Drawing on over fifty years of research and data collected by field-school students, Hawkins argues that two factors--cultural collapse and systematic social and economic exclusion--explain the recent religious transformation of Maya Guatemala and the style and emotional intensity through which that transformation is expressed.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch pounded the isolated village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán in mountainous western Guatemala, destroying many homes. The experience traumatized many Ixtahuaquenses. Much of the community relocated to be safer and closer to transportation that they hoped would help them to improve their lives, acquire more schooling, and find supportive jobs. This study followed the two resulting communities over the next quarter century as they reconceived and renegotiated their place in Guatemalan society and the world. Making a Place for the Future in Maya Guatemala shows how humans continuously evaluate and rework the efficacy of their cultural heritage. This process helps explain the inevitability and speed of culture change in the face of natural disasters and our ongoing climate crisis.

The possibility of violence beneath a thin veneer of civil society is a fact of daily life for twenty-first-century Guatemalans, from field laborers to the president of the country. Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala explores the causes and consequences of governmental failure by focusing on life in two K’iche’ Maya communities in the country’s western highlands. The contributors to this volume, who lived among the villagers for some time, include both undergraduate students and distinguished scholars. They describe the ways Mayas struggle to survive and make sense of their lives, both within their communities and in relation to the politico-economic institutions of the nation and the world. Since Guatemala’s thirty-six-year civil war ended in 1996, the state has been dysfunctional, the country’s economy precarious, and physical safety uncertain. The intrusion of Mexican cartels led the U.S. State Department to declare Guatemala “the epicenter of the drug threat” in Central America. Rapid cultural change, weak state governance, organized crime, pervasive corruption, and ethnic exclusion provide the backdrop for the studies in this volume. Seven nuanced ethnographies collected here reveal the complexities of indigenous life and describe physical and cultural conflicts within and between villages, between insiders and outsiders, and between local and federal governments. Many of these essays point to a tragic irony:the communities seem largely forgotten by the government until the state seeks to capture their resources—timber, minerals, votes. Other chapters portray villages responding to criminal activity through lynch mobs and by labeling nonconformist youth as gang members. In focusing on the internal dynamics of poor, marginal communities in Guatemala, this book explores the realities of life for indigenous people on all continents who are faced with the social changes brought about by war and globalization.

Two unprecedented, striking developments form part of the reality of many Latin Americans. Recent decades have seen the dramatic rise of a new religious pluralism, namely the spread of Pentecostal Christianity - Catholic and Protestant alike - and the growth of indigenous revitalization movements. This study analyzes these major transitions, asking what roles ethnicity and ethnic identities play in the contemporary process of religious pluralism, such as the growth of the Protestant Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the indigenous Maya movement in Guatemala. This book aims to provide an understanding of the agenda of religious movements, their motivations, and their impact on society. Such a pursuit is urgently needed in Guatemala, a postwar country experiencing acrimonious religious competition and a highly contentious debate on religious pluralism. This volume is relevant to scholars and students of Latin American Studies, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Practical Theology, and Political Sciences.

Between 1995 and 1997, three groups of college students each spent two months in K’iche’ Maya villages in Guatemala. Led by Professors John P. Hawkins and Walter Randolph Adams, they participated in an ongoing field school designed to foster undergraduate research and documentation of K’iche’ Maya culture in Guatemala. In this enlightening book, Hawkins and Adams first describe their field-school method of involving undergraduate students in primary research and ethnographic writing, and then present the best of the student essays, which examine the effects of modernization on K’iche’ Maya religion, courtship, marriage, gender relations, education, and community development. The process of actively involving undergraduate students in research is one of the most effective methods of enhancing education. Indeed, there is growing interest in this idea—currently the Council on Undergraduate Research, a national organization, boasts members from more than 870 colleges and universities. For educators of all fields interested in learning how to organize a field school that fosters research and publication, Hawkins and Adams discuss the methods they used and the problems they encountered. Anthropologists and sociologists will find this demonstration of undergraduates’ achievements useful for introductory and field methods courses. Finally, the book’s portrayal of the K’iche’ Maya culture in transition will appeal to Mesoamericanists and Latinamericanists of any discipline.

This book examines medical systems and institutions in three K'iche' Maya communities to reveal the conflicts between indigenous medical care and the Guatemalan biomedical system. It shows the necessity of cultural understanding if poor people are to have access to medicine that combines the best of both local tradition and international biomedicine.