Nobody Here But Us Maya
My mother-in-law came over the other night to visit her grandkids. A book on the dining table caught her eye. Hands of the Maya is a book written by an American school teacher about life in a Mayan village. It’s complete with photos of Mayan babies, mothers and abuelitas. My son loves photos and so he loves the book.
“So this is why Americans always think of us like this,” she said, referring to the indigenous men and women featured in the text. I could tell she was bothered by the huipiles and huaraches. So I explained to her that the book was about a village in Guatemala that had an interchange set up with an American school. “Hmmmm…,” she said.
There are a lot of people in Mexico who didn’t seem to realize that there were really indigenous people still living in Mexico until the Zapatista uprising. You see, that’s the problem with “mestizaje.” If everyone is a mestizo, there is very little room for the indigenous with their different languages, traditions and sometimes even religions.
While Americans are fascinated with brighter side of indigenous life, that is, the folklore that covers up the real face of indigenous Mexico, many Mexicans are ashamed by it. Very few people ask themselves where these women who sell tortillas and chayotes actually come from and much less how they live. Octavio Paz talks about how when a sirvienta is cleaning someone’s home and a visitor stops by and asks who’s there, she’ll respond, “Nobody.” Nobody?
The problem is how you reconcile the Americans’ overt enthusiasm for all things folkloric and Mexicans’ aversion to the reality of indigenous life.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
a spot on post, I think sometimes that mexicans will quite willingly throw their hands in the air, some of them, in despair at the situation. It really is a complicated and thorny political issue, but at the same time there are lots of good people working on it - on both sides of the border.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Hi James,
It is a complicated political and social issue that goes back even before the conquest. In Coatepec there is a fandango for Chicanos and Mexicans going on. It looks interesting and is just one of the many ways that people are working to bridge the gaps. There are a lot of exciting projects in the works.