2 - Possessing Sentiments and Ideas of Progress

Summary

Chapter 2 examines how Q’eqchi’ patriarchs addressed the challenges posed by popular pressures from below and new state efforts to modernize by privatizing property, institutionalizing coerced wage labor, and expanding state authority after the 1871 Liberal revolution. Q’eqchi’ patriarchs’ efforts included culturally translating communal properties into coffee plantations, engaging in the scientific cartography, and converting the spatial markers of mountain spirits into boundary markers. Ultimately, however, the efforts of Q’eqchi’ patriarchs to forge coffee plantations was limited because of internal pressures within indigenous communities, predatory capitalists, and state officials unwilling to recognize their plantations and grant labor exceptions to their workers.