Mayans Fucking on Shotglasses: Offensive?
Uncovered in the tourist shops of the Yucatán: cartoon Mayans, glibly fucking each other afront the great architectural acheivement of their civilization, Chichen Itza, exquisitely rendered on a set of collectible shotglasses with the script, “Maya Sutra.”
So, is this kitschy Mexican representation of the nation’s native culture more or less offensive than one you might find in the United states?
The scenario reminded us of our own nation’s history. “Would we sell shot-glasses of Native American chiefs having sex with each other with full headdresses on, outside Indian reservations?” one of my travel companions asked.
I don’t know. Would we?
Native Americans selling conservationism
Native Americans selling American pastimes
Native Americans selling popcorn
Actually, yes, we probably would do that.
“Perhaps,” my travel companion posited, “It is more acceptable to mock the Mayans in Mexico than it would be in the U.S. The civilization is lost. Few direct descendants of the Mayans remain.” She paused. “Well, I guess that’s because the Spanish killed all of them and took over their land.”
Sound familiar?
Perhaps, in actuality, the Mexican native sex shotglass artists and distributors of the world learned to commercialize their oppression from the best—their neighbors to the North. After all, they’re only selling ‘em because we buy ‘em.
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4:28 pm
At least the shot glasses seem to be Mayans having consensual sex with other Mayans. If they really wanted to capitalize on oppression, they could have a shot glass with Cortez in mid-rape, a bottle in one hand and a big thumbs up with the other, with the caption “party like it’s 1619″.
10:44 am
yeah I mean you do know that there are loads of mayan descendents here right? All the brown people… yup that’s them.
2:23 pm
There were blond Mayans?
8:23 am
um I strongly second that, mdesus.
Though these glasses are just weird. Is sex a common image? Someone once brought me back earrings that were two people having sex in the position of the people on the glasses on the left (and this was supposedly no big deal, just an average pair of earrings), but that was from Ecuador… not near Mexico… and not Mayan. Either way, kitschy, made for tourists consuming images of Mayans… yeah.