AHA Session 249
Conference on Latin American History 53
Conference on Latin American History 53
Saturday, January 9, 2027: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Napoleon Ballroom C2 (Sheraton New Orleans, 3rd Floor)
Chair:
Gilbert M. Joseph, Yale University
Papers:
Comment:
Gilbert M. Joseph, Yale University
Session Abstract
This panel brings together historians and anthropologists using archival research as well as ethnohistorical and ethnographic methods to investigate the past in four communities historically identified as Maya on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Our papers share a common concern with exploring the complex relationship between predominantly Indigenous communities and the Mexican state in the political realm, broadly defined. Chronologically, the panel spans much of the 20th century defined in Mexico by rise and fall of the long-ruling Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI for its initials in Spanish) and ends at the present, as Yucatecan communities are still resisting displacement by the Tren Maya (Maya Train), a mega-infrastructure project. Taken together, the presentations reveal how over time Maya communities and Maya people sought to defend local democracy and collective claims to land and other natural resources through a spectrum of tactics, ranging from political participation and citizen journalism to reliance on Indigenous epistemologies to armed struggle.
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