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Las Voces Olvidadas Del Territorio: Infancias Mayas Ante El Conflicto Socioambiental En Ixil, Cielo María Ávila López, Myriam Montserrat Baca Canché, José Israel Herrera

Journal of Maya Heritage

Resumen: En la península de Yucatán, en el sureste de México, la comunidad maya de Ixil resiste ante los diversos intentos de implementación de megaproyectos en su territorio. En el marco de estas disputas territoriales, las voces de las infancias adquieren un matiz clave en el análisis de las dinámicas de desterritorialización y las respuestas de resistencia que devienen del contexto del conflicto socioambiental. Es así como, a partir de la ecología política y metodologías que favorecen el acercamiento a las voces de las infancias, emergieron los significados construidos en torno a dichos sucesos, lo que reveló que más allá …

Front Matter, Maya America Editors

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Full issue of Maya America, volume 8, issue 1.

Full Issue - Maya America V8, I1, Maya America Editors

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Includes Cover Art and Table of Contents

Introduction: Maya Language Advocacy And Mayas’ Production Of Cultural Knowledge, Walter E. Little

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This introductory essay is part of the special issue Maya America, Volume 8, Issue 1, guest-edited and coordinated by the Mayan Languages Preservation Project. The 10 authors of the various research articles and commentaries represent eight of Guatemala’s 22 Maya languages. What brings these essays into relationship with each other are the pragmatic concerns of strengthening Maya languages, such as providing academic, professional, and social services contexts for using and not merely maintaining these languages but helping them thrive. Each author in this special issue has actively worked in various ways to promote Mayan language and cultural knowledge preservation. As …

Geographic Origins Of Mam Interpretation Encounters At La Clínica De La Raza Fruitvale Village In Oakland, California: Informed By A Survey-Based Study, Anibal Pablo

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This study examined the geographic origins of Mam Maya who sought interpretation services at La Clínica de la Raza’s Fruitvale Village Pediatrics department in Oakland, California. Between February 22 and September 6, 2024. The results showed that 95% of interpretation encounters involved respondents from three municipalities – Todos Santos Cuchumátan, San Juan Atitán, and Santiago Chimaltenango – located within the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes region of western Guatemala. This concentrated pattern suggests that the Fruitvale Mam community is largely rooted in a specific set of municipalities whose linguistic variants and cultural practices have important implications for interpreter training and healthcare …

Who Owns Land, Who Owns Language? Challenging The Commercialization Of Indigenous Language Data, Matthew Riemland

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

As Indigenous scholars and activists have pointed out, the commercialization of Indigenous language data resembles the historical and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous land. Using Mayan languages as a case study, this article illustrates the process by which digital advertising platforms – Google and Meta – appropriate and benefit commercially from Indigenous language data, drawing parallels with the dispossession of Indigenous land. It identifies the significant costs of this commercialization to Indigenous communities, including the lack of compensation for the Indigenous language data’s commercial value, the distortion of Indigenous communities’ linguistic and cultural representation online, and the reinforcement of extractive relationships …

La Violencia: Family Stories Of Labor, War, And Migration, Gabriela Merida

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Gabriela Merida, a doctoral student at the University of Albany and a child of Guatemalan Maya refugees, interviews her grandmother and father about their lives in Guatemala and their subsequent experiences as migrants in the United States. Through life history interviews with each of them, Merida examines how foreign intervention shaped the economic and political realities that compelled them to migrate. She employs Giovanni Batz’s (2024) concept of the four invasions as an analytic frame to demonstrate how the historical arc of colonization, the plantation economy, the Guatemalan Civil War, and capitalism produce compounding forms of structural and quotidian violence …

Mayan Languages And Technological Inclusion: The Mayan Languages Preservation Project As An Applied Model To Create Equity In Language Access, Winston Scott

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This article traces the project's founding, structure, and achievements over three years, documenting a community-led effort to create digital resources, including talking glossaries, keyboards, tools to help communities create textbooks for schools, and machine translation corpora for the 22 Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. Drawing on principles of communitybased language documentation and recognized under UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022–2032), the project confronts intersecting challenges of poverty, illiteracy, digital exclusion, and the ethical risks of data extraction by external actors. The author argues that meaningful language digitization should be guided by native speakers and community organizations, rather than …

Who I Am, Andrea Per

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

I have many beautiful memories from my childhood visiting my grandma in the village of Patzicía, Guatemala. Usually, my cousins and I helped her feed her chickens and collect eggs. She also had turkeys, bunnies, and many other animals, including a parrot that my aunts and uncles bought for her so she wouldn’t feel alone during the day. After helping her, Grandma Rafaela usually invited us to enjoy a traditional Maya dinner: black beans, rice, homemade cheese, and handmade tortillas cooked on her comal over a traditional firewood stove, along with a warm drink she made from toasted corn powder. …

Sentimiento Maya Frente A La Injusticia: Qué Es Ser Maya, Kawoq Baldomero Cuma

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

¿Qué es ser maya? El sentimiento de ser maya se refleja en todo nuestro y entorno, como lo es nuestra cosmovisión, donde emerge mucha sabiduría y arte, que muestran nuestra identidad. Los pueblos originarios tenemos un tronco común en nuestras vivencias, y eso nos hace identificarnos con el mismo sentir. Solo expresamos nuestros pensamientos sobre todas las vicisitudes de los distintos escenarios de nuestra historia. Así pues, este ensayo sirve como un llamado a alzar nuestra voz colectiva, para hacer saber al mundo que perduramos —que existimos— a pesar de las indignidades que hemos sufrido en un mundo desigual.

Lenguas Vivas: La Importancia De Preservar El Idioma Mam Y Las Lenguas Indígenas De Guatemala, Sindy Villagrez

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Cada vez que una lengua indígena deja de hablarse, el mundo pierde una manera única de entender la vida, la naturaleza y la experiencia humana. Con ella desaparecen historias transmitidas durante generaciones, conocimientos construidos a través de siglos de observación y experiencia, formas particulares de relacionarse con la comunidad y visiones del mundo que no pueden reproducirse completamente en ningún otro idioma. Estas lenguas forman parte del patrimonio cultural de la humanidad porque conservan conocimientos sobre la agricultura, la medicina tradicional, la convivencia comunitaria y la relación respetuosa con la naturaleza. También guardan valores, memorias y formas de pensamiento que …

My Experience As A Mayan Language Interpreter, Misael Itzep

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Misael discusses his experiences as a court interpreter for K’iche’ migrants in the United States. He has witnessed that “many of my compatriots don't consider that driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, fleeing after an accident, leaving a minor alone at home ‘for a moment’, hitting their partner, etc., has serious repercussions under the law in the United States, something that rarely has legal consequences in Guatemala. For example, in Guatemala, many driving laws aren’t enforced, such as the requirement to wear a seatbelt or to stop at a red traffic light. In contrast, laws are enforced in …

Importance Of Maya Culinary Traditions In Cultural Identity, Claudia Pacay

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Elder women play a crucial role in preserving Mayan identity through food, serving as the primary keepers and transmitters of traditional culinary knowledge. Through everyday cooking and special ceremonial meals, they pass down ancestral recipes, techniques, and the symbolic meanings of ingredients to younger generations. These foods are deeply connected to Mayan history, agriculture, spirituality, and community life — such as the use of native maize, traditional grinding methods, and dishes prepared for rituals and celebrations. By teaching children and grandchildren how to prepare these foods and explaining when and why they are eaten, elder women help maintain cultural continuity …

Woven In Silence: Maya Q’Anjob’Al Cosmology, Gaspar Tomas

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

The Q’anjob’al, Akateko, and Chuj communities of the Guatemalan highlands are among many Maya communities that are flourishing with knowledge that draws on the classical-period Maya civilization and infuses it with contemporary practices. This knowledge guided the Maya people in building a stronger relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds: the very foundation of our social structure and the key to understanding our place in this universe. The survival of our culture, our languages, and our oral traditions all played a critical role in preserving our worldview, but the one that stands resilient above all is the one recorded on …

Examples And Evaluation Of Sustainability Research With Tribes, Aaron M. Canter, Sharon Hausam

Faculty Publications

This is a working paper produced as part of National Science Foundation project #2115169, “Transforming Rural-Urban Systems: Trajectories for Sustainability in the Intermountain West,” known as the “Intermountain West Transformation Network” (TN), led by the University of New Mexico with institutional partners at three additional universities in New Mexico, two in Arizona, and one each in Utah, Colorado, and Washington. The TN’s Indigenous and Tribal engagement was supported through a contract with Dr. Sharon Hausam, additional work by Aaron M. Canter, coordination with Dr. Lani Tsinnajinnie, and an Advisory Committee on Indigenous Information Needs primarily comprised of Indigenous representatives in …

Indigenous Community Research Opportunities, Sharon Hausam, Aaron M. Canter

Faculty Publications

This is a working paper produced as part of National Science Foundation project #2115169, “Transforming Rural-Urban Systems: Trajectories for Sustainability in the Intermountain West,” known as the “Intermountain West Transformation Network” (TN), led by the University of New Mexico with institutional partners at three additional universities in New Mexico, two in Arizona, and one each in Utah, Colorado, and Washington. The TN’s Indigenous and Tribal engagement was supported through a contract with Dr. Sharon Hausam, additional work by Aaron M. Canter, coordination with Dr. Lani Tsinnajinnie, and an Advisory Committee on Indigenous Information Needs primarily comprised of Indigenous representatives in …

Opportunities For Leadership In Indigenous And Tribally Engaged Research At The University Of New Mexico, Sharon Hausam

Faculty Publications

This is a working paper produced as part of National Science Foundation project #2115169, “Transforming Rural-Urban Systems: Trajectories for Sustainability in the Intermountain West,” known as the “Intermountain West Transformation Network” (TN), led by the University of New Mexico with institutional partners at three additional universities in New Mexico, two in Arizona, and one each in Utah, Colorado, and Washington. The TN’s Indigenous and Tribal engagement was supported through a contract with Dr. Sharon Hausam, additional work by Aaron M. Canter, coordination with Dr. Lani Tsinnajinnie, and an Advisory Committee on Indigenous Information Needs primarily comprised of Indigenous representatives in …

'We Will Be Here': Modeling Hunting Community Narratives In Avanersuaq, Greenland, Talor Stone

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The Inughuit, a small Indigenous population in Northwest Greenland with a rich history of subsistence hunting in one of Earth’s harshest environments, have long been portrayed in Western media and academic literature as symbols of vulnerability and resilience, often depicted more as icons of climate change and a culture under threat than as actual people with hopes and aspirations. Indigenous voices are strikingly absent from these Western accounts.

As the Arctic gains prominence amid rapid growth in climate discourse, regional geopolitics, and tourism, the implications of these representations become increasingly significant. When Western crisis narratives dominate discourse and shape regulatory …

Iniciativas Transfronterizas Informe De Border Fellows 2025-2026, Elise Free Ma, Tori Luna Ma, Jonathan De Vicente Encarnación Mtro., Yolanda Viridiana Chávez Flores Dra., Korina Odet Cortés Uribe Dra., Jessie Valcin, Cristina Solano Díaz, Etienne Mulumeoderhwa Mufungizi Dr.

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

El Informe Border Fellows 2025–2026 documenta seis proyectos comunitarios realizados en la región Tijuana–San Diego en el marco del Programa Border Fellows del Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. Desde la academia, la sociedad civil y el sector público, las y los fellows abordaron retos distintos atravesados por un mismo contexto: el tráfico de armas y la violencia armada contra mujeres y personas LGBTQIA+; la violencia juvenil y el riesgo suicida en una secundaria pública; la discriminación en una preparatoria federal con más de 4,300 estudiantes; la capacidad organizativa y los derechos lingüísticos de comunidades indígenas en Baja California; el …

Cross-Border Initiatives Border Fellow Report 2025-2026, Elise Free Ma, Tori Luna Ma, Jonathan De Vicente Encarnación Ma, Yolanda Viridiana Chávez Flores Phd, Korina Odet Cortés Uribe Edd, Jessie Valcin, Cristina Solano Díaz, Etienne Mulumeoderhwa Mufungizi Phd

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

The 2025–2026 Border Fellows Report documents six community-led projects carried out across the Tijuana–San Diego region under the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice's Border Fellows Program. Working in academia, civil society, and the public sector, the fellows addressed distinct challenges shaped by a common context: firearms trafficking and armed violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people; youth violence and suicide risk in a public middle school; discrimination in a federal preparatory school serving more than 4,300 students; the organizational capacity and language rights of Indigenous communities in Baja California; academic accompaniment for Haitian adolescents excluded from formal schooling; and intercultural …