Everyday work as spectacle: celebrating Maya embodied culture in Belize

Abstract

Since 2004, new identity performance strategies have been deployed among different Maya groups and villages in southern Belize where they meet annually to celebrate Maya Day. This festival condenses different forms of representing the dynamic and strong identities that the Maya people (often ignored and relegated) maintain as part of Belizean society. Maya Day is organised by Tumul K’in Center of Learning, an autonomous intercultural education project based in the Maya village of Blue Creek. The school provides secondary level education to Maya and non-Maya teenagers from different villages of the southern district of Toledo and beyond. The Maya Day festival includes traditional dances, marimba and harp music, old and new songs and musical genres, and rituals. However, one of the main attractions that the festival offers to Maya and non-Maya attendants is the different competitions where Maya villagers engage in the performing of everyday tasks, such as wood splitting, corn shelling and grinding, and conch blowing. Public competitions of this kind are not common, but express widely accepted notions of Mayaness, such as physical strength and resilience, resourcefulness in the face of adversity, extended and nuclear family cooperation, among others. In this article I explore and discuss why these competitions have become so important for the Maya actors involved in the organisation of Maya Day, and what happens when daily, embodied practices become spectacle. I call attention also to the significance of this festival in relation to the demands that Maya peoples express for political recognition and social inclusion.