Pyramid made by the contemporary people of Guatemala.

The Maya (Yucatec Maya: maaya'ob, Spanish: mayas) are a people in southern Mexico and northern Central America. The term is used as an umbrella term for 29 indigenous peoples from the same region, who have the same cultural and linguistic background. There are 8 to 9 million Mayans, the vast majority living in Guatemala and the South of Mexico (Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche , Chiapas and Tabasco), with smaller communities in Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. There are relatively large emigrant communities in the United States and northern Mexico. Many Mayans struggle with the problem that on the one hand they want to benefit from the good aspects of the modern world, while at the same time they do not want to lose their own identity. Throughout the twentieth century, the Mayans have been victims not only of deprivation and disenfranchisement, but also of persecution and mass murder. More than eighty percent of the 200,000 victims of the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996) were Mayans. In the 1980s, under Presidents Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt, a full-blown genocide of the Mayan population took place in Guatemala. The Roman Catholic Church of Guatemala has extensively documented the often gruesome crimes that cost the life of a bishop of the archdiocese, Juan Gerardi. Someone who is campaigning on the Mayan side against persistent lawlessness is Rigoberta Menchú (Nobel Peace Prize, 1992). Under international pressure, more rights have been granted to the large Mayan population in recent years. Bilingual education in particular has been praised internationally. Tensions flared in Mexico when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) revolted in Chiapas in 1994. Since the 1970s, many Mayans have converted to Protestantism. Among the Mayans in Guatemala and Chiapas, there are now more Protestants than Catholics. Evangelical Christianity and Pentecostal churches are especially popular. This change is not without controversy. After all, at the time of the 'violence' (the 'violencia'), the work of North American Protestant missionaries was promoted by a murderous Guatemalan government, while progressive Roman Catholic priests were persecuted. Many old (community) traditions will disappear under the influence of anti-ritualistic Protestantism, although this has the advantage that Protestant Mayans no longer have to fulfill the often expensive community duties and can thus achieve economic development in the Western sense.