Ethics in the Mayan Marketplace

A voluntary and often unconscious practice of redistributive justice exists in the indigenous marketplace based on social relationships embedded in Mayan cosmology. This paper explains that ancient belief system that is based on something akin to - although pre-dating - Adam Smith’s theories of moral sentiments. The paper relates Mayan social and market institutions to modern institutions that create moral limits to markets. At the same time, indigenous Mayan culture is more receptive to self-help and entrepreneurial activity than to pity and charity. The paper draws upon Adam Smith’s theories to demonstrate the overlap between Smith’s thought and Mayan thought, and its rapid transformation in the current time. Agencies such as the Highland Support Project (HSP) can build upon indigenous practices that use social capital for lubricating market development