| Summary: | As the Pan-Maya movement becomes increasingly important in present day Guatemala,
the Popul Wuj, a Maya creation narrative, has become a site of struggle over national
identity for indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalans alike. This paper engages with
the introductions of various editions of the Popul Wuj written from the late 1940s to the
mid 1970s by non-indigenous ladinos in Guatemala. These middle and upper class
ladino academics, or letrados, express their own view of the nation and its place in the
roll of important Western nations using the language and epistemology of modern
science. It traces their underlying assumptions about prehispanic Maya culture and
attempts to reveal their deployment of it for the purpose of producing a glorious past for
the "modern," and in their eyes, ladino, nation. === Arts, Faculty of === History, Department of === Graduate
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