In The Indian Christ, the Indian King Victoria Reifler Bricker analyzes four centuries of ethnic conflict among the Maya using ethnohistoric records, ethnographic and linguistic data, and standard structural techniques with the observation that written and oral traditions (Spanish and native) contain analogous margins of error and distortion. Early in the study Bricker departs from Lévi-Strauss’s theories of bricolage and inversion by demonstrating that the Maya selectively chose structurally consonant elements from their history. By telescoping time and space, the Maya assimilated “current” ethnic conflict into the cyclic paradigm of myth and ritual. Structural elements retain total mobility within a given stratum, whereas structures are neither substituted nor inverted.
According to Bricker, nativism as prophecy enabled the Maya to merge myth with reality, to manipulate confrontation into conformation with repetitive cycles of the past. Colonial rebellions and the Caste Wars are interpreted as native efforts to relativize orthodox Catholicism and to syncretize Spanish/Ladino culture. Bricker argues tangentially that the Spanish myths of pacification and ethnic solidarity metamorphosed pacific religious movements into volatile sociopolitical revolts. This is one of her more interesting hypotheses, though it is insufficiently documented with negative proofs. Cyclic time and prognostications provided a “metahistorical model” for wisdom and knowledge for the resolution of ethnic conflict. Bricker’s impressive linguistic data and rigorous analysis of the elements and structures of native myth and ritual constitute a fine contribution to the refinement of structural theory as applied to Maya ethnohistory and ethnography and significantly enrich the extant corpus of Maya studies.
