Crisis, Nahualism and Resistance in Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Men of Maize

Abstract

This article analyzes Men of Maize by Miguel Ángel Asturias from a critical-literary and cultural perspective, with the aim of examining the articulation between crisis, Indigenous resistance, and nahualism in the face of the imposition of the capitalist model on Indigenous communities. Through a textual and interpretive analysis, supported by critical approaches to colonial legacies and studies on Mesoamerican Indigenous worldviews, the article argues that nahualism functions in the novel not only as a mythical motif but also as a narrative strategy of symbolic resistance that reaffirms a sacred relationship with nature and challenges the logic of natural resource exploitation. The study focuses on the literary construction of figures such as Gaspar Ilóm and other nahual characters, as well as on formal devices—polyphony, fragmentation, and symbolism—through which Asturias shapes a poetics of resistance. The originality of this proposal lies in considering nahualism as an organizing axis that links narrative form, Indigenous worldview, and a critique of capitalism, rather than as a mere folkloric or magical element, thus allowing the novel to be reread as a site of epistemological confrontation between modernity and Indigenous thought.