Victor Montejo: The Living Maya

Victor Montejo is a Jakaltek Maya originally from Guatemala. He is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in Mesoamerican Indigenous cultures. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut, USA, in 1993. He was awarded the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Davis in 1995 and then joined the faculty of Native American Studies in 1997. He is a scholar, novelist, poet, activist, journalist, and major Mayan public intellectual, recognized nationally and internationally for his work.

During his time in Native American Studies, he served as Department Chair for one term and consistently helped strengthen the Graduate program in Native American Studies with his colleagues. At the undergraduate level, he taught one of the introductory courses in Native American Studies, along with NAS 115 Indigenous People in the Contemporary World; Native Knowledge, Methods and Epistemology. At the graduate level he taught NAS 200 Seminar: Basic Concepts: NAS 246: Research Methods and Theory in Native American Studies; NAS 202: Indigenous Myths and Worldviews; NAS 250: Seminar: Classic Maya Ethnographies.As a Maya native of Guatemala, he has focused his research on Maya culture and the pan-Maya movement of self-representation in the Americas. His academic interests focus on the Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. He works on the Latin American diaspora, human rights, migration and transnationalism, comparative studies, ethnicity, Indigenous worldviews and Native knowledge, and Indigenous literatures. Current projects include: Indigenous community development, rural development, sustainable development, cultural/economic/political self-determination, cultural resource management. Victor Montejo has been a columnist for a national newspaper in Guatemala and obtained First Honorable Mention for Best Column in Native Americas, Cornell University, from the Native American Journalists Association in 2000.

His Voices from Exile: Violence and Survival in Modern Maya History won the national Race, Ethnicity and Politics Award from the American Political Science Association.In 2003, Victor Montejo received a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and conduct research in Guatemala at the University of El Valle de Guatemala. He ran for Congress and won; from 2004-2008, he served in the Guatemalan national Congress. From this post, he was named Minister of Peace during the Guatemalan Presidency and worked out the National Program for Reparation to the victims of the armed conflict in Guatemala. He was president of the Congressional Commission of Indigenous Peoples.

As a Congressman he proposed and passed the law of the National Day of Indigenous People of Guatemala, and and proposed the Law Initiative: Ley de Consulta a Pueblos Indígenas. Professor Emeritus Montejo's major publications include: Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village (1987); The Bird Who Cleans the World and Other Mayan Fables, Curbstone Press, 1991; Sculpted Stones [poetry], 1995; The Adventures of Mister Puttison Among the Mayas [novel], Yax Te’ Press, 1998; Voices from Exile: Violence and Survival in Modern Maya History (1999); Maya Intellectual Renaissance: Critical Essays on Identity, Representation, and Leadership. Austin: University of Texas Press (2003); Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Mayas (1999); Q'anil: Man of Lightning, University of Arizona Press (2002). Pixan: El Cargador del Espíritu, Editorial Piedra Santa, Guatemala, (2014); Secuestro a ultratumba.

https://www.indigenouspeople.net/victorm.htm

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