HOW A PHONE CALL SAVED A MAYAN VILLAGE (HONOURING LATE, ANTHROPOLOGIST, SHELTON DAVIS)

The purpose of this essay, “The Mayan People and Sandy (Shelton) Davis: Memories of an Engaged Anthropologist”, by J. P. Linstroth is to honour my late friend, anthropologist, Sandy (Shelton) Davis (1942-2010). The article will highlight the activism of Shelton Davis and his involvement with the Mayan people during the 1980s. Of particular importance is the portrayal of an immigration hearing of nine Kanjobal Maya defendants in 1983 and the circumstances surrounding the problems of immigration in the state of Florida at that time. The article also explores how Shelton Davis helped save a village of Kaqchikel Maya in the Department of Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Of importance is how to represent varying narratives from three close colleagues of Shelton Davis to an overall conceptualization of the epistemology of narrative formulations. One finds that dispersed memories and aspects of synchronic trauma provide some avenues of forming a picture about Davis’ activism with the Mayan people. Likewise, it is significant to realize that histories and memories are not confined to specific structural agencies but rather may be regarded as multi-faceted expressions of pastness through an individual’s memories and narratives.