Writing about Aj Pop B\u27atz\u27: Bruce Grindal and the Transformation of Ethnographic Writing

The works of Bruce Grindal teach us many things about anthropology’s humanistic tradition. With examples such as Redneck Girl and “Postmodernism as Seen by the Boys at Downhome Auto Repair,” Bruce Grindal demonstrated how we can creatively engage our ethnographic writing to reflect lived experiences. In this article, I examine Bruce’s influence on my ethnographic writing and collaborative research in the Maya community of San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. Since 2006, I have worked collectively with a group of Chamelqueños to investigate the story of their local hero, Aj Pop B’atz’. In the sixteenth century, Aj Pop B’atz’ welcomed Spanish invaders to Chamelco in peace, avoiding the death and destruction suffered by indigenous communities elsewhere. Today, he is revered as a model of indigenous identity. Throughout our work together, my collaborators and I sought outlets to share the information learned through our research with the community. In 2012, we co-wrote a bilingual children’s book about Aj Pop B’atz’ for use in Chamelco’s schools. This book offered school children a chance to reconnect with their history, lost through decades of state-sponsored violence. The Aj Pop B’atz’ project, inspired by Bruce Grindal’s legacy, reveals that ethnographic writing can inform creative collaborative projects, making them accessible to those outside of academia and with whom we work in the field

Meaningful Relationships: Collaborative Anthropology and Mentors from the Field

In this article, I explore my collaboration with my long-time colleague in ethnographic research, Sebastian Si Pop, and our work on a collaborative ethnohistory project in Chamelco. In doing so, I examine the role that indigenous colleagues play in mentoring anthropologists. I argue that anthropologists develop the most meaningful relationships of their academic careers with the people that they meet in the field. These colleagues and friends often go underappreciated and unacknowledged in our resulting scholarship, even when they play crucial roles in our lives

The House in the Market: How Q’eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money and Commodities into Persons and Personhood

Recent research argues that globalization in Latin America sometimes results in the homogenization of culture and loss of indigenous identity. This paper, however, explores how Q’eqchi’-Maya market women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, generate Q’eqchi’ personhood by embracing the conflicts of value introduced by the confrontation of globalization with longstanding Q’eqchi’ values. I argue that in Chamelco, market women are mediators of value who participate in global capitalism to reinforce the categories that structure indigenous life. Q’eqchi’ women engage in marketing activities not only to accrue capital resources, but also to maintain local values, centered on the junkab’al or “house,” or “family.” In doing so, they convert the money and commodities exchanged in the market into kinship and Maya personhood. They do so by sustaining local junkab’als, providing them with products necessary for survival, and by constructing marketing as an occupation practiced by their ancestors. When faced with globalization, Chamelco’s market women harness capitalism to reproduce longstanding Q’eqchi’ values, rather than lose them to global capitalist ones. This research contributes to the growing literature on globalization in Latin America by revealing how Maya communities interface with global ideals to perpetuate, rather than alienate themselves from, indigenous values and categories

Meaningful Relationships: Collaborative Anthropology and Mentors from the Field

In this article, I explore my collaboration with my long-time colleague in ethnographic research, Sebastian Si Pop, and our work on a collaborative ethnohistory project in Chamelco. In doing so, I examine the role that indigenous colleagues play in mentoring anthropologists. I argue that anthropologists develop the most meaningful relationships of their academic careers with the people that they meet in the field. These colleagues and friends often go underappreciated and unacknowledged in our resulting scholarship, even when they play crucial roles in our lives