In 1983, a group of citizens in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, formed Sna Jtz'ibajom, the Tzotzil-Tzeltal Maya writers' cooperative. In the two decades since, this group has evolved from writing and publishing bilingual booklets to writing and performing plays that have earned them national and international renown.
Anthropologist Robert M. Laughlin has been a part of the group since its beginnings, and he offers a unique perspective on its development as a Mayan cultural force. The Monkey Business Theatre, or Teatro Lo'il Maxil, as this branch of Sna Jtz'ibajom calls itself, has presented plays in virtually every corner of the state of Chiapas, as well as in Mexico City, Guatemala, Honduras, Canada, and in many museums and universities in the United States. It has presented to the world, for the first time in drama, a view of the culture of the Mayas of Chiapas.
In this work, Laughlin presents a translation of twelve of the plays created by Sna Jtz'ibajom, along with an introduction for each. Half of the plays are based on myths and half on the social, political, and economic problems that have confronted—and continue to confront—the Mayas of Chiapas.

Monkey Business Theatre

Arts & Photography

Laughlin, Robert M.

Sna Jtz'ibajom

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

Monkey Business Theatre (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)

Literature & Fiction

The forty-two stories presented in this book were told to Robert Laughlin in Tzotzil by Francisca Hernández Hernández, an elderly woman known as Doña Pancha, the only speaker of Tzotzil left in the village of San Felipe Ecatepec in Chiapas, Mexico. Laughlin and Doña Pancha's running conversation is the source for the stories, which means they are told in much the same way that stories are told in traditional native settings. Doña Pancha is bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish, and the stories are presented here in English, Tzotzil, and Spanish. They range from mythological sacred stories to quasi-historical legends to historical accounts of life in the twentieth century.

Mayan Tales from Chiapas, Mexico (English, Mayan, Spanish and English Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University of New Mexico Press

PEOPLE OF THE BAT

Smithsonian

"Dr. Robert M. LaughIin, one of the world's greatest students of native language and culture, has produced a "historical anthropology" that is both captivating and illuminating. Like a mystery novel, the reader is led from the accidental discovery of a Tzotzil-Maya nineteenth-century text, found in the very building where Laughlin works (the Smithsonian Institution), through the bizarre and dramatic history of events surrounding the 1812 Cortes in Spain and an obscure proclamation sent to the officials of the American colonies. Through Laughlin's detailed accounts of these historical events that took place in Spain, New Spain, Peru, Guatemala, and Chiapa, the reader learns the meaning of the proclamation for the Creoles and Indians to whom it was addressed. In the best tradition of the "microhistorian," the proclamation and its Tzotzil text are historically and culturally contextualized rather than explained. As Laughlin himself states in his introduction: 'The pages that follow present a theater of the absurd, a fabulous history with myriads of details as if set in the Milky Way. The reader will not be comforted with an historical 'argument'.' The prose is wonderful, the characters alive, and the plot intriguing. And along the way, the reader is treated to an inside perspective on the vicissitudes and small triumphs of colonial Indians in one small corner of the Mesoamerican world."- Robert M. Carmack, Professor Emeritus, University at Albany

Beware the Great Horned Serpent!: Chiapas under the Threat of Napoleon (Studies on Culture and Society)

History

Americas

Institute for Mesoamerican Studies

Mayan Tales From Zinacantan: Dreams and Stories from the People of the Bat

Gran Diccionario Tzotzil De San Lorenzo Zinacantan, El (Spanish Edition)

CONACULTA/DIR. GENERAL DE CULTURAS POPUL

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