“I became more Maya”: International Kaqchikel Maya Migration in Central America

Previous scholarship highlights migration from the Global South to the Global North. This paper focuses on South-South migration using a case study of a Kaqchikel Maya woman, Brenda, migrating from Guatemala to El Salvador. Her life history and participant-observation data were gathered over the course of 18 months between 2010 and 2015. In her case, migration within Central America encouraged ethnic revitalization, particularly through her investment in Kaqchikel language and clothing. Such revitalization might be a common occurrence among indigenous women and is a significant consequence for indigenous women because of the reinforcement of gendered ethnic work as women are responsible for reproducing indigenous language and the use of ethnically marked clothing.

Spanish and Kaqchikel-Maya: A study in town and village in Guatemala’s central highlands

This article examines patterns of maintenance and shift affecting Kaqchikel-Maya in contact with Spanish in a municipality of the central highlands of Guatemala. It examines self-reported skills in the use of Spanish and Kaqchikel-Maya as well as directly assessed knowledge of Kaqchikel in relation to ethnicity, generations, and gender in town and village in the municipality. The study draws on fieldwork between 2011 and 2013 in the municipality of Parramos, Chimaltenango. Two researchers in collaboration with native Spanish-and-Kaqchikel-speaking assistants surveyed 280 speakers. Data are based on responses to an orally administered questionnaire that included self-reporting of language skills and direct assessment measures focusing on knowledge of Kaqchikel vocabulary as well as on the ability to respond to conversational questions in Kaqchikel. Results are interpreted in relation to stability vs. instability in the use of the two languages and to the asymmetry of the bilingualism that distinguishes the ethnic communities.