Development and Ethnocentrism

I would like to continue to discuss some of Sarah’s ideas about the relationship between development and the community of Totonicapán from our reading this week. As we have discussed many times in class, the changes and process that pertain to ‘development’ from our American understanding can often be rather counterproductive and ineffective in helping a community overcome its ‘underdeveloped’ state. In America, we value aggressiveness, assertiveness, and as admirable traits that ensure wealth and power in a world of competition. Yet over and over in Smith’s article do we hear from residents of Totonicapán that to hire cheap labor, to deny workers of fair wages, and to exploit others for individual gain, “…is just not our custom” (216). The irony is that here in the United States, these forms of oppression and injustice are considered to just be apart of business and the nature our system of economics. However, in Totonicapán such exploitation has yet to infiltrate the close community bond and shared sense of identity that defines the Mayans ‘costumbres’. With Guatemala becoming more and more developed every year, is it possible for such a sense unity to continue? To answer this question, I believe that we must reference the strength and vitality of the Mayan culture despite the many years of suffering and hardship they have faced. Time after time, the Mayan of Guatemala have thrived and kept their traditions and culture alive despite the persecutions they have faced for their way of life. With such a legacy of survival and stoicism, I believe that the Mayan of Totonicapán will be able to continue their ‘class consciousness’ and economic systems, even in the years ahead.

I would also like to discuss the nature by which Carol A. Smith wrote this article, and her attitude and method of analysis. While I found this study interesting and vital to our understanding of the Mayan, I was a little bit disturbed by the author’s often blunt ethnocentrism. For example, I felt that Smith treated the nature by which the Maya of Totonicapán understood their ‘costumbres’ and ran their market system as something strange and foreign( opposite of what an Anthropologist should do). While the idea of hiring labor for equal pay rather than making an individual profit may be strange to us, is this not the truly humanistic thing to do? Smith’s analysis at times sounded almost as if she was amazed that some communities actually treated all its members fairly. Through the article, she often came off as unethical and even unmoral. She further continues to call this system an “unusual phenomenon” (206). Is the town of Totonicapán’s way of treating its residents really completely unbelievable because it is actually honorable? Lastly, throughout the article Smith also constantly used the term ‘Indian’, rather than Mayan, to refer to the people of Guatemala. The term Indian, coined by Europeans, is itself a bit disrespectful and outdated, especially for a scholarly article such as this one.