A Maya Migrant: A Journey of No Return

After years of listening to Maya migrants in the United states and listening to migrants forced back to Guatemala, the novella’s author Gaspar Pedro González created the story of Palas and Malkal, man and wife. The story begins with a discussion of the causes behind migration, and then proceeds to Palas while he arranges his trip with the coyote, makes his goodbyes to his family and community, makes the overland passage through Mexico, and when finally in the United States finds some hopes and plans unobtainable. Palas, and his family left behind in Guatemala, will encounter challenges to their cultural traditions, their personal and community identities, their values and the way they see the world and life, and their personal, family and community relations. The original Spanish version was published in Maya America in Volume 2 Number 2 (2020).

Literacy and Power in Mesoamerica

Chapter 1 explores Maya and Zapotec systems of communication and contradictory colonial representations about Mesoamerican writing. It argues that writing and power were already interrelated in Mesoamerican indigenous communities so that the attribution of orality to indigenous peoples disavows the key role of pre-Columbian writing. It ends by discussing indigenous colonial texts as well as poetry framed through a double optic or kab’awil by foundational Maya and Zapotec authors such as Gaspar Pedro González, Macario Matus, and Victor de la Cruz.