Hot and Cold Politics of Indigenous Identity: Legal Indians, Cannibals, Words, More Words, More Food

This is an ethnographic analysis of Maya indigenous identity politics in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The analysis builds on first hand ethnographic fieldwork as a means to analyze newspaper reports and state laws concerning the nature, authority, activities, and cultural standing of Maya dignitaries— officials created by Mexican Law as a means to revitalize and support indigenous Maya culture. These figures are not as it were "autochthonous, "but an elusive illusion created by the State in a strategy of Allusion. The anthropological discourses of identity and the interpretations of time within Mayan studies are assessed for their portraiture of Indians and of Maya Indian. These portraits are manifest manners of how Indians behave, how they should behave, as well as what and how they think. They are allusions that the State uses in strategies and practices of governing the Maya. Allusion is developed as a means to understand the hot and cold interplay or complicity between the State and Indigenous communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The article is a form of cultural commentary and critique in the genre of ethnography.