8 The “Othering” of Maya Political Economies

Abstract

In the twentieth century, an emphasis on generating big models to explain cross-cultural similarities and differences, particularly with respect to environmental factors, culminated in some essentialist views that negatively characterized the complexity and stability of Maya area civilization and economic foundations. These assumptions about Maya “Others”—as those who are doomed to fail and as weak contrasts to central Mexican contemporaries—still prevail in recent literature. They are dismissive of historical accounts as well as decades of concerted archaeological research. It is time to consider these new data that attest to the stability, resiliency, and commercial sophistication of Maya places and peoples through time. Local historical contingencies gave rise to considerable variation in economic strategies for production and exchange and webs of interdependency provided safeguards for linked cities, towns, and rural places.