El patrimonio maya es la tierra (‘Maya heritage is the earth’): the work of contemporary Yucatec Maya artist Luis May Ku

Abstract

This article investigates Yucatec Maya heritage and identity through the perspective of Indigenous ways of knowing. The focus is the work of Luis May Ku, a contemporary self-identified Yucatec Maya artist from the community of Dzan in the state of Yucatán (Mexico). It considers the interplay of heritage discourses and power hierarchies as they apply to his life in Dzan, in Coba, where he has been teaching, and his outreach to international bodies, like the British Museum, and global marketing. My analysis is a case study of the layered, fluid, shifting, and ambivalent notions of Maya heritage and identity. I situate his artwork and practice in a wider context of Indigenous identity struggles, as seen through Tim Ingold’s relational model and other bottom-up heritage movements. These seek alternatives to capitalism, take strides to de-colonize land, and provide local lessons which – when applied more widely – can help make the more planet sustainable.

Keywords:

• Maya
• contemporary
• Yucatan
• identity
• heritage

Acknowledgements

This work is dedicated to Luis May Ku in deep gratitude. His enthusiasm for sharing and teaching Maya culture – past and present – made all of this possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 His legal name.

2 Hereafter, ‘Luis’ or ‘May Ku’, until the conclusion.

3 These rulers gave commissions to construct palaces for administrative purposes, monumental temples as funerary monuments, and causeways to connect neighborhoods. They validated their lineage, ancestral descent line, and personal accomplishments on carved stone stelae displaying their portraits accompanied by hieroglyphic texts. After about 900 AD, the proliferation of monumental construction and art production came to a halt. People moved, resettled, and reorganized under an altered social system relying on elite councils rather than a sovereign, in the Post-Classic cities. These were the Maya in the Yucatán peninsula that the Spanish made contact with in the mid-sixteenth century.

4 I borrow this term from Lisa Breglia’s (2006) analysis of Maya identities and heritage practices.

5 Likewise, Cant (2012, 245–261) discusses the layers and ‘hues’ of belonging in identity constructions among families of woodcarvers in Oaxaca. Paralleling post-Revolutionary twentieth-century Yucatán history, the process of Mexican nation-building required Indian blood to validate its historical roots, territory, and categorical difference from Europe. In policy making, rural people in Oaxaca were classified and branded as Indigenous placing them in the contradictory position of being linked with the past and at the same time personifying the Other of modernity, as well as denying them individual agency. Like with the Maya, Oaxaca carvers have been forging their own new ‘hues’ of belonging and identity in response to cultural tourism and the global demand for ethnic arts.

6 Dzan is Luis’ cah or social community and home land base (see Restall 2004).

7 To add to the ambivalence of identity, heritage, and artistic constructions concerning the ancient Maya blue, it must be noted that artist Lorena Ancona in Playa del Carmen figured out how to make Maya blue pigment with the ch’oj plant and palygorskite in 2017, one year prior to Luis. Born in Chetumal, she is of mestizo heritage and self-identifies as Caribbean (personal consultation, 2022). Lorena has a Master’s degree in art and has held artist residencies in Oaxaca as well as in Europe.

8 See: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=5739947039402346&set=pb.100001613203682.-2207520000.&type=3. Accessed June 2022.

9 As of June 2022, our stela is by and large protected. The Escuela Primaria has moved their Comedor (eating area) so that its roof shields the backside of the stela. I paid for a small metal roof for the front side. Luis is painting it in ch’oj and continues repairs.

10 See: https://www.facebook.com/aldea.kab. Accessed June 2021.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Christie

Jessica Christie My work has always been multi-disciplinary approaching visual culture through methodologies from Art History, Archaeology, and Anthropology. My Master's thesis at the University of Texas in Austin explored the Pecos pictographs in West Texas. On the doctoral level, my focus shifted toward the ancient Maya and performance space of their Period Ending ceremonies. During my career as professor at East Carolina University, I have published about Maya palaces and elite residences (2003, 2006). Since 2009, I have turned toward landscape studies in the Americas (Landscapes of Origin, 2009) as well as with a world-wide focus in the co-edited volume Political Landscapes of Capital Cities (2016). My single-authored book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Sculpted Outcrops (2016) brought Inka carved rock complexes to life from before the Spanish invasion to the present. More recently, my theoretical focus is strongly shifting toward the wide impacts of Colonialism and questions of how to de-colonize as we interweave the past with the present for a sustainable future. This is a major objective of my recent book Earth Politics of Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage: Three Case Studies in the Americas (2021). I am working on parallel case studies in Hawai'i and in the Maya area driven by my interests in bringing together different knowledge systems.