Narrating Boundary Markers in Early Colonial Highland Guatemala

Abstract Establishing and maintaining borders inherently relies on human relations between those invested in the landscape. As such, boundary records document not only territorial limits but the sociopolitical context that supports or contests them. But their practical effectiveness depends on their legibility to authoritative parties. In land titles composed during the first century of Spanish colonialism, K'iche'an Maya authors in highland Guatemala strategically drew on various narrative tools to solve a common problem of justifying territorial claims before Indigenous stakeholders and colonial officials alike. Depending on the situation, they cited naturally occurring or artificially modified border markers, or a mix thereof. They also deployed discursive frameworks that either dehistoricized markers as timeless givens or contextualized them as legitimate products of historical events. By documenting conditions in which markers were created and the materiality that sustained them, early colonial K'iche'an land titles reaffirmed the conditions necessary to maintain the boundaries into the future.