Religious Divides Thwart Maya Traditions at Quintana Roo Intercultural University

José María Morelos, Quintana Roo — Reconciling ancestral cultural practices, religious beliefs and educational models is one of the biggest challenges to keeping Maya expressions alive at the Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo (UIMQROO), professor and researcher Ismael Briceño Mukul said.

Briceño Mukul said some traditional practices that once featured in campus life have lost continuity because of religious differences among students and the tensions that surface when those practices are brought into a plural academic space.

He pointed specifically to cultural and religious activities and to expressions such as the vaquerías, traditional Maya festivities that at various times formed part of university life.

The researcher described the situation as a kind of cultural and academic schizophrenia, arguing that a contradiction exists between the rhetoric of preserving roots and the difficulty of coexisting with practices that not everyone in the community shares.

He warned that students who belong to reformist churches may reject certain traditional expressions, which makes it necessary to find ways of living together without provoking confrontation.

Interculturality, he argued, should allow different forms of knowledge and thought to meet, without any one culture or belief imposing itself on the others.