Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization

By June C. Nash and C. Nash June

Book Overview

A significant work by one of anthropology's most important scholars, this book provides an introduction to the Chiapas Mayan community of Mexico, better known for their role in the Zapatista... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415928621
• ISBN13: 9780415928625
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The best single book on the background to the Zapatista movement

I've lived in Chiapas for nine years, and have read extensively on its history, in addition to hearing and recording the oral histories of Indigenous friends. Ms. Nash's book communicates (with extensive references) the most important threads of that history. She shows how it relates to autonomy movements like the Zapatistas. She also explains the role of the Zapatistas as one of many local antiglobalization movements in a worldwide network. I think that any inquiring foreigner who lives long in Chiapas eventually says, "Chiapas is a hall of mirrors, and all I'll ever hear about the political/social situation is that fraction of the truth that aids the speaker's agenda". Ms. Nash is a refreshing change: she's an advocate for the Indigenous here, but she advocates for them honestly. For example, she spent years living in the Tseltal town of Amatenango, and unlike the glib tour guides here, she does not cover up the domestic brutality and the high incidence of murder, especially that related to accusations of witchcraft. However, she also notes that this internecine strife is partly the result of the dominant society's policies that broke up the Indigenous communities' regional social networks, and turned each community inward in a fear-ridden, zero-sum-game struggle for bare subsistence. Ms. Nash's book does take effort to read. It seems to have been written with the recognition that other academics (and anti-Zapatista laymen) may try to pick it apart. But anyone who wants to understand the situation here will find it worth the effort.