Kemenik le Ch’o’b’oj / Tejiendo Historias / Weaving Histories/Stories: Creating a Memoria Histórica of Resistance through Maya Backstrap Weaving Rhetorics

College Composition and Communication Sep 2023

Kemenik le Ch’o’b’oj / Tejiendo Historias / Weaving Histories/Stories: Creating a Memoria Histórica of Resistance through Maya Backstrap Weaving Rhetorics

Andrés C. López

Abstract

In their report of the violences committed during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), the Commission for Historical Clarification stated that “historical memory, both individual and collective,” is important for creating just conditions and providing reparations to the victims of violence perpetrated during this armed conflict (1998, 48). As a result, remembrance projects began to create a memoria histórica that historicizes the violences committed by the Guatemalan government. These remembrance projects and memories often imagine a heteronormative Guatemalan populace and, in turn, erase the existence of queer and trans Maya people also affected by violence and ongoing genocide. In this article I argue that the practice of Maya backstrap weaving is a rhetorical mechanism for remembrance and maintenance of traditional practices. Using a Two Spirit critique, I articulate a Maya-centered queer/trans rhetorical methodology that points to how Western historiographic methodologies continue to be the norm in Guatemalan historicizing practices, but also within WGSS, queer and trans studies, and rhetoric and writing studies. My use of backstrap weaving is a type of storytelling and remembrance practice that centers cultural rhetorics, Indigenous sovereignty, and locally specific Indigenous paradigms and frameworks to stop the erasure of Indigenous peoples from collective consciousness and canons.

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 2023-09-01
DOI: 10.58680/ccc202332673
Open Access: Closed
Topics: race and writing multilingual writers affect and writing

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Also cites 8 works outside this index ↓

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Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred

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Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances Between Native and Queer Studies

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Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and P…

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Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?

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Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing

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The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics

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Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge

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