Weaving Worlds: Indigenous Film, Poetry, and Photography in Quincentennial Mesoamerica

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Indigenous artists from Mesoamerica adapted modern media such as film, print literature, and photography during the late twentieth century, a period marked by the resurgence of Indigenous social movements throughout the region. While the works of these artists have often been interpreted as transparent expressions of Indigenous identity or as documentary records of cultural traditions, such readings risk overlooking the formal strategies through which these works produce meaning. Focusing on the historical conjuncture of “Quincentennial Mesoamerica” (roughly 1985–2005), this study asks how our understanding of Indigenous artistic production changes when these works are analyzed not primarily as representations of Indigenous worlds but as forms that actively shape them. Drawing on theoretical insights from Indigenous media studies, Mesoamerican philosophy, and scholarship on craft and aesthetics, the dissertation proposes weaving as a conceptual model for understanding the relational structures that organize these works. The dissertation develops this argument through three case studies: the films of Ikoots filmmaker Teófila Palafox, the bilingual poetry of K’iche’ Maya writer Humberto Ak’abal, and the text–image compositions of Tsotsil Maya artist Maruch Sántiz. Combining historical analysis of the institutional contexts that shaped the reception of these artists with close formal analysis of their works, the study examines how cinematic technique, poetic devices such as parallelism and chiasmus, and the interplay of language and photography generate structures of relation rather than transparent representation. Across these media, the works analyzed here enact what this dissertation terms a Mesoamerican philosophy of weaving: a formal and epistemological model that brings heterogeneous elements into relation without dissolving their differences. The conclusion reached is that these artists do not simply document Indigenous realities but elaborate Indigenous philosophical principles through artistic form, demonstrating that contemporary Indigenous media from Mesoamerica can be understood not only as cultural expression but also as theoretical practice.