Nobody Here But Us Maya
Sunday, October 14th, 2007My 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.
