This paper examines the role of the visual and material culture of cofradías and communal government in the formation of contemporary K’iche’ identities in Totonicapán, Guatemala, during the nineteenth century. The uprising led by Atanasio Tzul and Lucas Aguilar in 1820 marked a watershed for the peoples of Totonicapán and is considered a founding moment of the Council of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán, the indigenous communal organization that governs all these K’iche’ territories until today. During these periods of indigenous sovereignty over Totonicapán, leaders appointed new priestly and governmental positions made up entirely of indigenous people, and visual and material culture played a fundamental role in these processes. After independence in 1821, the communal authorities of Totonicapán had to deal with different political organizations such as the Federal Republic of Central America, the State of Los Altos, and the Republic of Guatemala, always defending indigenous sovereignty over their lands.
The K’iche’ community experienced successive waves of acculturation projects and failed attempts to erase their indigenous historical memory under both Spanish colonial rule and the establishment of the Guatemalan Republic in the nineteenth century. Documents like El Título de Totonicapán (a manuscript written in K’iche’ from 1554) and objects such as a sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel covered with Maya textiles, an ancient silver mayor’s staff, and the chair of Atanasio Tzul, all of them exhibited today in the Session Hall of the Council of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán, are elements that ratify their sovereignty by their very existence, so the importance of preserving them in the privacy of their community strengthens them in the face of threats to K’iche’ political autonomy. The materiality of the textile that covers the statue of San Miguel, the silver feather headdress, and the mayor’s staff wielded by the archangel give a particular political meaning to this important image for the Totonicapán peoples and subvert the meaning of a Christian devotion traditionally linked to the Conquest.
What was the role of material culture and communal authorities in the defense of K’iche’ autonomy in Totonicapán as part of their resistance to colonial and republican power? I will study a set of objects through a critical examination of Spanish chronicles, legal documents, publications, and photographs from nineteenth century, and by looking at oral history and contemporary religious and political ceremonies. These objects and ceremonies were examined through on-site research in the summer of 2023 in Totonicapán and other Maya communities. The material culture and events studied will be analyzed using the concept of visual sovereignty, which art historian Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) defines as an act of resistance by indigenous communities against settler state colonialism through their clothing, cultural practices, and contemporary art. This notion is useful for this study since material culture and cultural exchange played a fundamental role in the struggle of the K’iche’ peoples against the settlers by appropriating the paraphernalia of the Christian, Royal, and Republican authorities to visually represent indigenous sovereignty by combining those objects with elements from Maya culture.
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Leonardo Santamaría Montero (Costa Rica, 1992) is a third-year doctoral student in History of Art at Cornell University. He specializes in Latin American art, specifically 19th-century Central American visual and material culture, with a focus on indigenous aesthetics and their representations. Santamaría studies the transformation of Central American visual culture during its transition from the colonial to the republican regime, and the socio-political uses of pre-Columbian objects and contemporary indigenous material culture in that process. His book, Templo, palacio y centro social: la arquitectura y la ornamentación del Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica (EUCR, 2023), analyzes from a sociocultural scope the architectural and decorative design of the National Theater of Costa Rica (1897). He has presented his work at conferences such as the CIHA World Congress, the ALAA Triennial Conference, the Central American Congress of History, and the Native American Art Studies Association Conference. He received a BA and a Licentiate degree in Art History from the Universidad de Costa Rica, where he will return as a professor after completing his doctoral studies at Cornell.
https://cornell.academia.edu/LeonardoSantamaríaMontero
This paper examines the role of the visual and material culture of cofradías and communal government in the formation of contemporary K’iche’ identities in Totonicapán, Guatemala, during the nineteenth century. El Título de Totonicapán (1554), a sculpture of Saint Michael, an ancient silver mayor’s staff, and the chair of Atanasio Tzul (ca1820) are objects that ratify K’iche’ sovereignty by their very existence, since they survived several attempts to erase indigenous historical memory. These objects are analyzed using the concept of visual sovereignty, that is, the acts of resistance of indigenous communities against colonialism through their clothing and other cultural practices.