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Describes geography and natural history of the peninsula, gives brief history of Mayan life, discusses Spanish conquest, and provides a long summary of Maya civilization. 4 maps, and over 120 illustrations.
Describes geography and natural history of the peninsula, gives brief history of Mayan life, discusses Spanish conquest, and provides a long summary of Maya civilization. 4 maps, and over 120 illustrations.
In 1562, de Landa conducted an 'Auto de fé' in Maní where in addition to 5000 'idols, ' he burned 27 books in Maya writing. This one act deprived future generations of a huge body of Mayan literature. He culturally impoverished the descendents of the Mayas, and left only four codices for scholars to puzzle over. The document translated here is de Landa's apology, and one of the few remaining contemporary texts which describe pre-conquest Mayan society, science, and art in detail. As such it must be read in context. The translator and editor, the distinguished Americanist William Gates, provides plenty of background on de Landa, the decline of the Maya, and what is today known about their ancient culture. Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán also created a valuable record of the Mayan writing system, which despite its inaccuracies was later to prove instrumental in the later decipherment of the writing system. Landa asked his informants (his primary sources were two Maya individuals descended from a ruling Maya dynasty, literate in the script) to write down the glyphic symbols corresponding to each of the letters of the (Spanish) alphabet, in the belief that there ought to be a one-to-one correspondence between them. The results were faithfully reproduced by Landa in his later account, although he recognised that the set contained apparent inconsistencies and duplicates, which he was unable to explain. Later researchers reviewing this material also formed the view that the "de Landa alphabet" was inaccurate or fanciful, and many subsequent attempts to use this transcription remained unconvincing. It was not until much later, in the mid-twentieth century, when it was realised and then confirmed that it was not a transcription of an alphabet, as Landa and others had originally supposed, but was rather a syllabary. Confirmation of this was only to be established by the work of Russian linguist Yuri Knorozov in the 1950s, and the succeeding generation of Mayanists. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán was written by Diego de Landa Calderón circa 1566 shortly after his return to Spain after serving as Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán in the sixteenth century. In it, de Landa catalogues a partial explanation of written and spoken language that proved vital to modern attempts to decipher the language[1] as well as Maya religion and the Mayan peoples' culture in general. It was written with the help of local Maya princes, and contains the famous translation of "I do not want to". The original manuscript has been lost, although many copies still survive. Currently available English translations include William E. Gates's 1937 translation, has been published by multiple publishing houses under the title Yucatan Before and After the Conquest
Publisher Description
In this first book-length treatment of Maya intellectuals in national and community affairs in Guatemala, Kay Warren presents an ethnographic account of Pan-Maya cultural activism through the voices, writings, and actions of its participants. Challenging the belief that indigenous movements emerge as isolated, politically unified fronts, she shows that Pan-Mayanism reflects diverse local, national, and international influences. She explores the movement's attempts to interweave these varied strands into political programs to promote human and cultural rights for Guatemala's indigenous majority and also examines the movement's many domestic and foreign critics. The book focuses on the years of Guatemala's peace process (1987--1996). After the previous ten years of national war and state repression, the Maya movement reemerged into public view to press for institutional reform in the schools and courts and for the officialization of a "multicultural, ethnically plural, and multilingual" national culture. In particular, Warren examines a group of well-known Mayanist antiracism activists--among them, Demetrio Cojt!, Mart!n Chacach, Enrique Sam Colop, Victor Montejo, members of Oxlajuuj Keej Maya' Ajtz'iib', and grassroots intellectuals in the community of San Andr s--to show what is at stake for them personally and how they have worked to promote the revitalization of Maya language and culture. Pan-Mayanism's critics question its tactics, see it as threatening their own achievements, or even as dangerously polarizing national society. This book highlights the crucial role that Mayanist intellectuals have come to play in charting paths to multicultural democracy in Guatemala and in creating a new parallel middle class.
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