AbstractFemale specific gender roles found in Central America, and many patriarchal societies, deter women from having freedom and reaching their full potential. Over generations, society has placed specific gender expectations for women. These expectations undermine them and don’t allow them to be equal to men. Gender roles have become social norms, which means that women are expected to live their lives a certain way. The only way to escape this trap, is for women to break these gender expectations. In my paper, I will do an in-depth analysis of the female specific gender roles that are found in the film La Yuma by Florence Jaugey. I will present how Yuma, the main character, faces setbacks due to her community placing certain gender expectations. However, she is able to prevail by breaking these gender expectations and creating her own happiness. AbstractEveryone will ultimately have different life experiences, but there are people that may have similarities in the lives that they live. I feel that by living in a Hispanic household in the United States, I have been fortunate to be exposed to both Hispanic and American cultures and traditions. In the ethnography, "A Playlist to My Life," I wanted to use different song titles and artists to represent different aspects, relationships, and situations that I have had in my life and how both cultures are very prominent in it. I will illustrate some of the highlights of my life, in which I was able to learn and grow as a person and strengthen my relationships with others.
AbstractThis paper aims to use personal experience to convey that Indigenous Mayan culture from Guatemala continue to break barriers and are alive in spaces like Los Angeles and other transnational spaces. I will specifically take a look at Quiche communities. The use of knowledge both through community and nonprofits work together to keep this spiritually alive. Through examination and analysis of organizations, movements, and media they help provide a depiction of how these indigenous people that continue to keep Mayan spirituality alive both in Los Angeles and in Guatemala exist today.
AbstractI wrote this essay because I’ve seen the many struggles that women go through daily. Every day I see domestic workers on my way to class on the metro with their cleaning supplies ready to work. Many of these women have stories such as the ones in the film, Maid in America. I see them again in the night going back home exhausted from working more than eight-hour shifts. There’s a reason why they work hard in order to provide for their families. These women are becoming stronger for themselves and their loved ones. The world is changing, and it is time for everyone to stand up against patriarchal systems to show the world that women have always worked as hard as men. There are going to be many challenges in life for women, and the decisions that they will make will impact them and their families as well. My paper analyzes the specific cases of Eva, Telma, and Judith featured in the film. AbstractWomen often make sacrifices that are in favor of their families’ futures. In La Yuma, Yuma gives up her career as a boxer in order to make more money and provide better living conditions for her siblings. In Maid in America, Telma, Judith, and Eva come to the United States in hopes of helping their families. They sacrificed their homes in their native lands. Even though they came looking for the American Dream, they are not able to find easier lives, but they find their way to live through poor working conditions because even this is easier than living poorly in their homelands. Lastly, Walterio Iraheta’s drawing of the Central American woman in a Superman costume best portrays the strength that women have and that men are blind to see. I will examine through a formalistic perspective the reoccurring theme of feminism presented within these texts.
AbstractA woman’s role in a family has been commonly known to stay in the house and take care of their children. In Central America the beliefs that men and women have to follow a certain role in families has been a part of their culture for many years. Machismo and marianismo has influenced the beliefs of a women in a family and the work force. Machismo has affected men in Central America as being “macho” such as being the breadwinner of the family and being the head of the household. Men are believed to guide the children of the family and to be the parent that has a job. As for women, marianismo has been connected to the “La Virgen Maria” (the Virgin Mary) the mother of Jesus. A woman is taught to put her child first, similar to the Virgin Mary. The common traits of machismo and marianismo seem to be challenged when many Central American women migrate to the United States.
AbstractStruggles of identity within Central American youth has been difficult. Living in an environment where someone is constantly dealing with more than one culture means constantly negotiating identity spaces. My paper is an autoethnography about my personal life and the struggles I go through in finding my identity in Lake Balboa. I talk about my life and the way I saw myself growing up. As a young adult I always felt guilty about whether I should acknowledge my parents’ background or just acknowledge my place of birth. I hope others find my journey and my parents’ journey a useful insight into my life.
ACT I DARIO ( in a deep resonant voice) Thinkest thou to be somewhat of celebrity? The prince of Golconda, a literary deputy? Or perhaps a direct progeny of “El Conde Lucanor”? ASTURIAS ( ASTURIAS is shocked, scared out of his wits) W-wh- who… is that speaking in the middle of the night? A ghost ? A spirit? A vision from the past? Someone or something to haunt me as my troubled soul lies aghast? DARIO (Interrupts ASTURIAS) Abstract
The state formation and the centralization and development of the civil judicial apparatus created changes that allowed authorities and the community to play a role in the sexual politics and policing of the women’s body. Courts promoted a Christian upper-class ideal of marriage and purposely subjected women to the domestic space. In Nicaragua, we see the elite ladinos benefiting from their privilege to bride and govern municipal governments as well as control of indios (both men and women) and ladinas (excluding the single and widowed). In Costa Rica, we see women subjected to patriarchal domination as well as an invasion of private marital affairs. Conversely, we see how both Nicaraguan and Costa Rican women manage to access the legal arena and create a public sanction of marital relationships.
Minely Moradian is a first-year EOP student passionate about art. She is majoring in graphic design. By Ketzali Antu Saravia Umaña "Reveries"
Alone, atop the rubble With only a phantom limb to care for my wounds Her breath still lingers but she, she is gone The light of the moon washes over my face as I search the cosmos For the brightest star A cool breeze blew Through these thickets of grass and I, I was home The light of the moon washed over my face the cosmos reveal themselves to me Like a ball game amongst celestial bodies and I, I was home Mourning dawned She was draped in ash A thousand crows Perching on her chest I was to wear my finest black The stars aren’t as bright as they used to be Mother has passed and I, I was home Come dawn They will desecrate her grave Pillars will rise skyward Pierce right through mothers’ beating heart and I, I was home I was to keep time for her It is too bright out now Cannot see the stars anymore the game is over Alone, I walk along the rubble With only a phantom limb to care for my wounds Her breath still lingers but she, she is gone The light of the moon washed over my face As I searched the cosmos For the brightest star A cool breeze blew Through these thickets of grass and I, I was home. Abstract
In this paper, I argue that Central American street vendors reshape traditional foods to fulfill the desires of transnational people because it is a way of feeling part of home. It is necessary to conduct ethnographic interviews in Los Angeles where there is a strong population of Central American street vendors. As each mode of reshaping traditional foods becomes more prevalent in the lives of street vendors and transnational people, it is important to examine and explore the impact of these Americanized changes. For example, altering traditional food to fit Americanized tastes, carries the risk of certain traditions becoming extinct. However, street vendors are left with little choice because they must earn a steady income. Ultimately, Los Angeles has become an important study in shared cultural spaces and shared survival through food and community.
By Ketzali Antu Saravia Umaña Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s novel, Fábula asiática, argues that modernity and chronology are cultural constructs used to diagram our lives. The novel revolves around the stories of three young mathematicians who came together from distinct parts of the globe to put an end to Western modernity by destroying all forms of satellite communication. Parallel to Peter Osborne’s ideas regarding time, the novel argues that time is the simultaneity of multiple temporalities and not one continuous stream heading in a single direction. The narrative leaps around time as it stitches together the stories of the three main characters, Abdelkrim, Pacal and Xeno. To further elaborate on Osborne’s ideas regarding time, in this essay I will explore the musical concept of polyrhythmia as an analogy to global entanglements, since polyrhythms deconstruct linear perceptions of time in a similar fashion. The novel invites its readers to consider that the diagrams of Western modernity are used to exclude people who don’t fit into its confines and illustrates this through the United States’ treatment of Abdelkrim as a metaphorical “indio permitido,” an Indigenous person limited to modernity’s diagrams constructed to force assimilation. Along this vein, I will use the collective first person to disrupt the metaphor of the “indio permitido” by using Indigenous theorists’ use of “we” to discuss our mental colonization.
Historically, we have been forced to understand time as chronologically linear where the Western world has deemed itself the model of progress. However, Western chronology is an exclusive temporal construct, not the universal unfolding of time. The universalization of Western Chronology is a consequence of the ideas from the European Enlightenment becoming the global norm through its colonial imposition, where world history is told from a Eurocentric perspective. The West equates itself to the “First World”; whoever doesn’t fit in to its standards of development become part of the “Second” or “Third World”. We are relegated to different temporal zones dictated by a Western perspective on Cold War politics with the “Second World” representing the ideological “other” of Western Capitalism, the former Soviet Union and Communism, and the “Third World” representing the land of the “ancient”, “underdeveloped” and “conquered world”. The three mathematicians in the novel aim to erase the hegemony of the Western temporality, realizing that the Western temporality is a construction and an arbitrary fiction. By Kelly De Leon In order to acknowledge the San Fernando Valley, we must first recognize that this is stolen Native American Tongva tribe land (Banks, 1997). Present day Southern California has predominantly served as a diverse state that has multicultural groups of immigrants from around the world. Looking specifically at the San Fernando Valley, there has been an influx of Central American migrants migrating to the valley fir various reasons such as family reunification, escaping violence, or economic disparities. This paper will examine how Mexican hegemony contributes to the marginalization and erasure of Central Americans, not only is this detrimental to Central American prosperity, but it is also a direct attack on unity of the Latinx community. However, throughout the years, Central Americans in the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley, created their own safe spaces and are continuing to break barriers despite setbacks from Mexican centrism.
Abstract
Abstract
aBSTRACT
Roberto Castillo uses La Guerra Mortal de los Sentidos to criticize modernity in various ways. For example, he criticizes how indigenous people are considered invisible and how they struggle with others acknowledging their identity; thus, considering them as “other” for not conforming to modernity. I argue that this is because modernity is constructed through Spanish influence and ideals since the time of the conquest. For example, while being considered as other, modernity destroys indigenous identity. It portrays an image far from their reality. In addition, the complexity of the way that Roberto Castillo wrote La Guerra Mortal de los Sentidos seeks to decolonize the reader’s mind. In addition, the novel is used to mock modernity by showcasing a character that is ignorant of indigenous cultures. Lastly, it is important to understand that Roberto Castillo uses the Lenca people’s invisibility to demonstrate the effects on the trauma they have experienced in their own country. Ultimately, I argue that indigenous people are largely unknown in the western world and because of that they are left as othered victims of the violence of the universal western beliefs, such as modernity as a form of progress.
The sounds of scurrying feet fill in the vast area of darkness as a voice shouts, “Come on! Come on! Hurry!”
“Which room are we putting him in?” “This one. This room.” says another voice. “Ok, now. Steady.” The sound of the squeaking bed springs echoes throughout the room as another voice speaks, “Ok, someone grab the medicine.” “My god! Who found him? Where!?” AbstractThis paper examines the life of a Central American mother whose children migrated to the United States to understand the effects of migration on Central American families. The effects of her children's departure can be broken into two types of absence: physical and emotional. Their physical absence leads to more responsibility the mother must bear. Their emotional absence leads to the faltering and eventual fading of once-strong relationships. Ultimately, the combination of both emotional and physical absences leads to a fracturing of the family structure. The purpose of the paper is to combat the dehumanization of Central American migrants that is littered throughout President Trump's speeches and cable news shows. It is important for us to hear and empathize with the stories of mothers like Maria Rojas because these are the stories the mainstream media and politicians do not want us to know.
By Elena Cheung The war really happened. A Salvadoran man came to the United States. Coming for work.
Opportunity and safety. To survive. His day didn't consist of much. He went to work and then back home. His family kept him company. He wouldn't come out again until his boss called him in once more. He was accompanied. He came with his two children. His wife and other two children were still in El Salvador. He was the one who worked and raised money for the family. He would work in the nights, “taking the jobs” of those who lived there. Distressed, the Americans begged the local officers to deport the Salvadorans who were taking their jobs. And the officers managed to get a hold of some of the immigrants. Others managed to get away. The Americans got terrified again and said they were thugs, criminals, and drug dealers. The police suggested to keep them in their own community. The Americans thought that was a terrific idea. They pushed them to their own communities, but some of the other Spanish speaking communities did not want to mix their ethnicities. They made each other uncomfortable. . . Montserrat Rangel Vergara is a CSUN student interested in pursuing art. By Michelle Pacheco El Tiempo Principia en Xibalba is a novel written by Kakchiquel author Luis De Lion and published posthumously in 1985 after winning Guatemala’s literary award the Juegos Florales de Quetzaltenango. The novel focuses on a small town in Guatemala and the crisis caused by the return of Pascual, a young man who left to join the military. He shows disdain for his hometown and their “indigenous” ways while yearning for La Virgen de Concepcion, the statue of a Virgen who holds importance in the town and their church. Within the town also resides a prostitute, Concha, who is nicknamed La Virgen de Concepcion as she bears a striking resemblance to the statue in the church, and the man she eventually marries Juan Caca, the rich man who lives in a white house and is well regarded in the community. I argue that within the novel the author Luis De Lion uses references to the Popol Vuh in order to maintain indigenous identity among his characters despite the heavily Catholic and colonial influence on the small town in which the story is taking place.. De Lion uses a concept of time and language related to his own indigenous identity in his book in order to reify indigeneity in Guatemalan/Central American literature as this book is the only book read in this class that focuses solely on indigenous people. Language use in El Tiempo Principia En Xibalba It is important to look at the language in this book as it is a result of colonialism because the book is written in Spanish rather than in Kakchiquel or Quiché. Through the use of Guatemalan Spanish, De Lion has created a connection to the indigenous cultures in Guatemala that have influenced the way Spanish is spoken in the country. It is no longer the Castilian brought to Central America by the Spanish colonizers but a language that has been syncretized with the language of the indigenous populations. Language usage has been considered a determining factor in identity and which group a person identifies with the most[1]. There has been debate over the Maya influence on Guatemalan Spanish. Kenneth Yabes argues that the erasure of Maya influence on Guatemala Spanish stems from Guatemala ladinos not wanting to admit that their Spanish has been “indigenized” and that “they speak like indios”[2] Yabes links the linguistic inferiority to the prevalent racial issues in Guatemala and the fear of being “othered” through the indigenous heritage in their Spanish. In the novel, De Lion uses a common dialect that is known within all socioeconomic stratas in Guatemala, it is an “illegitimate language” that ladinos try not to acknowledge. De Lion purposely makes use of Guatemalan Spanish to force ladinos to face “la lengua mestiza”[3] Even in his pseudonym De Lion uses a characteristic phonological shift that is used in Guatemalan Spanish. Luis De Lion is a play on the author's full name, Jose Luis De Lion Diaz, and the shift breaks the [e] + vowel hiatus making Leon [Le.on] as [ljon] just as pelear [pe.le.ar] would be pronounced [pel.jar][4]. Nathan Henne points out that the use of “principia” in the title of the novel is an archaic verb that is no longer used in the modern Spanish speaking world but it is not considered archaic in the Guatemalan villages where it is used more than the preferred “comenzar” that is used in Spanish. By using “principia”, a speaker would be identified as indigenous and has an alienating effect in cities.[5] Henne states that “right from the front cover, El Tiempo Principia En Xibalba, purposely confronts its reader with the persistence of indigenous poetics in the absence of indigenous language”[6]. Within the novel De Lion continues to use aspects of Guatemalan Spanish such as using “nana” in the sentence “”O llegar acompañado de tu nana - o tu madre, segun como vos la llames.” There is a distinction between the indigenous use of nana over the use of madre which is used to mark differing ties to the indigenous culture or the Ladino and to the particular women that is being addressed. Henne points out that “nana” doesn’t just mean mom because in Kiche “nan” is used to refer in a respectful manner to any woman in the village. Later on, in the novel De Lion uses nanita, the diminutive of nana, when referring to the midwife, Senora Chus, who all the kids she helped deliver would say “good morning nanita; good afternoon nanita, good evening nanita.” It is interesting to note that Pascual, during a conversation with Juan (page 50), refers to his mother as “madre” as a way to make himself more Ladino. Another marker of Guatemalan Spanish used in the novel is the use of “vos” which is the most informal of the three second person singular voices (Usted, tu, vos). The use of voseo reflects a paradoxical relationship between the conservative indigenous cultures and the pervasiveness of “vos” and it shows a shift in voice within the novel and shows a closeness with in the relationship of the characters who are speaking. References to the Popol Vuh and Creating Indigenous Identity The title of the book comes up again in regard to the indigenous identity of the novel besides the archaic use of “principia”, the title also references Xibalba. The novel is influenced with symbolism from the Popol Vuh and is even mentioned with in the novel as “that strange book” (un libro raro) named the Popol Vuh which was just as distant to the village as Spain was. The section “The other half of the night they didn’t sleep” begins with the townspeople walking around the dark. They are cold, hungry, and lost. “And the people started to make the cross, when they brushed against each other because they thought maybe they had already been dead for some time, but that they were only now realizing it; and they felt that they had been deceased for a very long time, and now they were only haunting…and haunting themselves; they felt like the souls of men, and because they were souls they could only live in darkness; and they thought that if they were watching for the light of the sun it was so they could stop suffering, Since the darkness wasn't good for anything except for making more little dead ones. And so in order not to go on suffering, they decided to invent the day, just in their heads…” (30). The style of De Lions interludes within the novel is reminiscent of the literary style of the Popol Vuh through the way the sentences are structured. They are continuous and flow into each other, hardly ever breaking. Almost as if they are one long sentence. Xibalba is described in the Popol Vuh as a realm below the surface of the Earth ruled by deities of death and diseases and symbolically was associated with the times when the sun was no longer visible as well as feelings of non-beingness[7]. The darkness that the villagers are in is Xibalba and they are waiting for the sun, which would be the beginning of life. The sentence “they decided to reinvent they day” links to the Popol Vuh’s creation of the earth. Tedlocks translation states: “And then the earth arose because of them, it was simply their word that brought it forth. For the forming of the Earth they said “earth”. It arose suddenly, just like a cloud, like a mist, now forming, unfolding.[8]” The villagers say they felt like the “souls of men” and because they are in a state of non-being. “They could only live in darkness” has dual references, one to Xibalba where souls would walk around in darkness and another to the creation of humans. In the Popol Vuh (The Bearer, the Makers, Modelers named Sovereign Plumed Serpent say: “The dawn has approached, preparations have been made, and the morning has come for the provider, nurturer, born in the light, begotten in the light. Morning has come for humankind, for the people of the face of the earth.” It all came together as they went on thinking in the darkness, in the night, as they searched and they sifted, they thought, they wondered”[9] Humans are then formed from corn, the staple foods, used to create human flesh by the Bearer, Begetter, Sovereign Plumed Serpent. Therefore, the villagers deciding to invent the day in the novel can be tied to the creation of humans in the Popol Vuh and the morning has come for the residents of the town. They are creating themselves, remaking themselves after the disasters that have befallen their town and the destruction of the church. They willed themselves, created just by saying the words, into creating a new life for themselves and leaving the darkness of Xibalba and colonialism. They are reclaiming their indigenous identity and continue to move through time, rather than moving backwards (as people would refer to indigenous cultures as something from the past and not modern),. Time in El Tiempo Principia En Xibalbá as Circular The layout of the novel is written in a circular nature. The novel begins with the words, “Then, that night, first there was wind” as the title of the first section but also as the last words that are written. The entirety of the novel flashes forward and flashes backwards and phrases are repeated such as the instance where the village church has been built; “little by little, like an immobile and nameless bird that came into the world without needing to be hatched from an egg, and whose bones were born first, then its flesh, and finally its feathers until it stood there like a living fossil - slowly emerged from its foundations and, at last, got the finishing touch when it was painted as white as a Castilian pigeon, and then little thatched huts sprang up all around it like little hatchlings, nothing has ever happened in this town” which is first seen in First There Was Wind and then again in the Prologue which mirrors the cyclical aspect that the sentence “first there was wind has. This circular motion of time in the book is connected to the conception of Maya cyclical notion of time called the k’atun, according to Arturo Arias, which is present in the earliest forms of the Maya calendar. Using a Maya concept to frame the book is also a way for De Lion to show resistance against Western colonial concept of time that were pushed on to the indigenous people in Guatemala and can be seen as decolonizing. Peter Osborne states that time is not something that is fixed despite the notions of looking at the world in a chronological order of progression, evolution, and development[10]. Western ideas of time have always been associated with modernity and non-Western concepts of time have been seen as ideas that are stuck in time where the people are not able to move forward. Modernity categorizes time chronologically as well as defines it by the quality of the history creating a division between the present as its own time and the past as another time. Osborne sets up the concepts of non-contemporaneousness and chronologically simultaneous which states that time is not linear and different times can occur simultaneously without any geographical or temporal barriers. He states that modernity is a Western concept and that it is through a relationship with the West that the rest of the non-Western world is transformed. This idea of modernity erases the cultures of non-Western societies that are deemed to be “backwards” people because they have not followed modernity and evolved or developed themselves. By holding onto their cultural worldviews, religions, and traditions they are “staying in the past” rather than following the rest of Western world. Through their resistance to Western modernity they are continuing to live alongside modernity, developing differently, and thus creating an alternate timeline of development that is not relative to the Western world. The cultures are now outside of time. Not modern but not completely “undeveloped”. They are chronologically simultaneous. Luis De Lion uses the Maya concepts of time to write his novel in order to prove that these ideas are not in the past as many Ladinos would assume, but they are living concurrently along with the Western ideas brought by colonial powers and the Catholic church. It’s also important to note that both the Popol Vuh and El Tiempo Principia En Xibalba are written in five sections which is further reference and connection between De Lion’s novel and the Popol Vuh. Luis de Lion therefore creates a cosmological continuity of the Popol Vuh into contemporary time that also brings indigenous identity into contemporary Central American literature. Indigenous Identity in the Novel The novel focuses on the indigenous town in Guatemala that has been Catholicized and colonized. The people in the town are as far away from personal connections to the Popol Vuh as they are from Spain and communism. Pascual shows disdain towards the indigenous characteristics of his hometown after living in the Ladino world and the military. He hates how frozen in time they are and how it’s always “the same old shit as always in this town”. They can’t invent any new streets, or last names, or faces and nothing has ever happened in town since its creation. Pascual is an indigenous person who tries to change himself in a ladino by joining the military where he believes he’d fit in more than his hometown. When he returns no one recognizes him and he brings with him “a strange face, as if he were someone different; he had pieces of gold in place of some of his teeth, which he made an effort to show with pride every time he laughed or talked; in his mouth he brought strange words, unknown, like a man who has learned other languages; on his feet he had shoes in place of sandals made from strips of discarded rubber tires; on his head he had a hat made of vicuna leather in place of the simple grace of the woven straw hat; and on his body clothes that were different than those the people wore in the village[11]”. In his return, he has rejected every aspect of his indigenous identity in order to embrace a ladino one instead. He shows off his golden teeth, a status of wealth and privilege that people in the town could not afford, whenever he talks showing that he had the access to dentistry which might not have been common in such a small town. His language has changed into a more Castilian Spanish and no longer uses those indigenous words that were looked down upon in the military and the ladino world. He no longer wears his sandals, or a woven straw hat, and his clothes are far from what the modest people of the town would wear. Pascual has put in a large amount of effort in order to change himself and assimilate but it ends up not being enough. He still returns to his hometown knowing that underneath the facade he is still indigenous He returns to the town to die because it is where his umbilical cord is buried, the town is a part of him and he knows that it is where he belongs and where he will die. He has tried to live in the ladino world, he tried to belong but it rejected him. The reader finds out that while Pascual was gone, after abandoning the army, he lived with a prostitute who only loved him because she gave him money. She refused to marry him or bare him a child because it “would be an indian, like his father”. Pascual views the indigenous people in his village as all being the same, the same way that the town never changes or nothing ever happens. He narrates “You’re looking for a certain person, but it might as well be the first woman that happens to cross your path, who you know everything about; and you could ask for another woman, but even if the one you ask for is dead, it still seems as if she’s alive because the one in front of you is the same[12]”. To him, all the women in the town are the same person. They are all the same life. Gilles Deleuze identifies life as “all the moments that a given living subject goes through and that are measured by given living objects[13]” Deleuze posits that the life of a person are classified by the experiences within that life but that a “singular life might do without any individuality, without any other concomitant that individualized it[14]” which he uses the example of small children resembling each other with only a few things to separate them; a smile, certain gestures. The children have no individuality and that is how Pascual views the women in town. While, yes, they are all separate women, in his eyes they are all the same. While watching the women at the church Pascual sees them exactly as he had in his absence; “common, run-of-the-mill, with long hair, bare feet: Indians.” All the women in town have grown up with the same experiences, they have never seen the Ladino world, and have never left their town so to Pascual they are all as similar to him and the young children are to Deleuze. The only women who stands out to Pascual is the real Virgen de Concepcion who he described as being small, with long golden brown hair, eyes that didn’t look directly at a man, a straight thin nose, a mouth that had never kissed a man, a sweet shape like he’d never seen on any other woman, a flat chest, and a stomach that had the grace of a feather pillow. The Virgen de Concepcion is a European woman and ultimately that makes her stand out to Pascual who hates the indigenous women of his town because they all look the same and because she is the only Ladina in the village so she reminds Pascual of what he yearns to be. His love for the Virgen de Concepcion leads to him stealing the statue from the church. He plans their escape and hides in the church until he can steal her. He sneaks her off to his house and removes her clothes “slowly, like a Ladino might undress his bride on their wedding night, full of desire, burning with passion” and then has sex with the statue all night long. Once the morning comes he describes her as “sad, old; haggard...her cheeks no longer with the slightest hint of color and her lips now were in need of some lipstick to make them appear fresh. She looked like a used up slut; she looked like a whore”. After he has his way with the statue of the Virgen, he looks at her and is disgusted with the way she looks now. Now that he taken her “virginity” she has been profaned. Giorgio Agamben defines “to profane” as to return them to the use of man, in the context of religious objects[15]. The objects are returned to the common use of men and are free of sacred names such as the word virgin. He points out that the passage from sacred to profane can come about in inappropriate ways which is what is seen when Pascual has sex with the statue of the Virgen de Concepcion and he no longer regards her as sacred. When he wakes up in the morning and looks at her, calling her a whore, he proceeds to throw her onto the floor as he no longer wants to look at her. She has lost what had made her sacred and what had made her attractive to Pascual. She is “used up” and no longer perfect with her lips that looked that used to look like that had never kissed a man. As the town walks in to his house and sees what has happened she also becomes profaned for them and they destroy the church and hit her with their machetes and spit on her. Through the act of destroying the church and no longer idolizing the ladino Virgen de Concepcion, the town is moving away from being a Catholicized and colonized town. Through the use of language, references to the Popol Vuh, and indigenous concept of time Luis De Lion has created a novel that creates an indigenous identity to a town in Guatemala that has had a heavy Catholic influence thrown onto them by colonialism. The town eventually frees itself from colonialism through the profanation of the statue of the Virgen de Concepcion. Pascual, who wants to be Ladino, comes back to his hometown after realizing that he will never be a Ladino and that his indigenous identity will always define him. In a way, through his inappropriate acts with the statue he has freed the town from the worship of a Ladino figure and from the acts of colonialism that had befallen Guatemala when the Spanish had arrived. [1] Yoshioka, Hirotashi. Indigenous Language Usage and Maintenance Patterns among Indigenous People in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico and Guatemala. 7. [2] Yanes, Kenneth. Guatemalan Spanish As Act of Identity: An Analysis of Language and Minor Literature Within Modern Maya Literary Production. 19. [3] Yanes, Kenneth. Guatemalan Spanish As Act of Identity: An Analysis of Language and Minor Literature Within Modern Maya Literary Production. 20. [4] Yanes, Kenneth. Guatemalan Spanish As Act of Identity: An Analysis of Language and Minor Literature Within Modern Maya Literary Production .20 [5] Henne, Nathan C. Translator's Introduction. xii. [6] Henne, Nathan C. Translator's Introduction. Xii. [7] Arias, Arturo. 2016. Wheels Working Together: The Popol Wuj and Time Commences in Xibalba as Markers of Maya Cosmovision. 69. [8] Tedlock, Dennis. 1996. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. 65. [9] Tedlock, Dennis. 1996. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. 145. [10] Osborne, P. 1995. Modernity: A Different Time. [11] De Lion. 2012. Time Commences in Xibalba. 39. Trans. Nathan Henne. [12] De Lion. 2012. Time Commences in Xibalba. 25. Trans. Nathan Henne. [13] Deleuze. 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. 29. Trans. Ann Boyman. [14] Deleuze. 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. 30. Trans. Ann Boyman. [15] Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. In Praise of Profanation. 73. Trans. Jeff Fort. Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. Profanations. Translated by Jeff Fort. Zone Books; New York.
Arias, Arturo. 2016. “Wheels Working Together: The Popol Wuj and Time Commences in Xibalba as Markers of Maya Cosmovision” in Reading the Past Across Space and Time. Deleuze, Gilles. 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. Translated by Anne Boyman. Zone Books; New York. De Lion, Luis. 2012. Time Commences in Xibalba. Translated by Nathan Henne. The University of Arizona Press; Arizona. Henne, Nathan C. “Translator's Introduction: Translation and a Poetics of the Uncertain” in Time Commences in Xibalba. Zone Books; New York. Osborne, Peter. 1995. The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde. Verso; London/New York. Tedlock, Dennis. 1996. The Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Touchstone; New York. Yanes, Kenneth. 2014. “Guatemalan Spanish As Act of Identity: An Analysis of Language and Minor Literature Within Modern Maya Literary Production.” CUNY Academic Works. Yoshioka, Hirotashi. 2010. Indigenous Language Usage and Maintenance Patterns among Indigenous People in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico and Guatemala. Latin American Research Review. 45; 3. |