Despite the lament of a sixteenth-century Kaqchikel chronicler, the highland Maya sustain a vibrant, living presence, one that no student of Mesoamerica can fail to notice. Even modern government censuses, which tend to enumerate fewer Indians than there actually are, record significant highland Maya populations, today in excess of 1 million in the Mexican state of Chiapas and between 5 and 6 million in the case of Guatemala. If, in the national context of Mexico, the Maya of Chiapas exist as one of dozens of Indian minorities among a mass of mestizos or mixed bloods, their counterparts across the border constitute a more palpable demographic force, for Maya-speaking peoples make up about half of Guatemala’s total population (Tables 21.1–21.4 and Maps 21.1–21.4). Numbers are important but, by themselves, merely scratch the surface of the story. Only by viewing the highland Maya in historical perspective can their conspicuous presence be more fully appreciated.

Who are these native peoples? How, through the centuries, have they managed to survive? What sorts of lives have they lived? Why should their lot concern us? Such questions have ignited debate for some time, from the brave stand made by enlightened Europeans like Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican friar who championed native rights in the sixteenth century, to the passionate voice of Rigoberta Menchú, a Maya woman whose award of the Nobel Peace prize in 1992, like the communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos following the Zapatista uprising in 1994, focused international attention on more recent burdens, more recent iniquities, more recent threats to Maya survival.