Dr. Bianet Castellanos, Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota
Location: 10 Sachem, Room 105
Time: 12:00- 1:00pm
Title: “Embracing Debt and Risk: Maya Migrants and Housing Reform in Cancún, México.”
Yucatec Maya migrants in México have long associated debt with a history of indentured servitude and land with freedom and autonomy. As the Mexican government pivots away from land redistribution, Yucatec Maya migrants working in the tourist center of Cancún find it increasingly difficult to obtain land. Instead social interest housing has replaced government subsidized land allotments. In their quest for housing, migrants learn to embrace debt and financial risk by moving away from previous desires for autonomy. This project examines how shifting meanings of debt and risk deeply influence indigenous lives and help them form a powerful critique of the inequalities generated by housing reform.
The Yale Maya Lecture Series is supported through the MacMillan Center’s Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, the Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.