Nov 10, 2024

An Unholy Rebellion, Killing the Gods

Political Ideology and Insurrection in the Mayan Popul Vuh and the Andean Huarochiri Manuscript

Sharonah Esther Fredrick

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

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Summary

An Unholy Rebellion, Killing the Gods: Political Ideology and Insurrection in the Mayan Popul Vuh and the Andean Huarochiri Manuscript (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive comparison of two of the greatest epics of the Indigenous peoples of Latin America: the Popul Vuh of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala and the Huarochiri Manuscript of Peru's lower Andean regions. The rebellious tone of both epics illuminates a heretofore overlooked aspect in Latin American Indigenous colonial writing: the sense of political injustice and spiritual sedition directed equally at European-imposed religious practice and at aspects of Indigenous belief. The link between spirituality and political upheaval in Native colonial writing has not been sufficiently explored until this work.

Sharonah Esther Fredrick applies a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes history, literature, archaeology, and anthropology in equal measure to situate the Mayan and Andean narratives within the paradigms of their developing civilizations. An Unholy Rebellion, Killing the Gods decolonizes readers' perspective by setting Mayan and Andean authorship center stage and illustrates the schisms and shifts in Native civilizations and literatures of Latin America in a way that other literary studies, which relegate Native literature as a prelude to Spanish-language literature, have not yet done. By demonstrating the power of Native American philosophy within the context of the conquest of Latin America, Fredrick illuminates the profound spiritual dissension and radically conflicting ideologies of the Mesoamerican and Andean worlds before and after the Spanish Conquest.

Books mentioned:

Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe
The Huarochiri Manuscript translated by Frank Salomon
Popol Vuh translated by Dennis Tedlock

Sharonah Esther Fredrick teaches in the College of Charleston's Department of Hispanic Studies. She is the Colonial Americas editor for Routledge Resources Online--The Renaissance World.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.