This chapter summarizes the diverse natural environments from which Southeast Mesoamerica’s inhabitants variably drew the resources they used in forging their distinct but interrelated histories. We then review how archaeologists have approached the study of those histories. In particular, we relate the relative lack of interest that researchers exhibited in the area’s ancient inhabitants to trends in anthropological and archaeological theory that pertained throughout much of the twentieth century. Especially important were the efforts of investigators to define the borders of lowland Maya civilization and the relegation of those living beyond those limits in the Southeast to a frontier or periphery whose residents were largely enthralled and dominated by the accomplishments of their lowland Maya neighbors. Ancient Southeast Mesoamerican developments were, thus, understood as pale reflections of, and largely inspired by, events instigated by lowland Maya rulers. The legacy of this approach for our understanding of Southeast Mesoamerica’s Pre-Columbian past is long and pervasive, an issue that is also addressed within this section.

This chapter marks out an arc of poetic productions in originary languages, starting in the colonial period with materials compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and following with productions in Nahuatl penned by Sor Juana. The chapter moves into the nineteenth century with the interventions of Faustino Chimalpopoca, and the attempts to “update” Nahua poetry by José Joaquín Pesado. A critical assessment of the role played by scholars such as Ángel María Garibay and his student Miguel León Portilla during the twentieth century leads into readings of contemporary poets who write in Indigenous languages. Women poets of this genre, such as Natalia Toledo and Irma Pineda, are of particular interest.

This comprehensive review of Chicanx poetry considers the lyric poetry of Greater Mexico as an ongoing evolution of and conversation with varied poetic traditions at the crossroads of geopolitical, cultural, and expressive exchange. This chapter addresses this arc, beginning with oral forms such as the corrido, and examines the ascendency of poetry in the early borderlands press, which was anchored by colonial New Spanish lyric poetry. The focus then turns to the flourishinging of Chicano/a/x poetry in the 1960s through the 1980s via the establishment of Chicano/a/x publication outlets and independent printing presses as well as through Chicano/a/x-specific literary prizes. The chapter concludes by considering the form’s coevolution with Chicano/a/x identity and politics to the present day, including a return to oral forms such as slam poetry, and its evolving relationship with other Latino/a/x cultural productions.

This chapter is devoted to the forms of public activation of poetry. Such poetic performances comprise the spectacular (and heavily attended) mode of public performance that marked the success of Modernista poet Amado Nervo, and, later, the declamaciones by Berta Singerman. The decline of this type of dramatic performance was followed by more intimate poetic activations that can be traced through the recordings of collections such as Voz Viva de México. Even this sotto voce reading – in which the music of the verse plays a central role –has been challenged more recently by poets attuned to spoken word and poetry slam practices, and who have garnered considerable and well-deserved attention, among them Rojo Córdova, José Eugenio Sánchez, and Rocío Cerón.

Two major forms of political organization emerged in Southeast Mesoamerica during the last Pre-Columbian centuries. One, prevalent throughout western Honduras, saw power weakly concentrated in the hands of leaders who ruled small domains together with councils comprised of lesser elites. The boundaries of these realms were fluid, interelite alliances combining several independent domains into larger units that often fragmented at the deaths of their creators. The other, found mostly in El Salvador, was characterized by highly centralized, hierarchically structured states ruled from small cities. Whereas the former mode of governance was of autochthonous origins, the latter is attributed to Pipil migrants from further west in Mesoamerica. After describing these patterns, the chapter recounts developments in the Naco valley that diverge from the aforementioned political tendencies. The Naco experiment was shaped by persistent tensions among elite factions and between rulers and their subordinates that ultimately resulted in a form of corporate, or councilor, rule. Resources from far and near played key roles in shaping these political contests and their outcomes.

This chapter is focused on the work of contemporary Mexican poets, both those writing from Mexico and those who reside in the United States, and how their distinctive works challenge the Mexican tradition. These encounters include the undoing of the idea of poetic knowledge and upending the idea of poetry by engaging with various transnational traditions. Mexican poets writing in English – among them Wendy Treviño, Mónica de la Torre, and Rodrigo Toscano – undo the language-based idea of Mexican poetry. The chapter also discusses expatriate Mexican poets whose works remain in tension with national traditions, such as Dolores Dorantes, Manuel Iris, and Román Luján.

The roots of Mexican poetry wend out from many traditions. Indigenous epic and lyric poetry survive in early modern works that simultaneously preserved and overwrote them. They subtly informed the practice of Mexican poetry in subsequent centuries and reemerged in full voice in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Diverse poetic practices stemming from both popular and learned traditions were introduced by Spaniards into Mexico over three centuries of viceregal rule in New Spain. European languages, ranging from classical to vernacular, brought their respective forms and traditions to the Mexican poetic radix: Latin and Greek; Italian and then – centrally – French; and later English, with the stems of Portuguese and German traditions grafted on.

The volume considers how processes of political centralization, hierarchy building, and social differentiation were related in the political histories of ancient Southeast Mesoamerican societies. We define the above terms here and review how proponents of world systems, prestige goods, and community of practice theories have understood these connections. Subsequently, we summarize our approach to the topic. This perspective models political formations as the variably successful, never fully stable, outcomes of efforts made by agents of different ranks and identities to secure power by drawing on resources obtained through social networks of differing spatial extents. The resulting social webs were thus means for promoting cooperation among agents who were allied in the pursuit of shared goals even as they competed with those seeking comparable objectives through different social connections.

This chapter provides an overview of the theory of relationality – the idea that people care about how others relate to them, and whether they can successfully relate to others – and how potential collaborators can be uncertain about these relational aspects. “Relating to others” captures both the information to be shared, and also the experience of interacting. Key to the theory of relationality, as it applies to potential collaborators with diverse forms of expertise, is that status-based stereotypes can drive a wedge between having expertise and having that expertise be socially recognized. This chapter builds up to a series of hypotheses about how potential collaborators care about the information to be shared and the experience of interacting when choosing whether to engage in new collaborative relationships with diverse thinkers. It also identifies several possible interventions for fostering valuable new collaborative relationships.

The literary oeuvre of the seventeenth-century literary genius Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is genre-diverse: it includes plays, texts defending women’s intellectual agency, correspondence, religious-themed works, and, last but not least, poetry. Sor Juana’s texts are touchpoints for nearly all facets of colonial literary studies; her lyric works are invoked in critical conversations treating transatlantic studies, Barroco de Indias, New Spanish creolism, and feminist studies. Sor Juana’s lyric works evince not only her intellectual prowess, but also her artistic mastery of a variety of poetic forms, unequalled in her day or after her lifetime. This chapter examines the range of Sor Juana’s lyric writing in its totality, from her masterpiece, Primero sueño, to her renowned romances, redondillas, sonetos, and villancicos, contextualizing these in the scholarly and historical contexts out of which they arise.

This chapter describes the political formation that took shape at Copán and how that center’s rulers sought to secure their regional preeminence by establishing a network of colonies and allies at varying distances from the center. These extensive political arrangements come closest to approximating the traditional view of Southeastern societies as existing within the periphery of powerful lowland Maya cores. Nonetheless, what stands out in this account is the varied forms these relations of relative inequality took as local leaders and Copán’s lords negotiated the ever-shifting terms of their mutual dealings. Special attention is devoted to two Copán colonies, Quirigua in Guatemala’s Lower Motagua valley and El Paraíso in the western Honduran valley of the same name. Both were established by Copán’s rulers to accomplish specific, but different objectives. Their divergent histories highlight the limits of royal rule and the capacity of the colonized to shape their own destinies.

The political events that unfolded in the neighboring Naco and Middle Chamelecón valleys of northwest Honduras from CE 600–800 differed from those recorded elsewhere in the Southeast. Naco valley elites, like many of their contemporaries, sought regional preeminence by judiciously drawing on things, ideas, and practices secured through their interactions with peers living in diverse locales, including the Copán valley. How these intellectual and physical resources were employed in the domination strategies of those ruling from their capital of La Sierra was, however, distinctive of that realm. Craft production also played an outsized role in the basin’s history. La Sierra’s rulers enjoyed monopolies over fashioning such widely used goods as ceramic vessels and obsidian blades to make their subordinates dependent on them for these essential goods. The Middle Chamelecón capital, Las Canoas, in turn emerged now as one of the largest pottery-making communities known from the Pre-Columbian Southeast. Such large-scale commitment to pursuing a specific craft seemingly contributed to more muted forms of political centralization and hierarchy than was the case at La Sierra.