CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 345Guatemala, including those in the rural communities whose particular languages
and customs would be respected within the new Mayan nation. Although educated
Mayas like himself would take the lead, Mayas from all social levels would be en-
couraged to develop a unified “conscience” of their own.
Much has happened in the “pan-Mayan” movement (as it is often referred to)
since the original proposals by Cojti. Of special importance was the signing of Peace
Accords in 1996 by the Guatemalan government and the unified guerrilla organiza-
tions (URNG). The Accords specified the rights of the Indian peoples to speak their
own languages, practice their own religion and other customs, obtain political rep-
resentation, and participate more equally in the economy. Even though these
promised rights have been only partially honored in the years that followed, they
have received important support from the many NGO’s that have flooded into the
country, as well as substantial backing from the Guatemalan people. Of most im-
portance, the Accords helped lay down a (neoliberal) multicultural agenda for
Guatemala’s political parties and national government.
The pan-Mayan movement itself has expanded and been fortified by the previ-
ously mentioned developments. According to the anthropologist Kay Warren (1998),
one of the foremost students of the movement, the educated Mayas who lead the
movement have considerable “cultural capital” as a result of their knowledge of
Mayan languages and cosmologies. They also have access to modern technology and
media (Mayan newspapers, language books, radio stations and programs; commu-
nication through the Internet and wireless phones, etc.).
As might be expected, the greatly increased “cultural” powers of the pan-
Mayanists have elicited widespread opposition. Foremost among the opponents are
leftist popular organizations and ladinos of all kinds, along with an assortment of
Box 8.8 A Critique of the Pan-Mayan Movement.The strongest critique of the pan-Mayan movement has come from ladino intellectuals, most
prominently the journalist Mario Roberto Morales, who employs many of the “deconstructive”
methods of postmodernism to disparage the movement.
Morales argues, for example, that the movement (l) is a construction by elites who do not
represent the masses of Mayas in the countryside; (2) has become the tool of international ne-
oliberal capitalism and its tourist markets, and more indirectly of development agencies and aca-
demicians; (3) excludes the many Mayas who have adopted Western ways and have assumed
“hybrid identities”; (4) is racist in viewing Guatemalan society as divided between ladinos and In-
dians, when in reality both are differentiated by complex classes and social sectors rather than
by race or ethnicity.
The anthropologist Kay Warren (1998) points out, however, that the deconstructive approach
by Morales and others fails to confront important political realities that the pan-Mayan movement
is trying to deal with. Morales, she says, makes “invidious ethnic discrimination and poverty di-
solve before one’s eyes—but, of course, only on paper” (p. 43). She thinks that much of the crit-
icism levelled at pan-Mayan elites by critics like Morales is based on resentment over the
competition that the Mayas represent to ladinos for middle-class and professional positions in
Guatemalan society.