Human Rights in the Maya Region: Global Politics, Cultural Contentions, and Moral Engagements - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822342960 ISBN 13: 9780822342960

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In recent years Latin American indigenous groups have regularly deployed the discourse of human rights to legitimate their positions and pursue their goals. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the Maya region of Chiapas and Guatemala, where in the last two decades indigenous social movements have been engaged in ongoing negotiations with the state, and the presence of multinational actors has brought human rights to increased prominence. In this volume, scholars and activists examine the role of human rights in the ways that states relate to their populations, analyze conceptualizations and appropriations of human rights by Mayans in specific localities, and explore the relationship between the individualist and “universal” tenets of Western-derived concepts of human rights and various Mayan cultural understandings and political subjectivities.

The collection includes a reflection on the effects of truth-finding and documenting particular human rights abuses, a look at how Catholic social teaching validates the human rights claims advanced by indigenous members of a diocese in Chiapas, and several analyses of the limitations of human rights frameworks. A Mayan intellectual seeks to bring Mayan culture into dialogue with western feminist notions of women’s rights, while another contributor critiques the translation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into Tzeltal, an indigenous language in Chiapas. Taken together, the essays reveal a broad array of rights-related practices and interpretations among the Mayan population, demonstrating that global-local-state interactions are complex and diverse even within a geographically limited area. So too are the goals of indigenous groups, which vary from social reconstruction and healing following years of violence to the creation of an indigenous autonomy that challenges the tenets of neoliberalism.

Contributors: Robert M. Carmack, Stener Ekern, Christine Kovic, Xochitl Leyva Solano, Julián López García, Irma Otzoy, Pedro Pitarch, Álvaro Reyes, Victoria Sanford, Rachel Sieder, Shannon Speed, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, David Stoll, Richard Ashby Wilson

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Pedro Pitarch is Professor of Anthropology at the Complutense University in Madrid. His books include Ch’ulel: una etnografía de las almas tzeltales.

Shannon Speed is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Rights in Rebellion: Indigenous Struggle and Human Rights in Chiapas and a co-editor of Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas.

Xóchitl Leyva Solano is a researcher and professor at the Centro de Investigaciones e Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Chiapas, México. She is the author of Poder y desarrollo regional and a co-editor of Encuentros Antropologicos: Power, Identity, and Mobility in Mexican Society.

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"The notion of 'universal human rights' has had a checkered career over the past sixty years. Touted by some as one of the most effective tools for the empowerment and liberation of women and the poor in the so-called third world, it is denounced by others as a self-serving cultural imposition on the part of the Western world. "Human Rights in the Maya Region" takes us well beyond these extreme positions. By focusing on an exemplary case--the diverse experiences of the Mayan peoples of Chiapas and Guatemala--and never belittling the existing power asymmetries or the complexities of cultural translation, this coherent and well-grounded volume enlightens us on the multiple ways in which local groups make effective use of rights discourses on the basis of their distinct conceptions of persons and the world. At a more general level, the volume offers a nuanced and compelling explanation of the conjunctures of culture, rights, and power that are at play whenever 'rights' are deployed anywhere in the world. The volume will be of great value to those interested in human rights, indigenous peoples, social movements, traditional law, and the cultural-political dynamics of globalization."--Arturo Escobar, author of "Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, " Redes

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HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MAYA REGION

Global Politics, Cultural Contentions, and Moral Engagements

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2008 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4296-0

Contents

Abbreviations..............................................................................................................................................................................viiIntroduction Shannon Speed and Xochitl Leyva Solano.......................................................................................................................................11. Cultural Rights and Human Rights: A Social Science Perspective Rodolfo Stavenhagen.....................................................................................................272. Perspectives on the Politics of Human Rights in Guatemala Robert M. Carmack............................................................................................................513. Legal Globalization and Human Rights: Constructing the Rule of Law in Postconflict Guatemala? Rachel Sieder............................................................................674. The Labyrinth of Translation: A Tzeltal Version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Pedro Pitarch.............................................................................915. Are Human Rights Destroying the Natural Balance of All Things? The Difficult Encounter between International Law and Community Law in Mayan Guatemala Stener Ekern.....................1236. "Here It's Different": The Ch'orti' and Human Rights Training Julin Lpez Garca......................................................................................................1457. Indigenous Law and Gender Dialogues Irma Otzoy.........................................................................................................................................1718. Human Rights, Land Conflicts, and Memory of the Violence in the Ixil Country of Northern Quich David Stoll............................................................................1879. Global Discourses on the Local Terrain: Human Rights in Chiapas Shannon Speed and Xochitl Leyva Solano.................................................................................20710. Breaking the Reign of Silence: Ethnography of a Clandestine Cemetery Victoria Sanford.................................................................................................23311. Rights of the Poor: Progressive Catholicism and Indigenous Resistance in Chiapas Christine Kovic......................................................................................25712. "Asumiendo Nuestra Propia Defensa": Resistance and the Red de Defensores Comunitarios in Chiapas Shannon Speed and Alvaro Reyes.......................................................279Final Comments Making Rights Meaningful for Mayas: Reflections on Culture, Rights, and Power Richard Ashby Wilson.........................................................................305References.................................................................................................................................................................................323Contributors...............................................................................................................................................................................357Index......................................................................................................................................................................................361

Chapter One

Cultural Rights and Human Rights A Social Science Perspective

The Problem of Cultural Rights

The issue of cultural rights within the general debate about human rights forms part of a wider concern about the location of culture in international discourse. The contributions of the United Nations (UN) have proven rather modest in this field. Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, mainly refers to the right of everyone to take part in cultural life, to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, and to benefit from the protection of scientific, literary, or artistic works. Article 13 posits the right of everyone to education, which "shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity." While cultural rights are also referred to in numerous international instruments, as well as in several United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conventions and recommendations, the full implications of cultural rights as human rights remain to be explored. This essay aims to contribute to the debate from a social science perspective.

Cultural rights are closely related to other individual rights and fundamental freedoms such as the freedom of expression, the freedom of religion and belief, the freedom of association, and the right to education. Cultural rights have not been credited with much importance in theoretical texts on human rights and, as Asbjrn Eide has pointed out, are treated rather as a residual category. Yet states do have obligations to ensure the respect, protection, and fulfillment of each of these rights, and these obligations should be spelled out in the case of cultural rights and their various interpretations (Eide 1994: 233-38).

While some cultural rights can be dealt with exclusively within the framework of universal individual human rights, the relationship between culture and human rights is such that a broader approach is warranted. Lyndel Prott argues that cultural rights-particularly those pertaining to the preservation of cultural heritage, the cultural identity of a specific people, and cultural development-are sometimes considered "peoples' rights," and she calls for renewed efforts to frame such issues in international legal terms (1988: 92-106). In this essay I shall discuss some ideas concerning these issues.

If cultural rights are to be understood as any individual's right to culture, then ideally this term should have an unequivocal meaning. Yet even a cursory look at the way in which some international documents and legal instruments have dealt with the concept of culture shows a variety of usages. The right of a people to its own artistic, historical, and cultural wealth is stated in Article 14 of the Algiers Declaration on the Rights of Peoples, adopted by a nongovernmental meeting of prominent experts in 1976. It has no legal standing in international law, not having been sanctioned by an intergovernmental body, but as Ian Brownlie (1988) recognizes, it has had "a certain influence," particularly to the extent that its ideas were reflected in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1981.

UNESCO has asserted the right of every people to develop a culture and has proclaimed a "right to cultural identity," whereas the Algiers Declaration refers to the right to respect of cultural identity, and the right of a people not to have an alien culture imposed on it. The rights of persons belonging to ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language, in community with the other members of their group, are found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Art. 27), and they were rearmed in the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822342960
• ISBN 13: 9780822342960
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 392
• Herausgeber: Pitarch Pedro, Speed Shannon, Solano Xochitl Leyva
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar