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Brent E Metz

University of Kansas, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at the University of Kansas. Specialist in indigenous identification, violence, gender, migration, development, climate change, peasantry. Has conducted research in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Michigan (among Latino migrant farmworkers), Spain, and Costa Rica. Additional teaching and service focus on Mexico.
Phone: 785-864-2631
Address: Department of Anthropology
Fraser Hall
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS. 66045

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Papers by Brent E Metz

The Ch′orti′ Maya Area

Practical Considerations for Serving as an Expert Witness for Central American Asylum Cases

Annals of Anthropological Practice, 2022

Bridging the Gap: The Case of a Latino Nonprofit Organization in Kansas

Extranjero en MI Tierra (Stranger in My Homeland): Migrant Realities in Mexico's Riviera Maya

The explosive growth of Mexico's tourism industry in the Yucatán over the past thirty years has e... more The explosive growth of Mexico's tourism industry in the Yucatán over the past thirty years has exacerbated the poor living and working conditions of thousands of immigrants in Mexico's Caribbean coast. My main research question asks how migrant workers experience discrimination and human rights abuses on Mexico's Riviera Maya (Quintana Roo). Ethnographic field research and the collection of testimonies focuses on the ways in which construction workers are exploited and forced to live in squalid housing and have poor working conditions. Data analysis reveals that indigenous migrant workers from Chiapas and Guatemala are subject to discrimination by other migrants, employers, and police officials. Conclusions suggest that poor working and living conditions for migrant workers are caused by the lack of legal protection, inequalities, marginalization, and racism that exists in Mexico's glamorous paradise. Gracias a mi familia… Primeramente quiero darles las gracias a mis padres. Sus esfuerzos, triunfos y sudores en un país desconocido me ha motivado a terminar está tesis. A toda mi familia en México y en Estados Unidos por su gran apoyo en ambos países. Querido hermanito gracias por siempre escucharme con tanta paciencia. Thank you friends… Ariane Tulloch for your tremendous amount of support that you have given me throughout my entire graduate career. Rebecca Crosthwait for keeping me grounded aquí y allá. Rebecca Magario for the many wonderful hours we shared in countless coffee shops and libraries. Janelle Bogart, Gillian Ford, and Callie Largent for supporting me with your wonderful English skills. Joel García for your artistic talent that was used to support the literature in this thesis. Sara Cseresnyes, because of you I would not be at this stage in my academic career. Mohammad Eftekhari for constantly reminding me how perseverance and determination always pay off.

The Thesis committee for Carola Ramírez Castello certifies that this is the approved Version of t... more

379-384 The Ch'orti' Maya Area: Past and Present

As one of the least known and understood Mayan groups, the Ch'orti' Maya have long been periphera... more As one of the least known and understood Mayan groups, the Ch'orti' Maya have long been peripheral to the expansive literature on Maya and have been largely ignored, if not erased, by their national governments and populations. Few Guatemalans or Hondurans realized Chorti' inhabited their countries. While this anonymity has at times served them well-the Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) during which the military and government perpetrated acts of genocide against Maya, for example, immediately comes to mind-it also has hindered efforts to escape poverty or recover from catastrophes. Plagued by drought, famine, fires, epidemics, hurricanes, and other disasters, the department of Chiquimula where most Guatemalan Ch'orti' reside is one of the nation's poorest, yet its residents are seldom the beneficiaries of government initiatives. This is particularly true in the Ch'orti' region of the state. With little scholarly, government, or

Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile

American Anthropologist, 2014

The Ch'orti' Maya area: past and present

Choice Reviews Online, 2009

Anglo Domination of Mexican Migrants in Michigan: The Dynamics of Culture and Law

The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy.:The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

American Anthropologist, 2003

The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy. Arturo Arias. ed., with. response by David Stoll. Minneapolis: ... more

War in the Land of True Peace: The Fight for Maya Sacred Places. BRENT K. S. WOODFILL. 2019. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. xxvi + 295 pp. $39.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8061-6281-2

Latin American Antiquity, 2020

bone articulations and insect remains suggests that the bundles of the deceased may have been cur... more bone articulations and insect remains suggests that the bundles of the deceased may have been curated over time either in situ or at a nearby location. The exception is the six women found in an extended position who were likely sacrificed just before the tomb was sealed with gravel. Więckowski positions the lower story’s entombment as isolated in time from the activities that took place later in the mausoleum’s badly looted upper story where human remains and Wari-style objects were also found. This may be the case, yet neither Więckowski nor his colleagues in the Castillo de Huarmey project have been able to rule out the possibility that the structure was constructed in a single event, with the women entombed underneath the principal burial where the mausoleum’s entrance is located. Thinking about the mausoleum as a single context would not affect the details of Więckowski’s excellent analysis but might have an impact on his interpretations of the women’s role in Wari society. The lower story’s assemblage contains many weaving implements, and Więckowski notes dental wear and skeletal physical activity markers consistent with textile production. An all-female burial of dedicated weavers understandably brings to his mind the chosen women of the Inca state. These women became “Inca” through a process of dislocation from their communities and ritualized seclusion in imperial facilities. Local women buried underneath a principal burial might suggest instead a role more akin to wives or servants. This relationship would have been a more interpersonal one, and importantly, the women may have felt less “Wari” and more like part of an elite Huarmey household that had access to Wari objects. However Castillo de Huarmey is ultimately interpreted, Więckowski and his colleagues should be applauded for their scholarship. Wari Women from Huarmey is an exciting addition to the literature on the Andean Middle Horizon and an exemplar of the power of bioarchaeological analysis to address critical questions of culture history and change.

Ch’orti’-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala: Indigeneity in Transition

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2007

In recent years, several scholars have discussed issues of Guatemalan history and anthropology, a... more In recent years, several scholars have discussed issues of Guatemalan history and anthropology, and these studies have, with a few exceptions, only marginally approached the borders of the Ch'orti'-speaking areas of eastern Guatemala. Unfortunately, serious historical and anthropological scholarship on the colonial and modern culture and society of the Ch'orti' has remained painfully sparse. According to Metz, "Today, no more than twenty thousand people speak Ch'orti' " (p. 219). This statement describes the ongoing drama of an increasing Ch'orti' population, superimposed upon a simultaneously dwindling Ch'orti' culture in Guatemala's Oriente. In 1983, Murdo MacLeod asked what happened to colonial Ch'orti' society and called for a monographic study on the region. A decade later, in the Historia general de Guatemala (1994), Margarita Ramírez Vargas lamented the fact that there was still no exhaustive monographic study on the Ch'orti'. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a handful of doctoral dissertations (including Metz's and my own) had taken up various topics related to the Ch'orti'. As a result, the historical, ethnographical, and ethnological Ch'orti' have recently been the topic of increasing academic scholarship and debate. In Ch'orti'-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala, Brent E. Metz searches for indigeneity in eastern Guatemala. His quest (reminiscent of Robert Carmack's seminal work among the Quiche Maya of the highlands) is fraught with disappointment and misapprehension, because the Ch'orti' culture Metz searches for-which was described in detail by Charles Wisdom and Rafael Girard over a half century ago-has been systematically undermined by internal and external forces, to the point that the Ch'orti' they described in the 1940s scarcely exist any longer. Nevertheless, as a result of years of participant observation, Metz provides lucid and critical insights into modern Ch'orti' cultural and social longevity, all in the face of enormous pressures and conflicts that have threatened the Ch'orti' with cultural extinction. Metz argues that identifying what is "Maya" is a relatively difficult task, because the definitions continue to evolve through phases of both self-definition and redefinition. The author provides a somewhat terse overview of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala and the remainder of the colonial period in the corregimiento of Chiquimula de la Sierra. He categorizes the hardships the Ch'orti' overcame, including cultural and linguistic invasions, epidemic and pandemic disease, encomienda and repartimiento grants, and the effects of African slavery. Metz's narrative is a bit sparse for the period between 1890 and 1930 and also with respect to the political and economic catastrophe contiguous to the transfer of power from Jorge Ubico to Juan José Arévalo, and from Jacobo Arbenz to Carlos Castillo Armas at midcentury. In classic ethnographic style, Metz describes his introduction to the Ch'orti' villages near Jocotán that would become his summer home for over a decade. He elucidates

El Laberinto De La Indigenidad: Cómo Se Determina Quién Es Indígena Maya CH'Orti' en Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador

Determinar quien es indigena no parece ser ningun problema, pero cuando se va a la region maya ch... more Determinar quien es indigena no parece ser ningun problema, pero cuando se va a la region maya ch’orti’ de Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador, pronto uno se da cuenta que no se debe considerar nada como “por supuesto.” Si se empieza por apuntar ciertos rasgos universales, tales como la experiencia del colonialismo, la identidad continua desde la invasion colonial, las tradiciones diferenciadas, y el fenotipo diferente, pronto se encuentra uno en un laberinto de detalles sociales e historicos que son unicos para cada nacion, region, localidad y hasta, hogar. Si se considera que la cultura siempre cambia, especialmente bajo el colonialismo, se notara que lo mas importante es que los indigenas maya ch’orti’ se identifiquen y sean identificados como un pueblo aparte, y que las tradiciones y los fenotipos, entre otras caracteristicas, son herramientas que acentuan esa identificacion.

Ch'orti'-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala

The CH’Orti’ Maya Area of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador? Contemporary Perspectives

An ambivalent nation: Ch’orti’ in eastern Guatemala and western Honduras

Transnational Frontiers of Asia and Latin America since 1800, 2016

Las "ruinas" olvidadas en el area de ch´orti´: Apuntes para una historia de la violencia en el oriente de Guatemala

Adjusting Photovoice for Marginalized Indigenous Women: Eliciting Ch'orti' Maya Women's Perspectives on Health in Guatemala

Human Organization, 2017

Photovoice is a Community-based Participatory Research method in which cameras are distributed to... more Photovoice is a Community-based Participatory Research method in which cameras are distributed to marginalized members of a community to document their own perspectives as well as balance power between researcher, researched, and dominant members of their society. Photovoice has been used in many contexts and been subject to constant renovation and refinement, to which the authors intend to contribute here. At the start of an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) project in a Ch'orti' Maya community of eastern Guatemala, the authors—an environmental engineer/MPH student and an anthropologist working in the region for over two decades—introduced the Photovoice technique among impoverished indigenous women to heighten their, the authors' own, EWB members, and potential funders' awareness about health problems. The authors feel that the adjustments were partially successful, as seen in the elicited Ch'orti' women's perspectives reported below. Their application of the technique was nonetheless problematic, leading...

An Expression of Cultural Change: Invisible Converts to Protestantism among Highland Guatemala Mayas

Ethnology, 1991

Experiencing conquest: The political and economic roots and cultural expression of Maya-Chorti ethos

Education Ph.D. Anthropology. SUNY-Albany. Dissertation Title: “Experiencing Conquest: The Politi... more Education Ph.D. Anthropology. SUNY-Albany. Dissertation Title: “Experiencing Conquest: The Political and Economic Roots and Cultural Expression of Maya-Chortí Ethos.” Co-Chairs: Robert Carmack and Gary Gossen. Committee members: Liliana Goldin and John Watanabe, 1995. M.A. Anthropology. University of Michigan. Advisor: Conrad Kottack, 1989. B.A. Magna cum laude (3.8 GPA), Spanish and Anthropology. Western Michigan University Honors College, 1986.

The Ch′orti′ Maya Area

Practical Considerations for Serving as an Expert Witness for Central American Asylum Cases

Annals of Anthropological Practice, 2022

Bridging the Gap: The Case of a Latino Nonprofit Organization in Kansas

Extranjero en MI Tierra (Stranger in My Homeland): Migrant Realities in Mexico's Riviera Maya

The explosive growth of Mexico's tourism industry in the Yucatán over the past thirty years has e... more The explosive growth of Mexico's tourism industry in the Yucatán over the past thirty years has exacerbated the poor living and working conditions of thousands of immigrants in Mexico's Caribbean coast. My main research question asks how migrant workers experience discrimination and human rights abuses on Mexico's Riviera Maya (Quintana Roo). Ethnographic field research and the collection of testimonies focuses on the ways in which construction workers are exploited and forced to live in squalid housing and have poor working conditions. Data analysis reveals that indigenous migrant workers from Chiapas and Guatemala are subject to discrimination by other migrants, employers, and police officials. Conclusions suggest that poor working and living conditions for migrant workers are caused by the lack of legal protection, inequalities, marginalization, and racism that exists in Mexico's glamorous paradise. Gracias a mi familia… Primeramente quiero darles las gracias a mis padres. Sus esfuerzos, triunfos y sudores en un país desconocido me ha motivado a terminar está tesis. A toda mi familia en México y en Estados Unidos por su gran apoyo en ambos países. Querido hermanito gracias por siempre escucharme con tanta paciencia. Thank you friends… Ariane Tulloch for your tremendous amount of support that you have given me throughout my entire graduate career. Rebecca Crosthwait for keeping me grounded aquí y allá. Rebecca Magario for the many wonderful hours we shared in countless coffee shops and libraries. Janelle Bogart, Gillian Ford, and Callie Largent for supporting me with your wonderful English skills. Joel García for your artistic talent that was used to support the literature in this thesis. Sara Cseresnyes, because of you I would not be at this stage in my academic career. Mohammad Eftekhari for constantly reminding me how perseverance and determination always pay off.

The Thesis committee for Carola Ramírez Castello certifies that this is the approved Version of t... more

379-384 The Ch'orti' Maya Area: Past and Present

As one of the least known and understood Mayan groups, the Ch'orti' Maya have long been periphera... more As one of the least known and understood Mayan groups, the Ch'orti' Maya have long been peripheral to the expansive literature on Maya and have been largely ignored, if not erased, by their national governments and populations. Few Guatemalans or Hondurans realized Chorti' inhabited their countries. While this anonymity has at times served them well-the Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) during which the military and government perpetrated acts of genocide against Maya, for example, immediately comes to mind-it also has hindered efforts to escape poverty or recover from catastrophes. Plagued by drought, famine, fires, epidemics, hurricanes, and other disasters, the department of Chiquimula where most Guatemalan Ch'orti' reside is one of the nation's poorest, yet its residents are seldom the beneficiaries of government initiatives. This is particularly true in the Ch'orti' region of the state. With little scholarly, government, or

Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile

American Anthropologist, 2014

The Ch'orti' Maya area: past and present

Choice Reviews Online, 2009

Anglo Domination of Mexican Migrants in Michigan: The Dynamics of Culture and Law

The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy.:The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

American Anthropologist, 2003

The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy. Arturo Arias. ed., with. response by David Stoll. Minneapolis: ... more

War in the Land of True Peace: The Fight for Maya Sacred Places. BRENT K. S. WOODFILL. 2019. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. xxvi + 295 pp. $39.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8061-6281-2

Latin American Antiquity, 2020

bone articulations and insect remains suggests that the bundles of the deceased may have been cur... more bone articulations and insect remains suggests that the bundles of the deceased may have been curated over time either in situ or at a nearby location. The exception is the six women found in an extended position who were likely sacrificed just before the tomb was sealed with gravel. Więckowski positions the lower story’s entombment as isolated in time from the activities that took place later in the mausoleum’s badly looted upper story where human remains and Wari-style objects were also found. This may be the case, yet neither Więckowski nor his colleagues in the Castillo de Huarmey project have been able to rule out the possibility that the structure was constructed in a single event, with the women entombed underneath the principal burial where the mausoleum’s entrance is located. Thinking about the mausoleum as a single context would not affect the details of Więckowski’s excellent analysis but might have an impact on his interpretations of the women’s role in Wari society. The lower story’s assemblage contains many weaving implements, and Więckowski notes dental wear and skeletal physical activity markers consistent with textile production. An all-female burial of dedicated weavers understandably brings to his mind the chosen women of the Inca state. These women became “Inca” through a process of dislocation from their communities and ritualized seclusion in imperial facilities. Local women buried underneath a principal burial might suggest instead a role more akin to wives or servants. This relationship would have been a more interpersonal one, and importantly, the women may have felt less “Wari” and more like part of an elite Huarmey household that had access to Wari objects. However Castillo de Huarmey is ultimately interpreted, Więckowski and his colleagues should be applauded for their scholarship. Wari Women from Huarmey is an exciting addition to the literature on the Andean Middle Horizon and an exemplar of the power of bioarchaeological analysis to address critical questions of culture history and change.

Ch’orti’-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala: Indigeneity in Transition

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2007

In recent years, several scholars have discussed issues of Guatemalan history and anthropology, a... more In recent years, several scholars have discussed issues of Guatemalan history and anthropology, and these studies have, with a few exceptions, only marginally approached the borders of the Ch'orti'-speaking areas of eastern Guatemala. Unfortunately, serious historical and anthropological scholarship on the colonial and modern culture and society of the Ch'orti' has remained painfully sparse. According to Metz, "Today, no more than twenty thousand people speak Ch'orti' " (p. 219). This statement describes the ongoing drama of an increasing Ch'orti' population, superimposed upon a simultaneously dwindling Ch'orti' culture in Guatemala's Oriente. In 1983, Murdo MacLeod asked what happened to colonial Ch'orti' society and called for a monographic study on the region. A decade later, in the Historia general de Guatemala (1994), Margarita Ramírez Vargas lamented the fact that there was still no exhaustive monographic study on the Ch'orti'. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a handful of doctoral dissertations (including Metz's and my own) had taken up various topics related to the Ch'orti'. As a result, the historical, ethnographical, and ethnological Ch'orti' have recently been the topic of increasing academic scholarship and debate. In Ch'orti'-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala, Brent E. Metz searches for indigeneity in eastern Guatemala. His quest (reminiscent of Robert Carmack's seminal work among the Quiche Maya of the highlands) is fraught with disappointment and misapprehension, because the Ch'orti' culture Metz searches for-which was described in detail by Charles Wisdom and Rafael Girard over a half century ago-has been systematically undermined by internal and external forces, to the point that the Ch'orti' they described in the 1940s scarcely exist any longer. Nevertheless, as a result of years of participant observation, Metz provides lucid and critical insights into modern Ch'orti' cultural and social longevity, all in the face of enormous pressures and conflicts that have threatened the Ch'orti' with cultural extinction. Metz argues that identifying what is "Maya" is a relatively difficult task, because the definitions continue to evolve through phases of both self-definition and redefinition. The author provides a somewhat terse overview of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala and the remainder of the colonial period in the corregimiento of Chiquimula de la Sierra. He categorizes the hardships the Ch'orti' overcame, including cultural and linguistic invasions, epidemic and pandemic disease, encomienda and repartimiento grants, and the effects of African slavery. Metz's narrative is a bit sparse for the period between 1890 and 1930 and also with respect to the political and economic catastrophe contiguous to the transfer of power from Jorge Ubico to Juan José Arévalo, and from Jacobo Arbenz to Carlos Castillo Armas at midcentury. In classic ethnographic style, Metz describes his introduction to the Ch'orti' villages near Jocotán that would become his summer home for over a decade. He elucidates

El Laberinto De La Indigenidad: Cómo Se Determina Quién Es Indígena Maya CH'Orti' en Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador

Determinar quien es indigena no parece ser ningun problema, pero cuando se va a la region maya ch... more Determinar quien es indigena no parece ser ningun problema, pero cuando se va a la region maya ch’orti’ de Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador, pronto uno se da cuenta que no se debe considerar nada como “por supuesto.” Si se empieza por apuntar ciertos rasgos universales, tales como la experiencia del colonialismo, la identidad continua desde la invasion colonial, las tradiciones diferenciadas, y el fenotipo diferente, pronto se encuentra uno en un laberinto de detalles sociales e historicos que son unicos para cada nacion, region, localidad y hasta, hogar. Si se considera que la cultura siempre cambia, especialmente bajo el colonialismo, se notara que lo mas importante es que los indigenas maya ch’orti’ se identifiquen y sean identificados como un pueblo aparte, y que las tradiciones y los fenotipos, entre otras caracteristicas, son herramientas que acentuan esa identificacion.

Ch'orti'-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala

The CH’Orti’ Maya Area of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador? Contemporary Perspectives

An ambivalent nation: Ch’orti’ in eastern Guatemala and western Honduras

Transnational Frontiers of Asia and Latin America since 1800, 2016

Las "ruinas" olvidadas en el area de ch´orti´: Apuntes para una historia de la violencia en el oriente de Guatemala

Adjusting Photovoice for Marginalized Indigenous Women: Eliciting Ch'orti' Maya Women's Perspectives on Health in Guatemala

Human Organization, 2017

Photovoice is a Community-based Participatory Research method in which cameras are distributed to... more Photovoice is a Community-based Participatory Research method in which cameras are distributed to marginalized members of a community to document their own perspectives as well as balance power between researcher, researched, and dominant members of their society. Photovoice has been used in many contexts and been subject to constant renovation and refinement, to which the authors intend to contribute here. At the start of an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) project in a Ch'orti' Maya community of eastern Guatemala, the authors—an environmental engineer/MPH student and an anthropologist working in the region for over two decades—introduced the Photovoice technique among impoverished indigenous women to heighten their, the authors' own, EWB members, and potential funders' awareness about health problems. The authors feel that the adjustments were partially successful, as seen in the elicited Ch'orti' women's perspectives reported below. Their application of the technique was nonetheless problematic, leading...

An Expression of Cultural Change: Invisible Converts to Protestantism among Highland Guatemala Mayas

Ethnology, 1991

Experiencing conquest: The political and economic roots and cultural expression of Maya-Chorti ethos

Education Ph.D. Anthropology. SUNY-Albany. Dissertation Title: “Experiencing Conquest: The Politi... more Education Ph.D. Anthropology. SUNY-Albany. Dissertation Title: “Experiencing Conquest: The Political and Economic Roots and Cultural Expression of Maya-Chortí Ethos.” Co-Chairs: Robert Carmack and Gary Gossen. Committee members: Liliana Goldin and John Watanabe, 1995. M.A. Anthropology. University of Michigan. Advisor: Conrad Kottack, 1989. B.A. Magna cum laude (3.8 GPA), Spanish and Anthropology. Western Michigan University Honors College, 1986.

Guatemala violencias desbordadas

by Santiago Bastos, Manuela Camus, Brent E Metz, and Luis Pedro Taracena

Guatemala. Violencias desbordadas, 2009

Este libro reune varis textos que tratan de comprender diversos aspectos de la violencia que se ... more