I knew that the story was going to be about revolution and fighting against oppression but I was curious about how Subcomandante Marcos would tell it. His story is structured more like a written story than Menchú’s was but still didn’t completely conform to tradition. But this made it a more interesting read. Besides this Marcos’ story has a lot of similarities with Menchú’s with them both fighting similar battles against similar opponents. Both are fighting for poor, indigenous peoples and their ancestral land against oppressive, violent and racist governments.

One thing that really surprised me but in hind sight probably shouldn’t have was how directly Marcos calls out the Americans for supporting and directly being apart of the conflict and issues in Mexico. There is no beating around the bush or insinuations, he just says it out right multiple times. I loved it and I bet a lot of Americans were not thrilled with this, particularly the ones in power. But it’s true and it is not just in Mexico where the US has contributed to the exploitation and abuses carried out. In Guatemala the US provided things guns and training for interrogation aka torture during the civil war.

Marcos’s choice to hide his face is an interesting strategy and I quite like it. He is not the face of the movement but the mouth piece. Often in movements an individual is made the face of the struggle and they come to embody the struggle. But with the Zapatistas it is about the rebellion, the collective not the individual. It is about collective rights, not individual ones because none of them are free unless they all are. The masked faces also keeps the spotlight on the movement as the main focus. With everyone’s faces covered the people under the masks could be anyone. They become one in their struggle. “We must come to understand that each battle won for human rights and democracy is a battle won for all of us, that beneath the mask of our own personal struggles, we are all Marcos.”

I didn’t realize what a big part part that women played in the Zapatista movement, especially in command positions. I love that Marcos put in a section describing and praising various female leaders in the movement.  They are not confined to gender roles and they are listened to and respected. The Zapatista’s cry is “all for everyone or nothing for no one” and to me this shows them practising as they preach. People fighting together equally.

In the first half of the book Rigoberta described her life and the many hardships that she and her people suffered in Guatemala. The things she described are terrible but in the second half of the book things got even worse. The things that she describes her mother and brother enduring are so horrible they wouldn’t even show up in a horror movie. It’s hard to imagine anyone enduring this let alone actually doing it to other living creatures. The total disregard for life is heartbreaking. And it goes beyond disregard for life because you can not care if people die but that doesn’t mean you can torture and brutally kill them. That takes a special kind of evil and it is scary that so many were capable. Some of the perpetrators were also indigenous, these were their communities. What could have possibly been done to them to make them into what they became?

At one point Rigoberta says, “I remember my father telling us: ‘My children, don’t aspire to go to school, because schools take our customs away from us.’” In the west education is quite valued and in many places in the world people fight so hard to have the opportunity to go to school. Education  should be about learning new ideas and gaining knowledge that can be used to improve lives. But for people like Rigoberta and her siblings education has been turned into a colonial weapon to spread lies for the colonial agenda. For some education is a way to liberation, but for others it is used to keep them trapped.

I was very impressed with the defence strategies the peasants used in their villages. The traps and weapons were very resourceful with everything to limes being weaponized. Chiles I can see because I have seen first hand how they can burn but limes I never would have thought of. I think that counters the myth that indigenous people are lazy and stupid because this shows how creative, smart and resourceful they are. They are literally bringing a knife to a gun fight but still cannot be defeated.

Speaking a language like English that is spoken in many places can often make people take for granted how important language is for connecting people. This is why finding a common language was so important for the work Rigoberta was doing. For different communities to not be able to speak to each other they can’t properly pass on their experiences and organize to gather. The language barrier can become almost like a physical barrier separating people.

This book is like listening to someone speaking which I enjoyed. Instead of being written very factual and more formal it is quite informal which makes easy to engage with and read. The story though is quite sad. Rigioberta describes so much cruelty and difficulty that the poor indigenous Guatemalans must endure. And most if not all of their suffering is avoidable. Their lives are hard because others make their lives hard by cheating them, overworking them, killing them with toxic chemicals and starvation, and more. At one point she writes “They said I was beginning my life as a woman and I would want many things that I couldn’t have. They tried to tell me that, whatever my ambitions, I’d no way of achieving them. That’s how life is.” My parents told me that I could achieve my ambitions I just had to work for them. But not all parents get tell  their children that. It must be terrible to have to teach your children that their life will be hard and they cannot have ambitions or other things they want.

At one point Rigioberta says, “They say we Indians are dirty, but it’s our circumstances which force us to be like that.” This kind of stuck out to me because just from this one line you can see the root of so many problems in Guatemala. The racism that creates so much suffering and inequality that then leads to resistance and violence is stuck in a loop that creates a self fulfilling prophecy. The indigenous can only wash their clothes once a week and they work so much doing hard dirty work that them and their clothes of course get very dirty. And if you are getting up at 5 in the morning and getting home late and having to do chores then it is very understandable to just go to sleep. Being dirty is the least of their concerns but to outsiders it is a mark of their low class and low value as humans.

I was surprised by how strict the expectations to continue with tradition were. Not dressing in traditional clothes is seen as leading you down a road to ruin and it means a lack of dignity. But it does make sense that the indigenous Guatamalans hold so tightly to their traditions and culture because it could easily disappear. Outside forces want to assimilate them and make them “less Indian” so if they don’t fight to keep their culture alive and follow tradition they probably would disappear.

I was a little surprised by the book because of how it was written. Unlike Guaman Poma’s book Yawar Fiesta is written like a story but I thought it might be like The First Chronicle outlining Spanish abuses. Yawar Fiesta is a lot more subtle than the First Chronicle as it showed the racism and abuses perpetuated by the Spanish by slipping things in to the story as it goes along. You can see the way the indigenous are spoken about, spoken to, treated, and thought of by outsiders.

At the beginning there is a lot of description and scene setting so it was really easy to picture where the story was taking place. This goes on through the story with lots of details added. This is one of the many elements that are different from western story telling. There is a lot of information and interactions and sometimes they do not seem necessary to the story. It is also not told in a linear way like the Popol Vuh.

One thing that really surprised me though were some of the words that popped in many places. There are words like Yankee and red skins and others that I thought would have been too modern to show up. It made me wonder if this was a direct translation or, more likely, that these words are just the most recent and nearest equivalents to the Spanish words that were used. Changing up what words are used changes the meaning of the message. It can be subtle or it can have a large impact depending on the word choice and context. I wonder what would change if I read this is Spanish or Quechua and how my interpretation would change. Languages do not perfectly translate so for the translator there is some flexibility in translation.

There was so much anticipation for the bullfight in the book but often these fights were described very violently and gory. People get disembowelled and apparently this is entertainment. This sport is very dangerous and deadly for the indigenous bullfighters who do it and it is even mentioned that people get gored and ripped apart every year. The edict that is passed is not for the indigenous’ sake though but for the town. Several of the elites think that this type of bullfighting makes them look bad, which is why it must be stopped. The injured and mangled people are just a side note.

The second half of Guaman Poma’s letter to the king was a lot less historical than the the first half and was a lot more of his opinion and him trying to convince his audience as he detailed things like Spanish abuses. By the way he writes it often seems that Guaman Poma is trying to raise his status to an elite nobleman on the same level of the Spanish. This could be a strategy for personal gain but it could also be to make him more reliable to the Spanish. A nobleman is something the Spanish understand and this high position could give Guaman Poma credibility so that his work was taken seriously. If Guaman Poma was seen as a peasant then the Spaniards, who were from a hierarchal society, would have never have listened to him or taken him seriously. But a nobleman could be taken more seriously, even if they were indigenous.

I found it very interesting how he portrayed the Spanish. Most of them he shows like spoiled children without consequences. He writes pages about how badly the Spanish abuse the indigenous and are being bad Christians. Even the priests and the justices are described as corrupt and badly behaved. They are blamed for most of the bad things that are happening in the region as they steal, drink, gamble, corrupt the indigenous and abuse their power. I was surprised with how openly Guaman Poma wrote about what was happening in Peru. This would have meant his letter to the king would have been very unpopular and potentially dangerous for him, which he even admits when he writes “Good men will laugh at this book; bad men will get angry, will be aggrieved by it, and will want to kill me.”

To be successful Guaman Poma needed to convince the Spanish king to take an interest that would fuel action. Instead of just asking for the king to intervene Guaman Poma frames the problems as the king is being wrong along with the indigenous by the Spaniards. This makes it the king’s problem as he is directly being affect even if these things are happening thousands of miles away. If the king had ever read the letter and had been convinced by Guaman Poma history might have turned out very differently. But unfortunately the letter was never seen by the king so we can only wonder and guess.

The way that Guaman Poma wrote was a bit confusing at times. He would add in details, like the names of popes, that were not really needed or would repeat himself a bit. I had to re-read a couple times to clear up my confusion but overall it was fine.

I found it very interesting the way Guaman Poma describes the Spanish in a negative way and often criticizing them for greed, bad behaviour and mistreatment of the Inca. When he spoke about the Spanish king he had nothing but praise, however the majority of the other Spaniards he mentioned were talked about very negatively. Guaman Poma even described the many crimes committed by the Spanish in Peru, saying that they were robbing the Spanish crown and were bad christians. I was surprised that he would be so blunt about this, figuring that he would  dance around the truth so as not to offend anyone.

However, Guaman Poma also seems to conform to the Spanish’s racism, like when he talks about black people and non christian Incas. Could it be that he believes everything that he says in his book or is he just trying to play along so that there is a greater chance of his book being read by the king, and if it is read of it, of it getting the king to take action to stop the Spanish abuses of the Inca? Even as a Christian who accepts the Spanish king as the rightful ruler of Peru, Guaman Poma is still an indigenous man, meaning he will never he accepted fully by the conquerers. It is not longer the Inca’s world so that people must play by the Spanish’s rules.

Guaman Poma claims that he is from nobility and several times he writes about the high ranks and great deeds of his family that may or many not be true. It could be that he made events and facts up to increase his own status and improve his image. So is part of his agenda in righting this book for personal gain? If his book was read and acted on by the king then he would be a hero to his people and likely he would be given some respect and recognition from the Spaniards. We will likely never know but I think it was probably a mix. By the way he details the abuses committed by the Spanish against the Incas and his condemnation of their actions show that he cares about putting an end to them. He also had the opportunity for some self propaganda.

The second part of the Popol Vuh gets even more elaborate, and at times more violent, than the first part of it was. The different stories are full of details that describe many of the elements that are happening in the story so it is not hard to imagine the characters and the settings. There were several times where the stories take a violent turn, like when Hunahpu’s head was cut off and then used as a ball for the ballgame, or when the twins are burned alive. But it never gets gory. The violence is stated as part of the story, but not graphically, and then the narrative simply moves on. In other words the violence has a purpose which was usually to be part of the story telling but is not necessary in graphic detail.

I also noticed how there was a lot of explanations for why the natural world is the way it is woven into the narrative. It seems that the stories of the Popol Vuh have many purposes. They are histories, cultural lessons, social values, and explanations for why the natural world exists that way it does. To say that they are simply fun entertaining stories were be a gross simplification of them that dismisses their cultural significance. Even if you were to look at the Popol Vuh from a non-believing outsider’s perspective I think it should be plain to see that these are not only stories but teachings of many lessons. They provide another way to see and understand the world.

There was also a big focus on names that I noticed. Everyone is often referred to by name, even when it is not necessary. Names are very important, even holding power. Often people do not think much about names but they are more than just labels. They are identity, the verbal representation of people, places, and things. If something or someone does not have a name they do not have a full identity. A name sums up all the different parts in one word. I wonder if this is why names are so often repeated in the Popol Vuh as a way to identify and in some ways to make the characters real.  By speaking names those who are named are kept alive. If words are no longer used they get forgotten and if those words are names then a lot is lost.

I found the Popol Vuh quite interesting. I was not really sure what to expect of it before starting it, not really sure what time of stories were going to be told and in what way. It is interesting how even with multiple translations you still get the feeling from the language that it is used that this is an old piece of work and from a culture that did oral story telling.

The stories in the Popol Vuh was actually quite similar to biblical stories from Christianity I found. While reading the Popol Vuh I kept finding similarities. In both before creation the world was dark and then through divine intervention the earth was created and populated with plants and animals and people. There is also a flood in both the bible and the Popol Vuh that was sent to punish humans and lasted for many days and nights while the earth was in darkness. But the K’iche’ stories go beyond Christianity as they have more details and more stories in general.

But in the Popol Vuh there is not one all powerful deity but a great number of them. Wow there are a lot of them. I knew that the Mayan culture is a polytheistic one since I have studied it previously in other classes but sometimes I forget just how many there are. It was actually a bit confusing at times trying to keep all the names straight, especially at the beginning when it was talking about the creation of the earth and everything on and in it. It also seemed that different gods had multiple names, which were used interchangeably, making it even harder to remember who is who. In some of the stories, like the ones with Seven Macaw, were easier to remember who everyone was.

Something that I found really interesting was that the gods are not shown as perfect all knowing beings that never make mistakes. They are imperfect, they make mistakes, for example their different attempts to create humans properly, and they are not all powerful. In many ways they are quite like humans as they can be proud, they fight with each other, and they have to face consequences. So at the end of the day the gods can be seen as just as human as the humans are themselves except that the gods have supernatural powers and control over the world that greatly outdoes what the humans have.

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Hello everyone my name is Anja, I am in my fourth year here at UBC and I am majoring in Gender, Race and Social Justice. I am from Vancouver originally but my family has not been here very long. My dad is Australian and my mom is from Germany with her family coming over to Canada to start a new life that was not possible in Germany at that time. I have a wide range of interests in many things like music, books, movies, tv shows and sports to name a few. This makes it hard for me to pick a favourite in anything as there is too much for me to choose from. This also includes classes so I often find it hard to narrow down my classes because there are so many that interest me here at UBC.

For hobbies I love being active and outside, as well as doing creative things that keep my hands busy. Soccer is my main sport but I also snowboard, bike, kayak and rock climb. Being in Vancouver means that I have lots of great mountains so I also go hiking with my friends and dog when I have time.

I am a doing a minor in Latin American Studies which is part of the reason that I am taking this course this semester. Besides having this class for my minor I am also very interested in this course material. When I first started studying in post secondary I took some Latin America courses and I have not stopped taking them since because I found them so interesting. Latin America is such a diverse place full of so much history and culture that I love learning about it. For this course I am excited to go more in depth into Indigeneity. I have studied indigenous groups in Latin America’s past and present a bit in previous courses, looking at many of their struggles that began with the arrival of the Spaniards and continue today. This course should help expand my knowledge and understanding on this topic as it looks at how the European view of indigenous cultures, societies, and peoples have caused problems and shape the treatment of them. The books look very interesting and I am not really certain what to expect with them.