Beauty queens and the politics of traje (2): the Rabin Ajaw

This series of entries was prompted by a conversation I had with some Maya women friends over dinner. One of them, Laura, had told me about attending the "reina indígena" (indigenous queen) selection in Xela. After briefly discussing the pageant that she had witnessed, she asked if I had heard about the controversy surrounding the Miss Universe pageant and the Guatemalan entry. I said I hadn't, and she explained that Miss Guatemala was going to appear at the Miss Universe pageant wearing ceremonial men's traje from Chichicastenango. In order to explain why this is so controversial and upsetting, I am writing a series of blogs about beauty queens and indigenous queens in Guatemala.  While I do not consider myself to be any kind of expert on the subject, this has become one of the pieces of my ever-evolving research, and since I spend a lot of time with Maya women, I will try to include some of their thoughts as well.
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One of the ongoing controversies among Mayanists and Maya activists is the representation of Maya women and the way that Maya culture, and more specifically women's garments, are used, appropriated and represented.  Many are concerned, and upset about what they see as "folkloricism" -- the treatment of Maya culture and Maya people as quaint curiosities, or museum relics,  whose culture can just be grabbed piecemeal, pulled out of context, and used for political, tourist or other purposes. In Cuba, I found that the term "folklore" was often used in a positive or at least a neutral way by people who were not academics or government functionaries, to describe their very vibrant cultural and religious practices, but here "folklore" generally has a negative vibe. Maya do not want be seen as "folkloric" nor do they want others misrepresenting their culture. When someone here uses the term "folclorismo" (folkloricism), they give it a critical edge. 

Young girl wearing a variant of the
Coban huipil

When I posted something on my Facebook page about Miss Guatemala and her use of ceremonial traje from Chichicastenango, a Maya friend quickly responded, "That's folkloricism." There has been some criticism by Maya women's organizations, for example, about non-Maya female candidates for elected office dressing in huipiles (or güipiles), a term referring to Maya women's tunics or blouses, usually hand woven. Sometimes people draw distinctions between what they consider to be huipiles - hand woven garments, usually somewhat loose-fitting, and often with elaborate woven patterns or embroidery-- and "blusas" (blouses), which are sewn from store-bought, machine-produced fabric, with puffed sleeves that end in a 1-3" wide band that falls somewhere between the bicep and the elbow. In Coban, for example, I saw a lot of women wearing "blusas"; they were cut in the same shape as the more traditional huipiles from Coban, but made of semi-sheer and lacy fabrics, so that you need to wear a camisole or sleeveless top underneath, or just a really nice brassiere if you are more daring.

I am not sure how I learned about the Rabin Ajaw ("daughter of the king" is one translation) pageant. I might have just been doing an internet search on indigenous queens, prompted by some reading I had done over the last several months, and come across a listing for the festival. 

It is described on the official website as a "national folkloric festival" that has been held for the last 40-odd years in the city of Cobán in Alta Verapaz, the department that is immediately to the east of Quiché -- it is in the northeastern part of the country.  I decided that I wanted to attend, and tried to figure out what were the key events and how to manage the trip there and back, sandwiched between other responsibilities at the radio station.


So, with not much in the way of preparation beyond having read a few articles or book chapters about indigenous queen/princess pageants, and some newspaper articles about the Rabin Ajaw selection, I set off for Cobán on the 31st of July.  I had little idea of what the travel conditions would be like and only the vaguest advice from friends; most of the people I know do not drive or own cars, and while some travel fairly regularly, they mostly do so on public transportation.  


I had traveled along the highway as far as Cunén,  a town to the northeast of Santa Cruz del Quiché, but that was the limit of my exploration. I felt a bit like Bilbo Baggins setting off with a vaguely drawn map of Middle Earth with a lot of unknown spaces.  
   
Writing about the Guatemalan countryside leaves me feeling as though I repeat myself -- breathtakingly, painfully, beautiful. The journey to Cobán goes along a river valley, and the landscape is striking. Every time I travel I fall in love with a new part of the country, and yet I find it hard to define the physical qualities that distinguish one area from another. 


I passed through Cunén, then Uspantán and Chicamán... and then the pavement stopped and the road turned to gravel and dirt. And stayed that way for a good 20 or more kilometers to the east of Chicaman, the last town in Quiché.  The road wound through small villages where the passage of my truck seemed to be the most novel thing that had happened in the last week.  There was one stretch where the road was closed, and I had to detour through a private community. The narrow winding gravel and dirt road wound down partway into a deep canyon. One stretch, more level, at the top, was sheer rocks, with a stream running through. Kind of eerie. The only people I saw were the ones tending the two gates at the entrance and exit (they charged a small fee for both entering and leaving). 

I finally arrived in Cobán and immediately liked the city. It was hard to tell why, other than it seemed to have a kind of energy about it. I'm not sure of the population, but it just felt good to be there. Santa Cruz is somewhat dusty and narrow; it feels very hemmed in, as does Chichicastenango. Coban, on the other hand, feels more expansive and relaxed.  It took me a little while to find the hotel, mostly because the people there couldn't give me easy directions although it turned out I was only a few blocks away; they sent someone on a bicycle to come find me and guide me there.  I parked my car, dropped my bags, and then set  off to find where the Rabin Ajaw selection was taking place.

Following the directions I had been given, I made my way to the municipal stadium and saw that on one side, up past the bleachers, there was a building where it looked like there was something going on. I climbed up and found the hall thronged with people. Most, it seemed, were contestants and their families or attendants. At the front was a low platform and on one side, a table where the judges (or selection committee) sat; about half a dozen women, mostly hunched over laptop computers. On the other side (my right hand side as I faced the front) was the sound system, the announcers, and some cameras.  Outside on the balcony, was a marimba, and behind it,  two musicians, playing a large drum and a wooden flute, both traditional instruments. 

There were numerous rows of white plastic chairs, with an aisle down the center. In the first several rows were the contestants: young women from 90 different municipalities, all dressed in the appropriate traje tipico for their respective areas. I later learned that they ranged in age from 15 to 24 or 25.  I positioned myself up near the front along the right hand side, with some other photographers. In front of the stage, a fairly sizeable amount of floor space had been left before the first row of chairs. 


The announcers were calling out the candidates by number - I think we were somewhere in the 60s. The announcer said the name, age, the parents' names and the place of origin; also what language the woman spoke. There was a young woman who stood at the front, wearing the traje of Coban -- a loose white huipil over a gathered skirt of blue and white fabric, her hair tied back with a long, thin piece of red fabric fashioned into an elaborate, drooping bow that reached down past her knees in the back -- bearing a brazier full of incense, who greeted each contestant as she came forward.

Some of the women carried objects that represented their municipality, or that represented Maya culture more generally. One contestant carried a miniature marimba. Some carried baskets. Others carried huge lit candles that were nearly half their height, along with large bunches of flowers.Each contestant made a bow of greeting to the judges, and then whatever kind of salute she wanted to do; some bowed to the four cardinal points. A few knelt and lifted their arms skyward. Then the contestant ascended the stage and had a few minutes to introduce herself and present her "message" -- a prepared statement in both her native language and Spanish.  

The young women were, with very few exceptions, forceful, articulate and thoughtful. I did not take notes on the exact content of each contestant's comments, but they spoke eloquently and passionately about the Maya cosmovision, about environmental issues, taking care of mother earth, about the ravages of mining, education, women's rights, cultural preservation, and the importance of maintaining Maya languages. Only one girl (she was 15, so I think I can safely call her a girl) lost her composure, froze, and lost her place in her statement. Although she received warm and encouraging applause from everyone, was unable to regain her place in her memorized remarks.  

After leaving the stage, the contestants went off to have their photographs taken by a few different professional photographers, including one man who had an impressive-looking vintage camera. I later discovered, through an article in the Huffington Post that a friend posted on Facebook, that he had acquired the camera in Afghanistan; there is a website where he published many of the photographs he took. I was trying to be respectful and stay out of his and the other photographers' way, so I didn't speak to him. Unfortunate, in retrospect.

After each of the contestants had been called forward, spoken and been photographed, the announcers said that the event was over for the evening (it might have been around 7:00, possibly a little later), and that they would reconvene the following day at another location nearby. I made my way around the hall, looking for the entrants  from El Quiché -- they were grouped together by department, so once I had located one of the very distinctive trajes from the department, I found the entire group. I did not know any of them, but I went over to greet them nonetheless. I introduced myself as an anthropologist who was living in El Quiché, said that I was glad to have found the women from my part of the country, and wished them all luck.

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My latest adventure

Without exactly intending or planning, I have thrown myself into the political process here in Guatemala. Through my involvement in Asociación Por Nosotras Ixmukané, the Maya women's organization with which I have been collaborating/volunteering/assisting for the last several months (basically since I arrived), I learned that two of the women who have been longtime activists in the organization, and even longer-time fighters for women's, and specifically Maya women's rights, were running for congress (diputada al congreso de la república).  Although the organization is not a political party, one of its areas of work has been to empower women to assume leadership positions in their communities and to be able to actively participate in the political process. By and large Maya women have participated in politics as voters (to a degree) and recipients of public services, and also through critiquing or protesting when public services and public institutions do not serve them. Even at the local level, community institutions such as community planning councils (called COCODES -- Consejo Comunitario de Desarollo; every community and town has one) have been unresponsive to women. Women have told me that when they have gone to COCODE meetings and been told that as women they have nothing to add to the meeting. The COCODE members are almost invariably men, and while they cannot legally bar women from attending the public meetings, they do make it hard for women to have any meaningful participation. 


So, a few months back I learned that two of the women in the organization, Doña Matilde de Leon and Doña Fermina Lopez, were running for congress in the first and second spots on the slate for the Frente Amplio de la Izquierda -- the Broad Front of Left, which is an alliance between Winaq (the indigenous political party founded by Rigoberta Menchú Tum and others), the URNG (the former guerrilla united front, which became a political party after the peace accords were signed) and the Alliance for a New Nation (ANN).  Usually when Maya women have been candidates for national positions, they occupy much lower positions on the slate. I don't entirely understand the system of voting for congress, because there are eight seats for Quiché but each voter only gets one vote. But each party can run a slate of up to eight candidates; however, the person in the first slot will be the first one to be selected once the vote totals are tallied. That is (this is how I think it works), once votes are counted, it is clear which party gained the largest number of votes for all of its candidates together -- and the party with the highest number of votes gets to put 2 or 3 people in as deputies, and then the next party, and so forth. So the people who occupy positions 3 or 4 or lower are very unlikely to actually sit in Congress; they are there to get votes for their party, which will help elect the people who are higher up on the slate. 


So the fact that Doña Mati and Doña Fermi are in the first and second slots respectively means that they are much more likely to actually get elected to congress -- at least Doña Mati as she is in the first slot. It is thus an accomplishment for Maya women and a testament to their decades of work that they were given those ballot positions.


I had known about their candidacies, and back in June, a few friends who are involved in Winaq and the Frente Amplio had asked me to help out. As those of you who have been reading this blog know, I've found the political process here fascinating in a kind of grotesque way. On the one hand, politics and most of the traditional political parties are dominated by big capital, the political and economic elites, and the parties and most elected officials act solely in their own interests. Office holders and parties are beholden to "godfathers" -- the large political/economic interests who finance campaigns and then expect concessions and favors in return.  There seems to be little regard for the laws and regulations that do exist -- yesterday, for example, the papers published accounts (probably largely fictitious) of the money that political parties reported spending on their campaigns.  The major parties had all gone over the legal spending limits (even in the doctored accounts that they submitted). However, the legal institutions seem powerless to do more than slap some citations and not very significant fines.  But nothing that the regulatory bodies do will have much impact. It is a week before the elections and the airwaves are full of political announcements; on the news radio stations, the ratio seems to be 10 minutes of political ads for every 5 minutes of news. 


And then there are those who are genuinely trying to make some kind of change through the electoral system. I deeply respect the people I know who are iinvolved in Winaq, the URNG and the Frente Amplio (I don't know anyone who is involved with ANN; the FA folks I know are all Winaq and URNG). Most are former insurgents, people who spent anywhere from 10 to 30 years in or actively supporting the armed resistance, or who were involved in other kinds of community and grassroots organization. I am well aware that this is not my country. I will not vote here. My daily life, once I return to the U.S., will not be affected by the outcome of the elections -- although I intend to have an ongoing relationship with Guatemala, and will likely return for both short visits and more extended stays for a long time to come.  So I hesitated a moment -- was it really my place to get involved more directly? My friends challenged me about my commitment -- if I were really serious about accompanying women in the process of seeking voice and representation, then why would I not become involved?  


So I agreed, and have been balancing my work with the radio station -- and the community radio movement more broadly -- and supporting my two compañneras who are candidates. Some of my support -- much of it, actually -- is simply logistical. I have a car, they need to go places, and I can help them do that. I am certainly not about to tell them how to campaign here. And I have been working to raise funds -- not directly for their campaigns, as that would not be appropriate, but to support voter education and outreach efforts to Maya women, so that they can make free and informed choices come September 11. I have never done internet-based fundraising before, nor have I raised funds for anything outside of the U.S., so it has been a learning experience.  A dear friend in the U.S. created the website and helped set up the Paypal account, my friend and comrade Benjamin Chaj, ex-insurgent and member of the national executive committee of Winaq, helped develop the idea and spread the word to his contacts.  

So now I am full of ideas about how we can try things along similar lines in the future. For one, to see how we can raise funds for the radio station (and perhaps for the community radio movement more broadly) and other projects of Ixmukané. And also, thinking about how the Guatemalan left can start to do fundraising in this way for the next elections in 2016 --since most of the traditional parties have large sums of money at their disposal, and the left does not.


Meanwhile, in the week before the election, it is not clear what I will be doing. We were going to take a long trip to the Ixcan region of Quiché, a remote and rural region near the border with Mexico and also Alta Verapaz, but that was called off. So we might go to Cunén and Sacapulas. It is not entirely clear when campaigning is supposed to stop. One person told me a week before the election; Doña Matilde told me 48 hours. I had said that I would put myself at the disposal of the candidates for the week prior to the election and election day, but I am still not sure what that means....