Maya Identities and the Violence of Place: Borders Bleed (2001) offers new perspectives on borderlands and identities, providing an important case study of people from Latin America on the move. Examining issues of indigeneity, diaspora, flights from physical violence and economic repression, and efforts to remain indigenous among a proud but beleaguered people, this book is replete with stories of movement and change that operate as means to maintain identity. Thompson examines how the Jacalteco Maya of Latin America form their identities as indigenous people, despite a long tradition of movement across the rigid constraints of “borders” of geography, history, race and ethnicity.
This is a book which asks us to rethink the processes of intellectual enclosure in which we place the subjects of our research. It does so through a beautifully written account of Mayan… identities and culture in transition.”
–The Global Review of Ethnopolitics