I liked this weeks reading because of the personal viewpoint it provided as well as the broad range of topics it covered while being centered around one town (Nahuala) and one main object (the pan-American highway). Although this road helped Nahuala economically by providing an easy mode of transportation for the crops to get to the market, the road also brought the people of this town “eyes and hears” to a world they may have been better off without seeing. I never considered factors other than invasion and war as communicants of Western ideology and progress, yet the Pan-American Highway may have caused the greatest shifts of all.
One of the many differences brought about by the road was the idea of religious choice. Through the eyes of Javier it is apparent that religion became an area of confusion and pain for many people in Nahuala after the Pan-American Highway was built. A central concept to traditional Nahuala was the lack of separation between political, social, and religious life with Catholicism being the only religion. With easy access to other parts of the country and ideas however, new religious concepts started streaming in and people were forced to decide. In America we consider religious choice an essential component to freedom and development. This also reminded me of Sen and his idea that freedom means choice. For the Nahuala’s however, this choice seemed to be the reason for the hardships later entailed. Javier had particular trouble with this idea since he wanted to explore all the religions and understand his entire new world, yet he was the leader of the town and was meant to “choose between mutually exclusive, bitterly opposed religious factions whose origins were neither Nahualens nor entirely foreign” (86). Javier expresses his confusion by protesting that before, the Mayas “believed in everything” and he asks then, “why is it not all right to believe in everything now?”(87). Before the highway it was harder to find people who did not believe in religion overall. Today however, it is common to find people in Nahuala who do not belief at all or whose religious beliefs differ extravagantly. This seems so strange to me and somewhat contradictory to what Americans learn about in school as well as from their families concerning religion. In retrospect however, it makes sense that religion was a unifying part of the Mayan communities. Like their town name, it identified them with the group and like Javier somewhat pessimistically explains “there’s nothing you can do about it” being gone (91).
Another point I found very interesting was the section on clothing change. Aside from bringing varying religious views the new Pan-American Highway also produced jobs that forced the Mayans of Nahuala to dress and act a certain way. Instead of traditional garments (koxtaar) the Mayans wore pants and t-shirts like every other common laborer. I thought Alonso’s quote sums up the transition very nicely when he said, “some people put on the pants and never took them off” (69). Like Manuel discussed with language, once the Western influence was there is was hard to hold onto Mayan culture. Many men however found this okay, seeing as the women still wore traditional dress (especially the corte or ankle length skirt). Even though they too experienced intense ridicule and mockery for wearing these clothes, women were the ones pressured to uphold this standard. I found this interesting for many reasons. In a society that is at least somewhat built on a hierarchy of respect beginning with the oldest males and working down first by gender then ages it seems strange to me that the women were the ones expected to preserve Mayan culture. I don’t really know why the Mayan men would give such a seemingly important role to a group that had traditionally been treated as inferior, but it is interesting to think of the possibilities.
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