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Hegemony and the Talking Cross
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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That useful and interesting publication, African Arts, regularly sends out a questionnaire to its readers asking them for details of financial details, range of interests, and criticisms of editorial policy. The picture of the average reader which emerges, a prosperous art collector, or prospering would-be collector, seems to reflect the advertisements rather than the articles. Were New Blackfriars to launch such a questionnaire, one would be little surprised to find that the average reader is an under-wealthy book addict who through the articles enjoys her/his fantasies of endless and fascinating reading in well-stocked and up-to-date libraries. For such people a worthwhile, or, at least interesting, questionnaire could be constructed to test their control of semantic variations by seeing how they defined various “in” words. One problem, of course, is that “in” words must shift in meaning if they are to stay “in” indefinitely. One “in” word is “hegemony” which received from Gramsci a neat specification as the situation in which a group dominates society by means other than force, fraud, or consent. Unfortunately, the word has also become a resource for translating Chinese foreign policy statements in which “hegemony” refers to the domination of the super-powers over their allies. I want in this article to use “hegemony” in discussing Spanish colonial, and Ladino post-colonial domination of the Maya Indians of Yucatan Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the way in which Maya resistance developed new forms of authority, based on the “assumption” of some of the symbols used by their conquerors.
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- Copyright © 1983 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Published quarterly at the African Studies Centre, University of California, Los Angeles.
2 “Ladie” refers to people who are culturally Hispanic, but who may be in descent, pure Spanish, pure Indian, or of mixed race. It is even possible in this part of the world for an individual to begin life as an Indian, to become a Ladine, and then, late in life, recover his Indian identity. The absence of a strict colour‐bar does not prevent the formation of unfavourable ethnic stereotypes.
3 “Maya” refers to a common cultural and linguistic heritage, as does “Scandinavian” in Europe. There are several Maya languages which are related. At the time of the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, the Maya formed several different political units.
4 Chiapas and Yucatan are states in southern Mexico; not all Guatemala Indians are Maya. The particular Maya language spoken in Yucatan, whose proper name is Yucatec, is often referred to as Maya.
5 In the sense of the taking‐over of an alien cultural element by a people, so that it becomes part of the core of their own identity.
6 The Indian Christ, the Indian King; the Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual by Victoria Reifler Bricker, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981 pp xiv + 368. 545.
7 If we are to use (as the ARCIC proposed) the concept of anamnesis to bridge differing positions on the Eucharist, then a purely linear time is not the only “sacred” time available to the Christian.
8 Bricker, op cit p 7.
9 Bricker, ibid.
10 Bricker, op cit pp 40‐41.
11 An alcalde mayor was a provincial governor.
12 Herbert S Klein, quoted in Bricker, pp 61‐62.
13 Bricker quotes Ximenez as saying that Alvarez de Toledo “introduced new church levies and increased old ones. His first tour, shortly after taking office, was very costly for the Indians”. p 66.
14 Ladines and Indians were regarded as separate castas.
15 Bricker, op cit p 93. “Contribution” referred to the church tax paid only by Indians. The liberals had reduced it in 1840; this did not satisfy the Indians, particularly as parish priests had raised fees for the sacraments in order to make up for the reduction in tax.
16 Bricker, op cit p 98.
17 Catholicism had been imposed on top of, rather than replacing, the old Maya polytheism. Hence, the different aspects of Christ were perceived as santos, which in this context means “spiritual powers” rather than “saints” in the normal Catholic sense.
18 Bricker, op cit p 194.
19 Indios sublevados pacificos.
20 Other scholars who have worked in the area seem to accept the crucifixion as fact.
21 Bricker, op cit p 150.
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