Using Traditional Practice and Craft to Attain Sovereignty (2025)

Since the 1500s, Maya populations have suffered atrocities at the hands of European colonizers and Ladino populations, not only through war and disease, but also through erasure. In modern Guatemala, where Maya peoples have had their languages, lands, and practices made punishable or erased, being visibly Maya can be interpreted as an act of resistance. Since the mid-twentieth century, various Latin American groups have used crafts to combat dictatorships and abusive regimes; similar methods are now used by Native North American groups to combat violence and having their peoples disappeared. I explore the question, for Maya groups, How are crafts and practices steeped in culture and tied to personhood transforming and laying foundations for legislative change?