344 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
Multiculturalism in Central America. Mobilization by Indians to improve their
standing in society has gained momentum in all the Central American countries.
Each of these states has adopted the “multicultural model,” at least in its outward
forms (Hale 2002:509). They have ratified the international ILO Convention 169
charter that calls for recognizing the special rights of indigenous peoples, and they
have made constitutional changes to better support and accommodate their
Indian peoples. Nevertheless, only in Guatemala are the issues of Indian rights
and multicultural nationalism playing a central role in the political life of Central
America. Indeed, during the l990s the center of gravity for nationalist Indian
movements in the larger Mesoamerican region appears to have shifted from
Mexico to Guatemala.
A sign of this shift was the gathering of Indians in 1991 from all over the conti-
nent in the city of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, where they denounced the Spanish
invasion of America and celebrated 500 years of “indigenous resistance.” Guatemala’s
centrality for the Mesoamerican Indians is understandable, given the fact that more
than half the Guatemalan population (some six million strong) identify as Mayan In-
dians. They more easily present a unified front than Mexico’s scattered Indian “na-
tions,” who make up less than one-tenth of that country’s total population. The
resurgence of the Mayas in Guatemala is an extraordinary development when one
considers that during the recent civil war, it was dangerous even to be identified as
an Indian.
In contrast to the educated Indians of Mexico mentioned before, the Indian
leaders of Guatemala are probably more culturally radical and unified than their
Mexican counterparts. Virtually none of them find assimilation into the ladino (mes-
tizo) national culture a viable option, and many of them harbor the idea of a sepa-
rate but equal Mayan nation (although taking over the state is still dangerous for
them to advocate in public discourse). Clearly, the idea of a multicultural nation is
increasingly being taken seriously by Mayan Indians from all sectors of Guatemalan
society.
Scarcely had the civil war begun to wind down in Guatemala and a civilian elected
president (1985), than educated Mayas began to mobilize nationwide Indian orga-
nizations. These organizations were soon linked together into postwar umbrella
fronts, one of the most important of which was known as the Council of Mayan Or-
ganizations (COMG). An early leader of COMG was Demetrio Cojti Cuxil, a self-
identified Kaqchikel Mayan professor in Guatemala City. Inspired in large part by
events associated with the revolutionary war, Cojti proposed an ambitious agenda to
create an autonomous Mayan nation within the Guatemala state, not through vio-
lence or force but by means of constitutional change and political dialogue with both
the guerrillas and the government.
Cojti’s plan would not have eliminated the mestizo nation of Guatemala per se
but would have ended its dominance over the Indians by giving the Mayas an allied
but autonomous nation of their own. Both nations would be free to promote their
own languages, cultural traditions, and values, and to negotiate the kinds of politi-
cal relationships that would bind them together into a new, restructured multicultural
state. Cojti (1996) argued that his plan was designed to benefit all Mayan Indians in