Why Study Culture?
Through the exploration of other human cultures, we enable ourselves to step outside our own to gain a perspective or vantage point which helps us better understand who we are and the traditions from which we come.

Another reason for studying different cultures is the appreciation we can experience for the uniqueness of human expressions which enhance our own communities.

Perhaps a more important reason for studying other cultures, however, is the increased respect and tolerance we gain for each other.

Why Study the Maya?
The Mayan civilization lies only three hours by air south the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Its ancient history, however, is more familiar perhaps that its horrific chronicles of the present. One of the most engaging among the ancient cultures in the Western World with its towering pyramids and exotic tombs, the modern Maya are important for another reason: United States economic and political interests in the Mayan regions has fomented a devastating conflict between two exemplary cultures in the twentieth century, a conflict which has been replicated throughout the world over the past five centuries between so-called "traditional" and "progressive" or "modern" cultures.

The Mayan Civilization at a Crossroad
The Mayan people of Mexico and Guatemala are among the many indigenous populations of the Western Hemisphere. Their history dates back more than three thousand years. This program, however, focuses on the modern Maya of Guatemala and their plight in the context of two conflicting ways of life or, if you will, two conflicting cultures and the catastrophic results.

About the size of the state of Ohio with a population of 10.2 million people, Guatemala, the first country south of Mexico, has been locked in the longest and one of the most brutal civil wars in modern history. The essential elements of the conflict were the wealthy Guatemalan "ladino" elites and the Guatemalan army which they supported against the various Mayan populations whose lands they were trying to seize.

An Overview of the Mayan Persecution
In a conflict which began in 1954 with the United States CIA overthrow of the Guatemalan government until December 29, 1996, with the signing of the United Nations-brokered peace accords, more than 200,000 people lost their lives, more than one million were displaced internally, and almost a half million fled toother countries in Central America, to Mexico, and to the United States. So severe was the repression by the Guatemalan army against the Mayan populations that among the twenty-two Mayan groups, there are more Kanjobal Maya alive today in Miami and Los Angeles than there are left alive in Guatemala from where they fled.

Seen from the perspective of cultural analysis, the conflagration in Guatemala can be interpreted as a conflict between a politically and militarily weak "traditional culture" and a much stronger "progressive culture." In the course of the thirty-seven year long civil war, the "progressive culture" was able to debilitate the Maya indigenous "traditional cultures" by attacking specific cultural elements that gave that society its very roots and identities.

The Assault on Mayan Mythology
Groups like the "International Maya League" who were committed to maintaining the traditions of the twenty-two Maya groups were denounced as "communists" and "guerrillas" and sent fleeing into exile. (Most of the Maya mythology was all but eradicated much earlier by burning all but four of the Maya codices in the 1550s by Christian zealots of the "progressive" European culture.)

The Assault on Mayan Religion
Indigenous religious expression itself has been attacked most recently by Christian charismatic evangelical movements, supported by the Guatemalan army, for the purpose of breaking down "subversive" Catholic lay organizations (known as "cofradias") and the remnants of the ancient Maya religions.

The Assault on Mayan Art Forms
Weaving is the most striking of the various Mayan art forms, and traditional patterns and designs have designated for centuries members of particular Mayan communities. During the civil war, ladino troops in the Guatemalan army were taught to identify and recognize the various costume designs and their symbolism before their attacks on various Mayan leaders and massacres of whole villages and towns. According to the 1999 report of the United Nations "Truth Commission" in Guatemala, the Guatemalan army was responsible for an estimated 93% of all human rights violations including the murders of perhaps as many as 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly indigenous Maya, in confirmed massacres conducted in 626 towns and villages.

The Devastation of Mayan Traditions
Today, the Maya survivors are beginning to start their lives anew, but the effects of the repression they have suffered are severe. Thousands of men and women have joined the charismatic movement, many in fear of identifying any longer with their nominal Catholic traditions or those of the Mayan rites–and with good cause. Many Maya are still terrified by the prospects of a return to fighting or persecution by roving clandestine army death squads committed to keeping them repressed and impoverished.

Many communities have given up their traditional costumes almost entirely in deference to western styles with the corresponding loss of the traditional values and meanings of the old ensembles. As we participated in the evening presentation, teams of forensics experts are in Guatemala assisting with the exhumations of perhaps as many as 2,500 secret military cemeteries containing the bodies of more than 150,000 Maya and the remains of the more than 50,000 "disappeared"–this gruesome task will take years to complete. So finely executed were many of the traditional handwoven garments they wore as they died, the clothing is still resplendent around the skeletal remains.

The Significance of the Mayan Experience
The plight of the Maya people is the same experience of literally hundreds of "traditional cultures" in their encounters with "progressive cultures" over the past 500 years. Whether proponents of the "traditional cultures" choose to assimilate and accommodate themselves to the more powerful "progressive cultures" or choose to resist, the inevitable conflict between the two cultures tends to be devastatingly destructive to the former. What we all lose in such conflicts is the richness of the variety of the human experience and its tapestry of interpretations. What inevitably we lose in such conflicts is something of our own self-worth and dignity.

Hopefully, through our short exploration, we have developed a fuller appreciation and respect that will help to keep our generation from repeating the sins of the past.

Geoffrey Grimes

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