Introductory Note to Issue 3, 2020

Maya America is honored to present this special issue in collaboration with Yax Te’ Books. Presenting a trilingual compilation of narratives from the town of Parramos and neighboring villages in the central highlands of Guatemala, the book in three languages underscores how challenges inherent in language maintenance also represent opportunities for affirming cultural values and practices

Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation

Book Review Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation Lauren Heidbrink Stanford University Press, 2020. 240p

Maya America: Introduction to the Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Twenty years ago, the first account of the emerging transnational scope of the Maya, The Maya Diaspora: Guatemalan Roots, New American Lives (2000), focused on the roots and emerging realities of Maya migration. Much has changed in a short time. While lives and identities continue to involve intergenerational connections to the south, they are also increasingly ones that reflect an intersection of indigenous, intercultural, and transnational experiences. Ultimately, it is hoped that Maya America will serve to reveal how greatly interconnected are the Americas, through processes of social and cultural evolution, history, and demography, and through assertions of rights of peoples south and north in shaping, and not just facing, what is ultimately a shared human destiny

Introductory Note

Names can encourage dynamic discussion as well as designate purpose and potentialities. “Maya America” refers to the historic and the present-day geographic regions where people of Maya descent live, while “Maya America” also reflects a term of self-identification used by many in the new generations born or raised beyond traditional homelands. The journal features essays and commentary about contemporary and emerging experiences and challenges, rather than endeavoring to establish a new category of “studies” alongside American, Latino, Indigenous, or Central American studies

Challenges for Maya Family Continuity in a Transbordered World

Migration between Central America and countries to the north has increased in scale as well as in contentiousness as a political challenge. Too often, those most involved are peripheral to public discourse and policies. Today sizeable numbers of families, including indigenous Maya families, are participants not only in movement but as through separations across national borders and time. Evolving strategies for maintaining or recreating social cohesion amid disruptions of migration and resettlement involve parents as well as children. Drawing on experiences of families from one highland Guatemalan community, and comparative research into adaptive strategies of immigrant families in the United States, we argue for the necessity of acknowledging current realities and shifting familial challenges that characterize millions of people in North America today

Actionable Learning for a Living Earth: Backwards by Design 2015-16 Project Report

During the summer 2015 “Backwards by Design” working retreat, I explored the intricate pairing of knowledge and action as central to efforts to bridge anthropology and environment. The retreat initiated a focus on “actionable learning” as a threshold concept that would come to underlie my seminar on “Ecocultural Ethics” in Winter 2016

Education as Solidarity

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138201/1/aeq12210_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138201/2/aeq12210.pd

Canada-US Border Securitization: Implications for Binational Cooperation

State borders are critical junctions where oppositional dynamics of exclusion and inclusion are played out. In the last eight years, transnational congruence inherent in economic globalization has clashed directly with the assertion of territorial security by the United States. Borders, harkening to the geopolitics of past centuries, are once again asserted to be sites of vulnerability and lines for maintaining control over people and territory. Border enforcement emphasizes controlling movement of undesirable people and goods, but it is also about ensuring domestic stability and countering challenges to the status quo. Given a history in which immigrants are as likely seen to be threats to national security as welcomed sources of assets and skills, border concerns and border control processes invariably breed anxiety about internal social and cultural boundaries as well. By differentiating the other, borders and their supporting narratives reinforce them. In addition to immigrants and refugees, people considered sufficiently different from prevailing norms are also affected. While national border policies affect the nation as a whole, border regions are disproportionately impacted. Border regions are the locus of cross border social and economic relations, the first point of contact and interaction between nations. As such, they serve to mediate perceptions of, as well as actual, relationship between countries. Their functions as social and economic conduits are constrained as border controls are intensified. Borders, under these conditions, serve to weaken relationships, and impede cross­border cooperation in such areas as commerce, environment, and public health. But the costs of border restrictions are far more than material and environmental alone. They involve social and psychological costs of growing suspicions, reluctance to engage, or slowed momentum for investing further in well established transboundary networks for working in common to solve complex problems. Focusing particularly on the Canada-U.S. border, this paper examines the impact of tighter border policies and enforcement processes on cross-border interaction, as well as their implications for binational and multinational security challenges. Among the questions that will guide the discussion are: What impact do exclusionary border policies have on host societies? How do border policies impact conceptions of border lands and binational cooperation? What problems are inherent in the often heralded trend toward smarter borders

Plasticity, political economy, and physical growth status of Guatemala Maya children living in the United States

Migration of Maya refugees to the United States since the late 1970s affords the opportunity to study the consequences of life in a new environment on the growth of Maya children. The children of this study live in Indiantown, Florida, and Los Angeles, California. Maya children between 4 and 14 years old (n = 240) were measured for height, weight, fatness, and muscularity. Overall, compared with reference data for the United States, the Maya children are, on average, healthy and well nourished. They are taller and heavier and carry more fat and muscle mass than Maya children living in a village in Guatemala. However, they are shorter, on average, than children of black, Mexican-American, and white ethnicity living in Indiantown. Children of Maya immigrants born in the United States tend to be taller than immigrant children born in Guatemala or Mexico. Families that invest economic and social resources in their children tend to have taller children. More economically successful families have taller children. Migration theory and political economy theory from the social sciences are combined with plasticity theory and life history theory (parental investment) from biology to interpret these data. Am J Phys Anthropol 102:17–32, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/37679/1/3_ftp.pd