Human Rights in the Maya Region

Global Politics, Cultural Contentions, and Moral Engagements

Autor: Pitarch, Pedro; Speed, Shannon; Leyva-Solano, Xochitl; Stavenhagen, Rodolfo
Editor: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822342960
eISBN Pdf: 9780822389057
Lugar de publicación: Durham , Estados Unidos
Año de publicación digital: 2008
Mes: Diciembre
Páginas: 392
DDC: 323.1197/42
Idioma: Ingles

Descripción

In recent years Latin American indigenous groups have regularly deployed the discourse of human rights to legitimate their positions and pursue their goals. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the Maya region of Chiapas and Guatemala, where in the last two decades indigenous social movements have been engaged in ongoing negotiations with the state, and the presence of multinational actors has brought human rights to increased prominence. In this volume, scholars and activists examine the role of human rights in the ways that states relate to their populations, analyze conceptualizations and appropriations of human rights by Mayans in specific localities, and explore the relationship between the individualist and “universal” tenets of Western-derived concepts of human rights and various Mayan cultural understandings and political subjectivities.

The collection includes a reflection on the effects of truth-finding and documenting particular human rights abuses, a look at how Catholic social teaching validates the human rights claims advanced by indigenous members of a diocese in Chiapas, and several analyses of the limitations of human rights frameworks. A Mayan intellectual seeks to bring Mayan culture into dialogue with western feminist notions of women’s rights, while another contributor critiques the translation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into Tzeltal, an indigenous language in Chiapas. Taken together, the essays reveal a broad array of rights-related practices and interpretations among the Mayan population, demonstrating that global-local-state interactions are complex and diverse even within a geographically limited area. So too are the goals of indigenous groups, which vary from social reconstruction and healing following years of violence to the creation of an indigenous autonomy that challenges the tenets of neoliberalism.

Contributors: Robert M. Carmack, Stener Ekern, Christine Kovic, Xochitl Leyva Solano, Julián López García, Irma Otzoy, Pedro Pitarch, Álvaro Reyes, Victoria Sanford, Rachel Sieder, Shannon Speed, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, David Stoll, Richard Ashby Wilson

Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part 1: Global Politics and Nation-States
- 1. Cultural Rights and Human Rights: A Social Science Perspective
- 2. Perspectives on the Politics of Human Rights in Guatemala
- 3. Legal Globalization and Human Rights: Constructing the Rule of Law in Postconflict Guatemala?
Part 2: Cultural Contentions
- 4. The Labyrinth of Translation: A Tzeltal Version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- 5. Are Human Rights Destroying the Natural Balance of All Things? The Difficult Encounter between International Law and Community Law in Mayan Guatemala
- 6. "Here It's Different": The Ch'orti' and Human Rights Training
- 7. Indigenous Law and Gender Dialogues
- 8. Human Rights, Land Conflicts, and Memory of the Violence in the Ixil Country of Northern Quiche
Part 3: Political Engagements
- 9. Global Discourses on the Local Terrain: Human Rights in Chiapas
- 10. Breaking the Reign of Silence: Ethnography of a Clandestine Cemetery
- 11. Rights of the Poor: Progressive Catholicism and Indigenous Resistance in Chiapas
- 12. "Asumiendo Nuestra Propia Defensa": Resistance and the Red de Defensores Comunitarios in Chiapas
Final Comments: Making Rights Meaningful for Mayas: Relections on Culture
References
Contributors
Index