The Weaknesses of a Colonial Mindset: A Study of Indigenous Spirituality during the Maya Caste War

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A major feature of colonization of the Americas was the weaponization of the Christian faith. In colonial Latin America it was distorted and weaponized to push a political agenda of forced conversion upon Indigenous peoples. In the instance of the Maya Caste War, however, this idea was flipped on its head by Indigenous peoples who used their spirituality to defend their own communities. At the center of this movement was the cult of the Talking Cross, a fusion of Christianity and traditional Maya beliefs and practices that revitalized Indigenous Maya spirituality and brought numerous people together. My project involves analysis of the archaeological roots of the spirituality surrounding the Talking Cross from the early 1950s to 1901. Utilizing archaeological and secondary textual and ethnographic sources, I argue that the utilization of Indigenous religion during the Maya Caste War was more effective in unifying the Indigenous people of Yucatán than their Western opponents’ forced weaponization of Christian spirituality and reshaped understandings of cultural heritage. My goal is to highlight Indigenous perspectives on the Caste War.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37296.0