Emilio del Valle Escalante (born 1970), known as Emil' Keme, is a Guatemalan/K'iche Maya professor and researcher in Indigenous literatures and cultures at Emory University. [1] He has written and edited books on his fields of expertise as well as various journal articles. He has also presented talks at other U.S. educational institutions.
Keme received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. [2] His areas of expertise include contemporary Latin American and indigenous literatures and social movements, cultural and post-colonial studies and indigenous studies. Much of his work has been focused on textual production by Indigenous peoples in Abiayala (the Americas) and how these challenge the usual political and social narratives about Indigenous peoples in Latin America. This is part of a broader theme of colonialism, nationhood, national identity, race/ethnicity and gender. His book, Le Maya Q'atzij/Our Maya Word: Poetics of Resistance and Emancipation From Iximulew/Guatemala 1960-2012, which focuses on the poetry of ten contemporary Maya poets, was awarded the 2020 Casa de las Americas Literary Prize. [3] [4]
He has presented his work on the Mayan movements at Penn State Lehigh Valley, [5] and the Guatemalan Civil War at Virginia Commonwealth University. [6]
He has been a professor of English and Indigenous Studies at Emory University since the fall semester of 2023 and was formerly an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2007 through 2023. Graduate courses he has taught include Indigenous Literatures of the Americas, Contemporary Central American Narrative and Spanish-American Literature:1880–Present. Undergraduate courses include Mesoamerica Through Its Literature, Introduction to Indigenous Literatures, Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Magic realism, boom and post-boom, Contemporary Latin America: México, Central America and the Andes and Introduction to Latin American Literature. [7]
http://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/712/1266#.UaSbcrXVArU
Other articles have been published in venues such as Mesoamerica, Studies in American Indian Literature, Revista Iberoamericana, Latin American Caribbean and Ethnic Studies, Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia and Revista de Estudios Interétnicos. [4]
Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.
Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was a well-recognized scholar internationally. In 2013, the Library of Congress of the United States bestowed on him the Living Legend Award.
Yucatec Maya is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Francisco, though most Maya Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages from Guatemala and Chiapas.
The Huasteclanguage, now commonly known by the endonym Téenek, of Mexico is spoken by the Téenek people living in rural areas of San Luis Potosí and northern Veracruz. Though relatively isolated from them, it is related to the Mayan languages spoken further south and east in Mexico and Central America. According to the 2005 population census, there are about 200,000 speakers of Huasteco in Mexico. The language and its speakers are also called Teenek, and this name has gained currency in Mexican national and international usage in recent years.
The Constitution of Mexico does not declare an official language; however, Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by over 99% of the population making it the largest Spanish speaking country in the world. Due to the cultural influence of the United States, American English is widely understood, especially in border states and tourist regions, with a hybridization of Spanglish spoken. The government also recognizes 63 indigenous languages spoken in their communities out of respect, including Nahuatl, Mayan, Mixtec, etc.
Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Native Mexicans or Mexican Native Americans, are those who are part of communities that trace their roots back to populations and communities that existed in what is now Mexico before the arrival of Europeans.
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies, who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world, and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
Central America is a subregion of the Americas formed by six Latin American countries and one (officially) Anglo-American country, Belize. As an isthmus it connects South America with the remainder of mainland North America, and comprises the following countries : Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Matthew Restall is a historian of Colonial Latin America. He is an ethnohistorian, a Mayanist, a scholar of the conquest, colonization, and the African diaspora in the Americas, and a historian of popular music. Restall has areas of specialization in Yucatán and Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. He is a member of the New Philology school of colonial Mexican history and the founder of a related school, the New Conquest History. He is currently Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at the Pennsylvania State University. He is a former president of the American Society for Ethnohistory (2017–18), a former editor of Ethnohistory journal (2007–17), a former senior editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review (2017–22), editor of the book series Latin American Originals, and co-editor of the Cambridge Latin American Studies book series. He also writes books on the history of popular music.
Indian auxiliaries were those indigenous peoples of the Americas who allied with Spain and fought alongside the conquistadors during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. These auxiliaries acted as guides, translators and porters, and in these roles were also referred to as yanakuna, particularly during the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The term was also used for formations composed of indigenous warriors which were used by the Spanish for reconnaissance and combat duties. Indian auxiliaries continued to be used by the Spanish to maintain control over their colonies in the Americas; frequently stationed on the frontier, they were often used to suppress anti-colonial revolts such as Arauco War.
Chitinamit is an archeological site of the Maya civilization in the highlands of Guatemala. It has been identified as Jakawitz, the first capital of the K'iche' Maya. The site is located in the El Quiché department, in the municipality of Uspantán. Chitinamit dates from the Early Classic through to the Late Postclassic periods and covers approximately 2 hectares (220,000 sq ft), making it the largest site in its region.
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
The Lakandon Chʼol were a former Chʼol-speaking Maya people inhabiting the Lacandon Jungle in what is now Chiapas in Mexico and the bordering regions of northwestern Guatemala, along the tributaries of the upper Usumacinta River and the foothills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes.
Gladys Elizabeth Tzul Tzul is a Maya K'iche' activist, public intellectual, sociologist, and visual artist who was one of the first to study Indigenous communal politics and gender relationships in Guatemala.
The Totonicapán Uprising of 1820 was an uprising of indigenous Maya peoples (K'iche') against the Spanish Empire that occurred in Totonicapán, located in the western highlands of Guatemala. The revolt was in response to the excessive tribute demanded by the colonial authorities, and managed to establish a short lived breakaway state in Totonicapán with a free indigenous government. The rebellion was concurrent with the independence of Central America and other Latin American wars of independence.
The Museum of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art is an ethnographic museum located in Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay, dedicated to the indigenous cultures of different parts of Latin America.
María Teresa Rojas Rabiela is an ethnologist, ethnohistorian, Emeritus National Researcher and Mexican academic, specializing in Chinampas of Mexico's Basin, history of agriculture, hydraulics, technology, and labor organization in Mesoamerica during pre-Columbian and colonial eras, as well as historical photography of Mexico's peasants and indigenous people. She is recognized as a pioneer in historical studies on earthquakes in Mexico. From 2018 to 2021, Rojas Rabiela was involved in the restoration of the section of the pre-Hispanic aqueduct of Tetzcotzinco, Texcoco, known as El caño quebrado.
Del Valle is a topographic surname literally meaning "from the valley" in Spanish. Notable people with the surname include:
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