“Too Dangerous to Help”: White Supremacy, Coloniality, and Maya Youth

Abstract

Global, (trans)national, and local moments frame this article and highlight how white supremacy and modern/colonial processes and logics operate in and through Guatemala, the Chuj nation, and Chuj youth's lives, organizing work, and educational spaces. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research with Chuj youth and educators, I argue that education, development, and Indigenous youth are at once targets of these racialized colonial logics and important sites of decolonial resistance. Building on decolonial theories, this article centers Chuj youth's insights into the contours of racialized modern/ colonial processes and brings them into conversation with (trans)national, state, and media discourses to highlight the complex material and corporeal implications of white supremacist colonial frameworks. Ultimately, I contend that Chuj youth provide insights into the impacts of modern/colonial processes and decolonial possibilities.

“Where We Are Within That”: Chuj Sovereignty and Belonging Across Overlapping Settler Borders

“…(3) What do Chuj youth's and educators' resistances expose about the ways coloniality operates and about decolonial possibilities and imaginings? (Allweiss 2018). This article gives particular attention to the third research question in the context of the two different intergenerational organizing and settler colonial contexts.…”

“…I began this research in 2015 through the Municipal Youth Office (MYO) in Xantin following an invitation from the MYO coordinators the year before joining them as an ally and collaborator. The MYO began in 2013 through youth advocacy and was a central organizing and capacity-building space for various local and regional youth organizations (Allweiss 2018). Through the MYO, I met three other focal youth groups: Juventud Xantineca, which started in 2011 through a national youth political leadership program and was central to the organizing for the MYO; Jóvenes Unidos, which formed in 2012 in partnership with regional Maya ancestral leaders and youth; and Mujeres Jóvenes Chujes, a Chuj girls group that began in 2012 through a regional grant focused on women's rights.…”

“…I also systematically tracked and collected news articles and organization documents related to youth, Maya Chuj organizing, and education. I used the documents to explore official policies and popular discourses alongside youth's responses and engagements (Allweiss 2018(Allweiss , 2021.…”

“…While youth also reflected on how elders' visions might differ from their own, they generally centered the value of these differences (Allweiss 2018) and reflected a commitment to "build[ing] a world in which many worlds will exist" (Mignolo 2011, 54). This was reinforced through Jóvenes Líderes' work to revive Chuj ceremony in collaboration with Chuj elders and PAG leaders to (re)establish connections within and across beings, worlds, and time through a Maya frame of complementary, interconnected energies (Allweiss 2018).…”

“…Since 2009, three hydroelectric dams owned by a transnational energy company started operating in the area, rerouting rivers, displacing people, and threatening Chuj lands and livelihoods. Chuj protests against the company were met with direct repression from state and security forces and an increasing military presence in the area (Allweiss 2018, 2021). Chuj experiences with corporate and state violence are reflective of other Maya nations and towns across Iximulew (Bastos Amigo 2022).…”