This month’s gallery/photo blog leaves me with two thoughts in particular: 1) Despite the myopia of the US media, by no means do Americans have the corner on conflict and terror, and 2) if we put as much effort into our freedoms as these souls do, this country of ours would look quite different. - the editor.

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All photos and captions are copyright 2007 John Santerre. Click ‘more’ for the photo captions.

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“Coming out of the Foodshed: Change and Innovation in Rural Alaskan Food Systems. For Full Text Click Here

This thesis is a combined volume containing three individual research papers, each written for submission to a different peer-reviewed journal. Each to some extent investigates community resiliency and vulnerability as they manifest in the past and present of Alaska Native foodways.

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My professors regularly reinforce in me and the other students, temperence and moderation in respect to an anthropologist’s inner desire to “help.” It is certainly true that the only things that stick will be things that come out of their own agency. But still, before any new initiatives in Chocola can begin, there is a tremendous amount of legwork that needs to be completed, to quantify the demographic and economic status quo. Campesinos who spend 4/5ths of their day working in order to feed their families just don’t have the time for things like this.

If anyone is to help Chocolenses help themselves, this is the first order of business; The second then, is theoretically where I come in, is to establish an ethnographic understanding of the K’iche Maya of Chocolá. Of particular interest to such a study is coming to understand the K’iche cultural space, and how the Maya might construct, maintain, and leverage their identity within a globally oriented market of agribusiness and tourism.

A Nearby Success Story?
The Kaqchikel Maya street vendors that work popular tourist stops such as Antigua and Panajachel display an intriguing example of identity management that has embraced change while allowing the essence of their identity to thrive. They have and continue to face many social, political and economic issues that await the Chocolenses, should they decide to turn to tourism as a new subsistence activity. As such their experiences will likely provide invaluable insight. These vendors are Maya that did not have to enter the tourism market, but have nonetheless, and have done so in calculated ways: “incorporating themselves into the global while continuing to reinscribe significance in the local.”

Of particular interest is how the women of these Kaqchikel families are actively remaking their cultural space, emerging as a recognizable icon of Guatemala and modern Maya cu lture. Generic family structure is consistent between the Kaqchikel and K’iche; though the eldest male carries the highest level of status in a family, there is little to no power differential between women and men. In Chocolá, it remains to be seen how powerful women might too remake themselves and thereby help their community better face new global influences and greater economic diversity.

From Philip’s personal Journal… dated 06-05-2005
“We went to see Don Nicholas, a Maya Shaman in the pueblo of San Pablo, to meet and consult with Maximon (St. Simon), a powerful local deity. The walls of his foyer were covered with letters from a hundred and one recipients of Maximon’s miracles, each with a photo of the sender in the corner. He was a surprisingly androgenous figure, with masculine hands but a feminine figure and voice. He served us some kind of juice as we waited for him to finish preparing Maximon’s altar.


“The effigy of Maximon was a frightening, life-size wooden mannequin, with empty eye sockets, gagged at the mouth, dressed in the clothes of a traditional Mayan campesino. Candles, piles of pom (incense), and circles of sugar and maize surrounded it in an esoteric pattern. The largest pile of incense, sugar and corn at the center was lit into a huge blaze. Every so often the incense would catch fire in a certain way to create a tornado of smoke and flames. Nicholas served us all sips of Johnnie Walker Red, after first pouring a generous amount into the mouth of Maximon. Nicholas repeated some unintelligble prayer, over and over, as he continued to feed liquor to us and to the effigy. Between the blaze and the whiskey every part of me was on fire.

“One by one Nicholas led us to a chair facing the effigy. Maximon’s cowboy hat was removed and placed on our heads. He asked me if i was married or had any children. He asked me if there was anything that I lived with that I was sorry for. He told me my father missed me.

“I felt like all the toxins in my body, chemical and psychological, were escaping through the sweat the fire brought. All the badness that had built up in my lifetime was leaving with the smoke and the steam. I took another sip of whiskey…

“The ceremony over, I felt the same way I felt the first time I jumped out of an airplane: I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be there, be involved with anyone else who was about to feel the great release and rebirth I had just felt. I wanted to share it. And Ididn’t want mine to fade.”

It hasn’t.