Literature Review

The Mam are one of more than 20 Mayan pueblos (peoples or nations) in Guatemala and southern Mexico, with varying languages, histories, cultures, and ancestral territories (Del Valle Escalante 2008; Mac Giolla Chríost 2003). Pueblos is a political term that may signify Indigenous nationhood and collective rights, including rights to territory, self-determination, autonomy, and the development of language, education, and cultural practices (Richards and Gardner 2022). Other terms, such as Socio-cultural groups (Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples 1995) and Maya ethnolinguistic identities (French 2010), are limited by emphasizing particular characteristics, such as language and culture.

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Today the pueblo Mam and their territory are divided by the Guatemala-Mexico border and other state borders within each country (Gardner and Richards 2017; Hernández Castillo 2001). In a broader sense, Indigenous territory is a geographic entity, both pre-existing and constructed through political action (see Escobar 2008; Di Giminiani 2018, 2019). Mam councils and activists contend that today Mam territory encompasses parts of western Guatemala (in the regional departments of Quetzaltenango, Retalhuleu, San Marcos, and Huehuetenango) and part of the border state of Chiapas, Mexico. Mam councils and activists draw connections between their people and a more holistic and interdependent conceptualization of territory in the Mayan Cosmovision, which includes sacred sites, the mountains, volcanoes, rivers, trees, plants, animals, and other living and non-living beings (Gardner 2024).

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These Indigenous perspectives of territory are sharply torn by histories of state border negotiations that excluded Indigenous peoples. Indeed, Indigenous peoples are almost entirely absent from state boundary agreements, as elites and political authorities have negotiated state borders without considering the ways that Indigenous peoples and their territories would be divided by them (Starks, McCormack, and Cornell 2011). Consequently, many Indigenous peoples are geographically, socially, culturally, and politically fragmented by state borders (Cojtí Cuxil 2005; Támez 2011). For example, the 1882 Tratado sobre Límites (Gobierno de México 1882) were negotiated and signed by Guatemalan and Mexican officials (detailing the contemporary Guatemala-Mexico borderline) without considering the division of the pueblo Mam by this border. Yet in recent decades Mam councils and activists have worked across such divisions to become more united in contesting projects that may environmentally, socially, and culturally impact the Earth and its inhabitants in these regions (Gardner and Richards 2017).

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Indigenous efforts to engage in social, cultural, and political aims across borders also align with Article 36 of the United Nations (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:

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1. Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.

2. States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise and ensure the implementation of this right.

As an expression of this collective right, some Indigenous councils (such as the Council of the Mam Nation) have strengthened cross-border ties as Indigenous nations and asserted collective rights demands to be consulted about transnational projects that could impact their ancestral territories within and across state borders (Gardner and Richards 2017).

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In the twenty-first century, Maya-Mam mobilization has consistently challenged transnational mining, hydroelectric, and other neoliberal projects in Guatemala and southern Mexico. These projects have damaged local rivers, communities, animal life, and landscapes in their ancestral territories, which are understood as interconnected in the Mayan cosmovision. Indigenous peoples in these regions (including the Maya-Mam) have organized Consultas Comunitarias de Buena Fe (Community Consultations) to vote against the mines and mining licenses granted by the government that provide transnational companies access to explore and exploit the natural resources within Indigenous ancestral territories.

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The Consejo Maya-Mam Saq Tx’otx’ (part of the Council of the Mam Nation located in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango) have organized in “la defensa del territorio” (defense of territory) as a social, cultural, environmental, and political struggle. Thus, Maya-Mam resistance is part of an ongoing struggle to unite in strengthening social, cultural, environmental, and political connections. As Mash-Mash and Gómez (2014) write, in the Mam language “[We] call Earth ‘Qtxu tx’otx’,’ or Mother Earth, because she gives us life, water, air, fire, and nourishment, and she protects us. We are part of her and she of us.”