The University of Arizona Press
November 15, 2024
Silvia Soto’s Caracoleando Among Worlds: Reconstructing Maya Worldviews in Chiapas provides an in-depth analysis of poetry, short stories, and one of the first novels written by a Maya Tsotsil writer of Chiapas alongside close readings of the EZLN’s six declarations of the Lacandon Jungle. Themes echoing ancestral connections, informing epistemologies, and sustaining cultural and spiritual practices emerge and weave the texts to each other. The work brings into the conversation literature that has been translated into English for the first time and places Maya writers of Chiapas in discussion with other Native American and Indigenous scholars.
This work shows how literature, culture, and activism intertwine, and offers a compelling narrative that transcends boundaries and fosters a deeper understanding of Maya identities and resilience. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.
From the moment the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN or Zapatistas) burst into the public eye, it stated its position and vision as an organized guerrilla movement through the release of the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle of January 1, 1994, published in its newly established paper, El Despertador Mexicano (Mexican Awakener), and made available online. The media surrounded the Zapatistas as they declared control of the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and six other cities in the state of Chiapas (captured in the special coverage by Canal 6 de Julio), bombarding them with questions about their uprising, despite their position having already been clearly stated. In the years since this New Year’s uprising, Zapatistas have released six declarations and hundreds of communiqués stating the philosophy of the movement, giving rise to what they call the power of the word, which has allowed them agency in the narrative of their movement. As books, films, music, and art about the EZLN continue to be produced to capture their struggle, their stream of communiqués stating the position and direction of the movement grants them control of their histories.
The contemporary Maya literary movement of Chiapas unfolded alongside the EZLN’s initial steps of underground organizing, with Indigenous intellectuals at the time reframing the ways they related to state projects of Indigenismo. Enrique Pérez López (Tsotsil) (2008), former director of the Centro Estatal de Lenguas, Arte y Literatura Indígenas (State Center for Indigenous Languages, Art, and Literature, CELALI), refers to this period of time as a reawakening of Indigenous peoples of Chiapas. The strides made by this Indigenous intellectual movement coincided, too, with shifts in Mexican policy toward a neoliberal agenda; changes to Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution, recognizing the plurality of the state; and the state’s endorsement of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169, which recognizes Indigenous rights in addition to labor and economic rights. In the late 1970s, these Indigenous intellectuals (young men and women who had mostly formally trained as teachers) had begun organizing by engaging in a shared reflection on the current state of their communities. The focus of these intellectuals was on education, the rescue and teaching of histories, reading and writing, and song and art rooted in their Maya belief system. There was no initial systematic application of this vision; instead, they were simply a group of people coming together to reflect and dialogue on new possibilities in their own relationship to their Maya worldviews.
Thus, in the last four decades, these two movements have flourished parallel to each other, crossing paths in different stages along the way. Local languages, Maya and Spanish, are central to this process. Orality and the written word are the guiding forces in the articulation of their positions. Such action connects to the Nahuatl concept of in xochitl in cuicatl or floricanto (flower-and-song), which captures the way that poetry and poetry’s metaphors unlock the mysteries of life and dreams that are central to a Nahuatl worldview (León-Portilla 1990a, 75). The EZLN has strategically and powerfully used this approach to deliver its flowery word through the written, audio, and visual release of communiqués. This approach is captured in its fourth declaration—further developed in chapter 4—which declares that “the flower of the word will not die,” in relation to the war Zapatistas are waging in defense of the rights of Indigenous peoples of Mexico (EZLN 1996a, 1996b).
In this chapter I examine the poetry of three Maya writers. The first section of the chapter centers on four poems and the ways the poets engage with the writing process of the poetry, allowing the written word to take center stage: “Sts’ibujon: Yo escribo” (I write) by Tseltal poet Adriana del Carmen López Sántiz, from her poetry collection Jalbil k’opetik: Palabras tejidas (Woven words, 2005); “A’yej: Discurso” (Speech) by Tsotsil poet Andrés López Díaz, published in the anthology Sbel sjol yo’nton ik’: Memoria del viento (Memory of the wind, López Díaz, Díaz Ruiz, and López Díaz 2006); and both “Slikebal Kuxlejaltik: Creación” (Creation) and “Vu’un Li’oyunkutike: Soy los que Estamos Aquí” (I am the we who are here) by Tsotsil poet Enriqueta Lunez, from her poetry collection Yi’ Beltak ch’ulelaletik: Raíces del alma (Roots of the soul, 2007). The second section of the chapter engages with the oral deliverance of the poetry and the immediacy such an act carries in the production of the poetry by centering on four additional poems by the same poets and from the same publications: “Jun k’ak’al: Un día” (One day) and “Ta’lo xa: Basta” (Enough) by López Díaz, “K’unil lajel: Agonía” (Agony) by López Sántiz, and “Yavu: Lunario” (Lunary) by Lunez. The movement the work of these poets creates—and the reclamation of their role as orators and carriers of knowledge—recenters their presence in the world and sets forward new possibilities and new visions for the future. Such a position connects to the trajectories of the EZLN and its narratives of the insurgency, particularly regarding its vision of “a world where many worlds fit” (further developed in chapter 4), where the recognition of “different” is essential to the continuation of the collective.
I frame my analysis of the poetry in direct dialogue with the work of U.S. Native scholars of the last five decades, such as N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma), and Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo). This analysis highlights the relationship between the role of language, the written and oral word, the interweaving of their stories to reveal their worldviews, and the reclamation of their place in history. These relations are always rooted to place (land) and time and are in continuous dialogue with one another. My analysis also brings into conversation the work of Indigenous and Indigenous studies scholars, such as Gloria E. Chacón’s (2018) concept of kab’awil or the double gaze, which addresses Indigenous writers’ search within their worldviews to reaffirm their presence as Indigenous peoples;
Paul M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios’s (2019) concept of ts’íib, which decenters the Latin alphabet by placing other methods of recording knowledges alongside it; Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpan’s (Mapuche from Chile) (2009) concept of oralitor (oraliture), which underscores the ways textual narratives are informed by millennia-old oral traditions; and Miguel Rocha Vivas’s (2021) concept of “oralitegraphy,” which, in line with the work of Chacón and Chihuailaf, stresses the usage of multimedia in Indigenous scholarship, and the ways that textual, oral, and visual narratives are in constant dialogue in Indigenous knowledge production. The work of these poets also brings out the concept of caracoleando, which speaks of the movement the poetry creates, the production of new ways of being that are drawn from the old ways and in a constant process of change. Through my readings of the poetry, I ask the following questions: What are the central themes articulated by the EZLN and Maya writers of Chiapas? How do orality and writing, as well as the specific languages used, produce these central themes? As these poets move through the practices of orality and writing, I suggest that the central theme the poems address is this notion of presence, revealing new visions of Maya worlds that are not just about claiming a Maya identity but also about claiming a space to perform this Maya identity.
Silvia Soto is an assistant professor in Chicano and Latino Studies at Sonoma State University (SSU). She earned her doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis, in Native American Studies. Her research focuses on the contemporary Maya literary movement of Chiapas, Mexico, more specifically on concepts of identity formation, gender relations, and Maya cosmovisions. Soto has been the recipient of the postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in American Indian Studies.
