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Becoming Maya: Ethnicity and Social Inequality in Yucatan since 1500. By Wolfgang Gabbert. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Pp. xvii, 252. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95 cloth.
Sociologist Wolfgang Gabbert's Becoming Maya constitutes a frontal assault on essentialist readings of Yucatec Maya culture that assert a core identity unchanged over the course of centuries. Gabbert denies that "Maya" was ever a self-conscious definition or category for Yucatan's people, and that much of today's indigenist vocabulary has resulted from interaction with state and federal agencies. The book puts into systematic argument a series of revisions that have been building over the past 15 years, including work on the colonial, early national, porfirian, and revolutionary era, all of which question sharp racial dichotomies.
Gabbert shows that "Maya" is a bit like "Indian": a colonial catch-all category that folded together all sorts of people who did not share a common identity in 1500 or after. Rather, autochthonous inhabitants of the Yucatan Peninsula tended to connect themselves most strongly with city and lineage. Even after the conquest, divisions...