Centri e periferie. Spazi (e) immaginari politici nell’altipiano guatemalteco

Abstract

This article examines the interactions and transformations of indigenous political spaces in the Guatemalan highlands. With the end of the internal armed conflict (1996), the emergence – and dispersion – of the Maya Movement, confronting the neoliberal turn of the new millennium, poses new challenges to familiar forms of state spatialization. The ambiguous decentralization processes are articulated with endogenous processes and global phenomena, paving the way for unpredictable and locally differentiated dynamics. These dynamics reveal how communities acquire a new “centrality” in constructing Guatemalan society and state, rooted locally but projected nationally and globally.