Mayan Literacy Reinvention in Guatemala

This book offers a very timely discussion of the interrelated problems of orality and literacy in the context of language endangerment and revitalization efforts. The author focuses on Guatemala and the renewed interest among speakers of two Mayan communities—Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, and San Pedro La Laguna, Sololá—such as native Mayan intellectuals and women's groups in strengthening their cultural traditions and linguistic practices following the rise of the Mayan Movement. Informed by the history of an ancient literacy tradition as well as ethnographic interviews and surveys and actual uses of writing in public and personal contexts over a period of 24 months, the author investigates what she calls the reinvention of Mayan literacy. This focus, she observes, fills a gap in the literature on language loss and revitalization in Guatemala pertaining to literacy in Mayan languages among the several generations that make up each community.The introduction provides the theoretical background to the study (“new literacy studies”), the need for the study (language loss, language revitalization), and the book's organization (p. xiv). Chapter 1 surveys the nature of Mayan literacy, past and present, among the members of the Mayan language family and describes the methodology employed in the study, concluding with a commitment to capturing the human experience. Chapter 2 explores the multilingual (diglossic) nature of Guatemala at large and of the two predominantly Mayan communities on which the author focuses, as well as the social forces that promote language shift, through careful scrutiny of available statistics and the author's own primary research on language and literacy uses in a variety of public and private settings, which results in a demographic profile of various groups of speakers and writers. Chapter 3 considers the role of gender, shame, and internal and external influences. Chapter 4 surveys the types of media that publish content in Mayan languages and compares them to media in other languages, in addition to examining issues pertaining to practical aspects of such media, the ideologies espoused by the groups who publish them, and language attitudes related to such media. Chapter 5 explores public literacy of various types (including clothing as a type of literacy), attitudes toward broader cultural change, and the revival of ancient Mayan glyphs in such contexts. Chapter 6 begins by surveying the history of language and literacy in education in Guatemala and explores the various ways that these have affected Mayan language maintenance and promoted language shift to Spanish—a situation that has not improved significantly, despite the constitutional recognition of Mayan languages following the Guatemala peace accords in 1996, due to lack of sufficient funding. Chapter 7 reviews the current state of language vitality, including Maya's social and cultural correlates and, crucially, some recommendations for policy change as well as for how individuals and communities can take the initiative. These recommendations are derived from studies, interviews, and analysis of the available language and literacy statistics. The author argues that “local control over the project and its funding” would provide a more solid foundation for literacy programs (p. 203).The takeaway is positive overall: Mary Holbrock notes that literacy is growing in some communities, spreading across some domains, and increasingly associated with pride in the cultural and ethnic heritage of the readers and writers. That in some of the communities speakers are alarmed by how quickly the language and cultural traditions are changing and disappearing is itself a positive development: in the past, a kind of denial about language loss seemed to take hold of communities. But Holbrock expresses worry, for even after such a realization some speakers still underestimate the severity of the problem. Citing an interviewee who looks to the “medium-term future,” rather than the “short-term future,” with optimism, the author warns that there may be no medium- or long-term future for the language unless immediate, short-term action is undertaken (p. 212).Of minor importance, I would observe that few secondary sources, one of them known to be riddled with errors and dated information (by Maria Longhena), are cited by the author in her review of ancient Mayan writing. Also, the author's exploration of “environmental print” has precedents in the well-established subfield of linguistic landscapes. Nevertheless, such oversights aside, the book is extremely important for scholars interested in the future of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala, Mayan or otherwise, and the author's overall approach could be reproduced in other Mayan communities in Guatemala and elsewhere (Mexico, Belize) to attain a more comprehensive view of Mayan language loss and revitalization. It is only through careful ethnographic and comparative case studies that the alarming reality and causes of language loss in a community can be understood. As such, Holbrock's contribution to the field of language revitalization will likely be a lasting one, and her contribution to the field of Mayan language loss and revitalization could not be timelier

Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Ethnography · Literacy · Orality · Pedagogy · Political science · Scrutiny · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Indigenous Cultures and Socio-Education · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy