Mayan Cultural Agency through Performance: Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya-Fomma

Abstract

Chiapas is a grand stage of coexisting realities and temporalities in permanent collision, an enactment of Nestor García Canclini’s definition of hybrid cultures.¹ An observer strolling in Chiapas’ center city of San Cristobal de las Casas finds Mayan women and children in traditional garments alongside business executives and tourists. Their particular versions of the Spanish language resonate in the city space, as they sell artful textiles and numerous items that condense cosmologies of ancient cultures. Music of different genres plays everywhere: typical marimba, modern pop, and metallic rock propitiate an eclectic orchestration of sounds. The visitor is engulfed by an environment that pushes a sort of “Mayan consumerism”: faces, costumes, glyphs, masks, ruins, art, weavings, handcrafts, flutes, and drum beats—a folklore potpourri announcing an idealized past. Restaurants offer Italian, French, and Indian cuisine along with savory Chiapanecan foods in specially designed heritage scenes and settings. Even the local Burger King displays a Mayan motif. Paradoxically, descendants of the Maya are tacitly discouraged from entering the same restaurants and stores that celebrate their heritage. In such a context the observer is a spectator, part of a staged live spectacle where actors portray multiple identities and roles meant for celebration and consumption of the so-called authentic Mayan experience.