Andrés López Díaz is a Maya Tsotsil poet from Chilimjoveltic, Chiapas, who began his writing career in 2002. Much of his work focuses on the cultural tension between Spanish colonizers and indigenous communities. After moving from his small pueblo to a large city as a young, Andres began to suppress his language and traditions as a result of the culture shock that he encountered. However, as he grew older, he returned to a pride in his Tsotsil heritage and boasted of the resilience of his people through his poetry. His epic poem, Ojov, invokes the spirit of a forgotten deity, emphasizing how Maya religious customs are interwoven in the dominant Catholicism. Andres writes of the thread between the Maya Tsotsil belief-system and and the Catholic religiion, suggesting that the faith of the Tsotsil people is still soaked in an ancient indigenous heritage. This is one of many illustrations of the ability of the Tsotsil to overcome the odds to preserve their way of life through literary endeavors.
Audio Recordings with Andrés López Díaz
- Maya Tsotsil poet Andrés López Díaz reading from his work, August 30, 2019.