‘The Root Is Maya, the Practice Is Pluralist’: Xel‐jú and Indigenous Political Mobilisation in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

Abstract

Since the 1990s Latin America has witnessed the emergence of ethnic, often social movement‐based, political parties. Within this context Rigoberto Quemé Chay became the first indigenous mayor of Quetzaltenango, the second‐largest city of Guatemala, a place that until then had been marked by indigenous political exclusion and racism. This article seeks to explain why Quemé was victorious in 1995 and also why he subsequently lost the election in 2004 through an analysis of the ideational struggle within the (indigenous) political organisation, Xel‐jú, which backed Quemé's candidacy twice. I use the movements of ‘departure’, ‘manoeuvre’ and ‘arrival’ in the process of the constitution of hegemonic visions of power to analyse Xel‐jú's rise to political power.

El giro rural de la política andina: desarrollismo, economía moral y políticas campesinas en Quispicanchi (Cusco).

“…Frente al protagonismo de los grandes movimientos indígenas de las décadas anteriores, se observaría en la actualidad un cambio en los escenarios de la acción política, que pasa del ámbito nacional al local. En este sentido, Perú se parecería a los casos más conocidos de Ecuador y Guatemala (Radcliffe 2002;Cameron 2008;Rasch 2012). Sin embargo, la emergencia de autoridades campesinas qusipicanchinas tiene elementos particulares, derivados de la historia reciente y de la particular configuración del sistema político peruano.…”