Speaker
Description
This paper critiques the colonial forms of land-use planning in Guatemalan society. Particularly, it focuses on the Municipal Development Plan oriented to Land-Use Planning (PDM-OT) required by the State of Guatemala for every town. I pay attention to the Maya Ixil city of Chajul and analyze how the PDM-OT introduces, under the principles of development, regulation, and a historical lack of technical foundations, a series of incompatible urban planning policies that do little to understand the land and people from the Mayan Ixil perspective. In a town where 95% of the population is Maya—with the same percentage speaking Maya Ixil, I observe how western planning tools adapted to Indigenous ancestral places reinforce colonial narratives that attempt to erase Indigenous presence. Based on qualitative inquiry and elaborating on decolonial praxis, I apply place in research and storytelling to highlight how Indigenous People "re-exist resisting and resist re-existing" in the same urban space. Namely, the efforts community organizations, non-profits, Alcaldías Indígenas (Indigenous Municipalities), and Ixil intellectuals develop to protect, foster, and maintain the Maya legacy in Chajul. Examples include the conservation of the historical memory after colonial, military, and private corporation invasions; the maintenance of ceremonial and archaeological sites; the daily activities that resist stereotypes of urban life; language as a form of thinking; and the cultural practice of weaving that provide continuity for being Maya and remains as an essential source of income. I observe how these interventions take place in decolonial cracks Indigenous Peoples are constantly finding in colonial planning. Finally, I elaborate on the Tichajil Tenam, a counter-planning proposal Alcaldes Indígenas delivered to the State of Guatemala in 2024, to exemplify how Indigenous People redefine urban planning practices and envision their future.
References
Albán, A. (2009) ‘Capítulo 13. Pedagogías de la Re-Existencia. Artistas indígenas y afrocolombianos.’, in Arte y esté-tica en la encrucijada descolonial. (W. Mignolo y Z. Palermo, Eds.).
Mignolo, W. and Walsh, C.E. (2018) On decoloniality: concepts, analytics, praxis. Durham: Duke University Press (On decoloniality).
Nejad, S. et al. (2019) ‘“This is an Indigenous city; why don’t we see it?” Indigenous urbanism and spatial production in Winnipeg’, The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 63(3), pp. 413–424. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12520.
Thompson-Fawcett and Riddle, C. (2017) ‘Being Ourselves and Seeing Ourselves in the City: Enabling the Conceptual Space for Indigenous Urban Planning’, Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp. 659–664.
Walsh, C. (2021) ‘Decolonial Praxis’, International Academy of Practical Theology. Conference Series, Vol 2 (2021):, pp. 4-12 Pages. Available at: https://doi.org/10.25785/IAPT.CS.V2I0.189.
| Keywords | Decolonial Praxis, Indigenous Planning, Decolonial Cracks, Urban Indigeneity |
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