Kaqchikel

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Kaqchikel

Kaqchikel, Mayans of south-central Guatemala (1992 pop. 750,000). The Kaqchikel (formerly known as Cakchiquel) came to highland Guatemala between 1200 and 1250 as warriors accompanying the K'iche' (Quiché) and the Tz'utujil (Zutuhil). By 1470 an independent Kaqchikel nation ruled forty towns from the capital, Iximche'. Although by 1520 the population had been decimated by European plagues, continued strife with the K'iche' and Tz'utujil forced the Kaqchikel to enlist Spanish military aid. Pedro de Alvarado (known as Tonatiu) marched into Iximche' as an ally in 1524. But after further joint campaigns against the Pipiles and the Tz'utujil, planned at and launched from Iximche', Alvarado broke with the Kaqchikel, demanding tribute. The Kaqchikel leaders abandoned Ixim-che' to lead guerrilla resistance that lasted over a decade.

Between 1519 and 1550 the Maya population of Guatemala dropped by 80 percent, and between 1550 and 1800 by another 60 percent.

The centrally located Kaqchikel supplied labor and provender for the Spanish settlements while reestablishing pre-Columbian trade networks through exchange of their minimal excess produce. Many adopted Catholic religious practices, though the sacred 260-day calendar round was maintained. Holy places, particularly the dawn altars, the caves, and the obsidian emblematic stelae brought from Tula, endured as often clandestine centers of worship.

The Indian policies of the Spanish and Guatemalan governments alternated between assimilationism and integrationism. The politically knowledgeable Kaqchikel have consistently used the courts to oppose discrimination and to petition for equal rights. While maintaining their own ethnicity, they have incorporated multiethnic Indian resettlements into Kaqchikel communities. At the time of the downfall of the Liberal regimes of Jorge Ubico and Federico Ponce (1944), they tried to secure their traditional lands. Under Juan José Arévalo, they formed farm labor unions. Successive governments tried to assure access to Indian labor by cultivating dependence through economic and educational subordination.

Through unions, cooperatives, education, and commerce, the Kaqchikel are freeing themselves from debt peonage and manual labor constraints. Although ties to the land are still important, many families are no longer primarily farmers. Robert M. Brown found that most Kaqchikel families have four sources of income in addition to farming. Between the 1964 and the 1981 censuses, both the absolute and the relative population figures for Kaqchikel increased, despite the toll of the 1976 earthquake.

Although the violence of 1979–1985 slowed Kaqchikel population growth, the average educational level, involvement in macropolitical and macroeconomic spheres, and commitment to revitalizing Kaqchikel culture are building steadily. The 1986 Guatemalan constitution recognizes the indigenes' rights to maintain their languages and cultures.

In 1987 the government established official alphabets for Mayan languages. Kaqchikel, as one of the four major indigenous languages, is now served by the national bilingual/bicultural education program. Mayan scholars are again turning to the classic sources of the 1500s, such as the Annals of the Kaqchikels and the Popol Vuh, as inspiration for novels, histories, textbooks, poetry, and for constructing a new world-view, a modern Mayan reality. In 1990 a Kaqchikel poet, Kab'raqän, wrote: "So we too emerge from the heavy shadows, the dark night. Because all of their shadowy voices, the voices of our grandmothers, our grandfathers are crying in our hearts."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Francisco Hernández Arana Xajila and Francisco Díaz Gebuta Quej, Memorial de Tecpán-Atitlán: Anales de los Cakchiqueles, translated by José Antonio Villacorta C. (1934).

Adrián Recinos, Crónicas indígenas de Guatemala (1957).

Sol Tax, Penny Capitalism (1963).

Manning Nash, "Guatemalan Highlands," in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 7, Ethnology, pt. 1 (1969).

Sol Tax and Robert Hinshaw, "The Maya of the Midwestern Highlands," in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 7, Ethnology, pt. 1 (1969).

Douglas E. Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (1979).

Sheldon Annis, God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (1987).

Robert McKenna Brown, Language Maintenance and Shift Among the Kaqchikel Maya (1991).

Judith M. Maxwell IxQ'anil

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture