Hach Winik : the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas, Southern Mexico / by Didier Boremanse.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boremanse, Didier, 1948-

Contributor:

State University of New York at Albany. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies.

Series:

IMS monograph ; 11.

IMS monograph ; 11

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lacandon Indians--Social life and customs.

Lacandon Indians.

Mayas--Mexico--Chiapas.

Mayas.

Mexico--Chiapas.

Physical Description:

xxi, 177 pages : illustrations, maps ; 28 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany, N.Y. : Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, New York : distributed by University of Texas Press, 1998.

Summary:

Hach Winik may be the last comprehensive study of traditional Lacandon Maya society based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork. Long isolated, culturally conservative, and bearing a mystique of Mesoamerican "primitivism", the Lacandon now live on the brink of cultural disintegration. Their habitat is all but destroyed by lumbering and by the large-scale invasion of other Maya peoples in search of land. In the 1970s and 1980s, Didier Boremanse collected cultural data and textual materials from two groups of Lacandon who still remained relatively isolated. Hach Winik describes and compares the cultural traditions of these two groups.

Topics presented in Hach Winik include the history of Lacandon contact with other peoples, settlement patterns, the life cycle, social control, residence and marriage, the kinship system, and the ritual expression of these social domains. Statistical data are balanced by a wealth of descriptive detail concerning events and individuals. A number of oral narratives are also presented and include many words and utterances in the original language with English glosses.

This book is an indispensable resource for scholars, Maya intellectuals, and lay people who are concerned with what the traditional Maya world can contribute both to our understanding of the ancient Maya and to the rapidly evolving pan-Maya ethnic consciousness of modern Mexico and Guatemala.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [173]-177).

ISBN:

094204116X

OCLC:

41362629