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The pandemic catapulted Mexican cities into spaces of trauma and loss and as sites of state failure. For Maya migrants, state failure forms part of a history of settler violence and neglect. In Cancún, settler tactics promote a narrative of a city of immigrants. These tactics erase Indigenous urbanisms seeking to uphold Indigenous self-determination and nurture u kuxtal yéetel u máatsil máako’ob/convivencia, a Maya ethics of sociality and care based on caring for each other. I argue that the ethics of care and place-making entailed in convivencia help Maya migrants experience the metropole as a space of reciprocity, survival, and healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects the construction of national music while the arise of the nation State in Guatemala. This development begins formally while the first decades of the nineteenth century and has not finished yet. For the myth of the Nation state and those who use it for their project of domination it is crucial that national music can be distinguished externally from musics generated by other nations while it can be applied internally for the aim of national homogenisation. Since the middle of the nineteenth century the music is used in Guatemala for the dissemination of ideologies that help to construct this myth. The vernacular music of the Maya people does not follow this logic. Hence it is considered inferior or «incorrect». For the myth of the nation State only the totality of «the people» as an abstract concept can understand and appreciate the national music, but not the concrete or individual group. Assuming this the music is converted into an important tool of a repressive mechanism and deculturation. The marimba thus is the symbol of the nation State in Guatemala. The dictatorships of the army, who were the main responsible of the genocide of the Maya people, declared the chromatic marimba symbol of the nation. After a long history of violence the marimba desindianizada and therefore ladinizada reached the status of the national instrument. While the period of violence the chromatic marimba never ceased to sound in the nightclubs and the elegant restaurants of the Capital. In the meanwhile the Mayas of the highlands hided their K’ojomes in caves and cañons to protect them from the army. Therefore the anarchic and rebellious diversity of the k’ojom’s tuning continues to be the vernacular and secret language of groups and individuals who do not belong to the national reality of the chromatic marimba.

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