Literacy and Power in Mesoamerica

Chapter 1 explores Maya and Zapotec systems of communication and contradictory colonial representations about Mesoamerican writing. It argues that writing and power were already interrelated in Mesoamerican indigenous communities so that the attribution of orality to indigenous peoples disavows the key role of pre-Columbian writing. It ends by discussing indigenous colonial texts as well as poetry framed through a double optic or kab’awil by foundational Maya and Zapotec authors such as Gaspar Pedro González, Macario Matus, and Victor de la Cruz.