Relationality captures how people want others to relate to them, and how they will relate to diverse others, yet as this chapter shows “relating to others” may include many different elements and be person- and/or context-specific. This chapter uses interviews with nonprofit practitioners and researchers, and also national surveys of policymakers and AmeriCorps program leaders, to lay out some of the ways in which different kinds of people who seek change in civic life express uncertainty about relationality.

The Naco and Middle Chamelecón’s political histories continued to diverge from patterns seen elsewhere in the Southeast during the ninth through tenth centuries. Political fragmentation in the Naco valley was accompanied by the proliferation of craft specialization. Specialized manufacture, though still pursued at La Sierra, was no longer restricted to the capital. Just about every known rural homestead was engaged in one or more forms of manufacture, exchanges of surpluses constituting a matrix of social networks that bound all valley residents together in relations that were more heterarchical than hierarchical. Differences in the scales and intensities of production did contribute to variations in the material well-being of producers; those who made more of a greater variety of goods accumulated more valuables than those who made less. Community-wide specialization in pottery production continued at Las Canoas even as signs of centralized power vanished there. Las Canoas’ potters exchanged their output with the Naco valley’s residents, though they were seemingly disadvantaged in those dealings. This vital system of production and exchange ended by CE 1000.

We review here the scant evidence pertaining to the early arrival of people in Southeast Mesoamerica and what is presently known about the timing and nature of the first efforts to domesticate plants in the area. Most of the chapter summarizes the different forms that sociopolitical complexity took in the Southeast during 1600–400 BCE. It was during this period that the first monumental platforms were raised in the area, suggesting the emergence of leaders who could plan these projects and command the labor to complete them. While such constructions speak to a modicum of political centralization, they did not necessarily signify the existence of hierarchies. People in different areas thus used similar things, such as large buildings, to craft different, locally specific power relations. Such variety sets the stage for the different political histories that will take shape in the coming centuries.

This chapter considers processes of political centralization, hierarchy building, and social differentiation that were initiated and sustained by agents who, from CE 600–800, operated in realms that were not in direct contact with representatives of the Copán state. In general, the creation of sociopolitical complexity in each case involved the selective acquisition and use of goods and ideas from various sources, including but not limited to the Maya lowlands, in strategies designed to advance the interests of a few elites over those of their immediate subordinates. The latter, in turn, transformed their domestic arrangements as they sought to maintain as much autonomy as they could in the face of these threats. The resulting changes often involved increased involvement in craft production and possibly market exchanges as those facing onerous elite demands for tribute sought novel means to counter them. The outcome was a dynamic set of political relations that operated at multiple spatial scales and which were animated by people of all ranks who mobilized diverse resources secured through overlapping social networks from various sources to exercise power in all its forms.

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.