Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nijai’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos: “The Title and Proof of Our Ancestors”

Mallory E. Matsumoto’s Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nijai’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos: “The Title and Proof of Our Ancestors” provides facsimiles, transliterations, transcriptions, and translations from K’iche’ into English, and in one title from K’iche’-influenced Spanish into English, of the foundational documents of one of the most important lineages of the K’iche’ people, the Nijai’ib.’ It also includes historical, linguistic, and orthographic analyses of the five titles produced for the Nijai’ib’ great house. Many of its members resided in Quetzaltenango and Momostenango in the sixteenth century and paid to have this document created and copied in the K’iche’ language. In the early seventeenth century, some members of the Nijai’ib’ lineage also had the title translated from K’iche’ to an ungrammatical Spanish that betrays the translating scribe as ethnically K’iche.’ They had the title drawn up and the copies made for the purpose of possible future legal conflict that might arise...