"Maya Exodus" offers a richly detailed account of how a group of indigenous people has adopted a global language of human rights to press claims for social change and social justice. Anthropologist Heidi Moksnes describes how Catholic Maya in the municipality of Chenalho in Chiapas, Mexico, have changed their position vis-a-vis the Mexican state from being loyal clients dependent on a patron, to being citizens who have rights as a means of exodus from poverty.
Moksnes lived in Chenalho in the mid-1990s and has since followed how Catholic Maya have adopted liberation theology and organized...