Acción subalterna, desigualdades socioespaciales y modernización : La formación de los actores y circuitos del comercio indígena en Guatemala, siglos XIX y XX
(2010)
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Details
- Authors
- Supervisors
- Peemans, Jean-Philippe
- Abstract
- (en) This study contributes to the understanding of the historical formation of the diverse subaltern subjects that are part of the complex and fragmented Guatemalan social space of postwar period. In particular, the construction of indigenous commerce’s spaces and the Maya-k’iche’ merchants as sociopolitical actors who constitute one of the forces that shapes the plural contemporary Pueblo Maya, is analyzed. This research was developed guided by two questions, one, regarding why Totonicapán an indigenous area, densely populated, suffering from land shortage and near the coffee plantations was not transformed into a labour reserve for the agro-export economy, that at the end of XIX century became the economic axis of the country’s capitalist modernization. In its place a dynamic indigenous economy based on textile production and rural marketing was developed. The other question analyses the political implications of Totonicapan’s development as a space of indigenous commerce, in contrast with the great majority of communities of the North-western plateau and the Verapaces, which were subject by means of violent relations to work on the large plantations. While the population of these zones nourished the social mobilizations that preceded the acutest period of the internal war (1978-1984) and massively underwent the impacts of violence, K'iche’s totonicapenses stayed relatively at the margin of the conflict and evaded the mass massacres. Problematizing the history of these actors and territories, I contribute to a critical reflection on social change interpretations that compare development with the capitalist unfolding, and which continuously read the history of South societies in terms of transition, failure and deficiency with respect to a idealised version of western modernization. I also contribute to a critique of alternative perspectives that essentialize popular actors and their territories, idealizing their difference as an alternative otherness disconnected from power relations and structural dynamics. Therefore, I stress the need to consider the complexity of subaltern groups’ agency, as well as the impacts of socio-spatial inequalities and phenomena like militarization and war in the constitution of development problems.
- Affiliations
Citations
Garcia Vettorazzi, M. V. (2010). Acción subalterna, desigualdades socioespaciales y modernización : La formación de los actores y circuitos del comercio indígena en Guatemala, siglos XIX y XX. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/92504