Inverting the Gaze from California

The epilogue contemplates writing this book from Luiseño land, specifically focusing on a park created in Oceanside, California, the ancestral lands of the San Luis Rey Band of Indians. The epilogue highlights the endurance of oral literature as well as writing throughout indigenous territory. It meditates on Mesoamerican literature as a new sign of Latin America’s transition from officially Spanish-speaking and mestizo to recognizing and affirming its multilingual and intercultural distinction.

Indigenous Women, Poetry, and the Double Gaze

Chapter 3 discusses the notion of gender complementarity through kab’awil as an achievable horizon for indigenous peoples. The chapter focuses on the work of indigenous women across regions and nations, demonstrating the way that the double gaze allows them to see beyond ideas of tradition that impinge on their sense of autonomy. The chapter underscores the work of Rosa María Chávez, Calixta Gabriel Xiquín, Maya Cú, Briceida Cuevas Cob, María Enriqueta Lunes, Angelina Díaz Ruíz, Irma Pineda Santiago, and Natalia Toledo Paz.

Literacy and Power in Mesoamerica

Chapter 1 explores Maya and Zapotec systems of communication and contradictory colonial representations about Mesoamerican writing. It argues that writing and power were already interrelated in Mesoamerican indigenous communities so that the attribution of orality to indigenous peoples disavows the key role of pre-Columbian writing. It ends by discussing indigenous colonial texts as well as poetry framed through a double optic or kab’awil by foundational Maya and Zapotec authors such as Gaspar Pedro González, Macario Matus, and Victor de la Cruz.

The Formation of the Contemporary Mesoamerican Author

Chapter 2 centers the discursive formation of the indigenous author intra-regionally and transnationally. The chapter argues that this generation moves from testimonial and collaborative publications to the demands made by assuming an author status. The discussion registers the work of Humberto Ak’abal, Jorge Cocom Pech, Nicolás Huet, and Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim and their kab’awilian strategies.

Contemporary Maya Women’s Theater

The 4th Chapter focuses on FOMMA and Ajchowen, two foundational Maya women’s theater troupes in Mexico and Guatemala, and their productions. It argues their plays re-envision women’s roles as critical to the future of indigenous peoples. The discussion concludes that both theater collectives underscore a need for political autonomy.

The Novel in Zapotec and Maya Lands

Chapter 5 examines the first novel published by a Maya woman, X-Teya, U puksi’ik’al ko’olel/Teya, un corazón de mujer (Teya, heart of a woman), and the first published Zapotec novel, Wila che be ze lhao / Cantares de los vientos primerizos (Songs of the first winds), as a rejection of first and second world- system alignments. This final chapter argues that the novelists transgress the political landscapes sketched by political ideologies, beginning a contemplation and imagining of what autonomy involves. I propose that the authors reject the nationalist liberal emphasis of integration as well as Marxist discourses as answers to the so-poorly termed “Indian problem.”

Sculpting Cosmolectics

The introduction situates indigenous writers within Latin American literary historiography. It enumerates key historical indigenous political changes that led to the rise of indigenous writers. This chapter proposes cosmolectics to name the relationship between cosmos and indigenous communities. It offers kab’awil as an exemplary cosmolectics to analyze contemporary indigenous literatures.