful that Guatemalans even today would make the mistake of conflating the racially separate titles of Miss Guatemala and Rabín Ahau.
48. But they can also fail in getting this message across, and can end up emphasizing and exacerbating the very divisions they are meant to minimize or control." Wilk, "Connections and Contradictions," in Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje, Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, 218.
49. McAllister writes that Miss Guatemala, the nation's symbol of idealized beauty, is "invariably among the whitest of the nation's young women." The indigenous queen's "task," she adds, is "to represent what makes Guatemala most distinct: her tradition, her Indian past. Authenticity marks the Maya Queen's particularity as an aesthetic property, subordinate to the truly beautiful." McAllister, "Authenticity and Guatemala's Maya Queen," 106.
50. Marisol de la Cadena provides another example of tests of "authenticity" in indigenous beauty pageants in Cuzco, Peru. Contestants (date unknown) "had to prove their indigenous 'racial' authenticity," she wrote. "The judges required that the participants in the beauty contest pose nude; short legs, small breasts, and scant pubic hair were the physical characteristics that the gentlemen organizers chose as markers of the bodies of real Indian women." De la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos, 81.
51. Rigoberta Menchú made this same critique in I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (New York: Verso, 1983), 204-9.
52. For contestation over mestizo folklorists' appropriation of Monimbó culture in Nicaragua, see Katherine Borland, "The India Bonita of Monimbó: The Politics of Ethnic Identity in the New Nicaragua," in Cohen, Wilk and Stoeltje, Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, 75-88.
53. See Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, chaps. 6, 7.
54. "El colonialismo cultural," Ixim: Notas Indígenas, May 1978.
55. See also Carlos Guzmán Böckler and Jean-Loup Herbert, Guatemala: Una interpretación h'istèrico-social (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1970).
56. Boletín Misionero: Noticiero Trimestral de la Actividad Misionera de la Iglesia en La Verapaz, no. 25 (Oct. 1978): 4.
57. "Privan de su corona a reina indígena de San Cristóbal AV," El Gráfico, 25 July 1978.
58. "Damas de San Cristóbal V., explican lo que ocurrió con la reina indígena," Prensa Libre, 29 July 1978.
59. Inforpress, no. 301, 20 July 1978.
60. Cha'b'l Tinamit 2, no. 23 (June 1978): 6.
61. See coverage in the Guatemalan press in January 1968, and Mary Jane Treacy, "Killing the Queen: The Display and Disappearance of Rogelia Cruz," Latin American Literary Review 29, no. 57 (Jan.-June 2001): 40-51.
62. New York Times, 6 Dec. 1982.
63. The press reported that she urged organizers and the public not to allow partisan politics to enter an "eminently folkloric" event. La Nación, 1 Aug. 1978.
64. For her own description of the evening, see La Nación/ Quetzaltenango, 9 Aug. 1978.
65. For military involvement in pageants in Santa Cruz del Quiché, see Carmack, "The Story of Santa Cruz del Quiché," in Carmack, Harvest of Violence, 62, 66. In a 1983 publication entitled " Guatemala" by a group calling itself Movimiento Indio, a drawing depicts an army officer, a rural massacre, and indigenous queen contestants side by side. The officer holds a grenade in one hand and with the other, crowns a reina indígena. Movimiento Indio, Guatemala, Jan. 1983, p. 7.
66. See also CEH, Memoria del silencio, case no. 4245.