churches and cemeteries: among these we can find crockeries, flower vases, incense-holders, earthenware tubs and tombstones.
Socio-Religious Syncretism
During the Spanish Conquest many Mayan rituals, arts and socio-political powers were abruptly destroyed. Ancient temples together with religious images were destructed, where some were used to build Roman-Catholic churches representing the supremacy of Christianity over paganism. However, as the Spaniards tried to eradicate the polytheistic Mayan ceremonies, many of their traditional beliefs were kept to attract pagan devotees into the Christian conception, since the doctrine to the natives “appeared to be primarily a set of practices, many of which resembled their traditional practices of prayer, offerings, processions, dramas, fasting and the used of sacred images”8. In other instances, many of the catholic missionaries adapted these traditions to the Christian forms in order to replace the paganism. The introduction of Christianity and these conversion strategies opened a narrow possibility in the Christian policy that the Mayan believers could undertake. Consequently, these Mayan religious traditions that were secretly fostered, remained in popular forms such as the cofradias9, the introduction and transformation of Mayan deities into Christian ones and celebrations venerating the dead.
Cofradias or Brotherhoods
The most important communitarian organizations and socio-cultural institution of the Maya is the cofradia. Its great importance is regarded as a shield of the ancestral culture enforces moral law and social order. Through it hierarchies, the millenary culture has been conserved through the structure of spiritual power between the communities. The colonized Maya transformed this Spanish institution, in the crucible where all the cultural elements of great richness melt.
The Brotherhood system is found in all the Christian religion and all their Christian images still remain syncretized with Mayan deities. Cofradias were very popular during the 16th-17th-centuries, used as instruments during the Counter Reformation. When they were transferred to Latin-America, they were overthrown into the natives to promote the Christian beliefs. This way they represented the sacred and pagan world in a mythological-ritual system. Consequently, they are believed as a refugee for the survival of the religious, socio-cultural expressions, in which the Maya dwell their wisdom, spirituality and organizing system. Each confraternity is named after one deity or saint which they dedicate to. The process of becoming the official brother has traditionally been the way for a man inside a community to prove his worth to the village and the gods. Each official is responsible of the liturgical celebrations and activities of the saints’ days.
Two and a half centuries after the post-conquest was followed by an intense abandonment of the clergy, a period when the interpretation of the Catholic rituals and symbolisms were syncretized through the natives cosmology. The cultural fusion was facilitated by the cultural-religious trends between the Catholic and Mayan, such as the sacred-holy figures venerated in both cultures. Many of the Christian saints statutes were easily identified with the Guardian-lords, so that today "ceremonies in the cofradias are concerned less with the cult of the Saint than with the ancestors, and with Christ as the fountain-head of tradition…One can speculate as to why the idea of continuity should be so persistently reiterated in the one aspect of life in which the break with the past has been the most dramatic."10
Maximón
religion represented as Judas of Iscariot11, Saint Michael Archangel, or as the apostle Peter. Nevertheless, to the Mayan he is idolotrized completely differently.
Maximón means “tied with string or lasso” or in Ri-Laj-Mam12 it means the “great grandfather” of all the people. The oral tradition tells the story13 of Maximón as the patron idol of traitors. Recently is believed and venerated as a sacred figure dedicated to cure diseases, remove curses, divine for the future, bless crops and win lawsuits. Even if Maximón is evoked as deity, he also plays a political role, personifying Francisco Sojuel, hero of the Tzutuhiles14 in their resistance against the Spanish. When Sojuel died his spirit perpetuated in Maximón in order to fight the conquerors with magic.
The attendants who dress him, carry and tend Maximón accompanied by countless swigs of liquor and two or three packs of cigarettes. The "dressing" of Maximón is synonymous with the "making" of the icon, for although Maximón has a heart of wood, his body in is layer upon layer of clothing and silk scarves. Resplendent in his new outfit, he is venerated and presented with gifts. He is carried through a procession around the village between the figures of Christ and Mary. After the March, Maximón will be carried to the home of a member of the indigenous council, where he will remain until the following Holy-Week.
The Day of the Dead
The cult of the dead in the Mayan cultures is a mixture of their beliefs and the Christian ones. November is the month dedicated to the dead, the time when the dead are allowed to abandon the underworld and seek on earth their homes and families, their ancient lands. There they share food and drinks and when satisfied they can return to their assigned places to experience a new eternal rest for 365 days. Then, they will return again, a interminable cycle which maintains ties between life and death.
The Mayas incorporated to their ritual many the customs brought by the Spaniards. They set-up altars dedicated to the dead, and as symbols of remembrance, they place photographs of loved ones, surrounded by incense, flowers, candles and drinks like ‘aguardiente’15 or ‘atole’16. The rite of “dressing the grave’ is then continued in the cemetery in the pre-dawn hours of November 1st, where devotees leave wreaths of wax-paper flowers and prepare the ‘fiambre’17 which they eat right there, bonding life and death.
In other Mayan villages, in addition to ‘dressing the grave’, they celebrate with marimba-music, fireworks and construct enormous kites measuring up to 3-meters wide. These are taken to the open fields to soar them in the open skies. This way they call to the departed, who are identify by the colours and patterns used in the kites. After they have been used, these are burned so that the dead may return to their world.
The Mayan agriculture and daily meals revolve around maize. Due to its importance they believe that this crop is not only a gift from the gods, but a god itself. The Mayan calendar probably was based on the maize-cycle as well, following the lowland climate. November is the harvest month, and it’s probably why the Mayan took this opportunity to venerate to their ancient god of Maize, Hun-Hunahpu masking it with a Christian celebration.
While most of the Christian representations of saints are wooden carved images, Saint Martin instead is a “red cloth bundle with five rectangular corn meal cakes places over it . .it’s kept in carved wooden-chest bearing the images of a split ear of maize, a leaping deer, and other symbols representing animal and vegetal fertility”18. The natives believe that the representation of Saint Martin is the benefactor of the maize harvest, and a blessing for their next cultivation, ensuring a prosperous harvest.
The ritual dance consists of two men wearing jaguar costumes, continually pawing other two wearing deer costumes. One, being the priest responsible of the Saint Martin bundle. This priest is ‘killed’ by one of the jaguars and is carried to the altar as a sacrificial offering. The ancient Mayan, believed jaguars to be inhabitants of the underworld, who accomplish the wishes of the patrons of death and sickness who reside there. This ritual dance resembles the Popol Vuh’s19 tale20 of the descent of Hun-Hanuhpu into the underworld where he was defeated and sacrificed.
However, Guatemala under a progressive military regime in this century21, the native highlanders were sieged again. The base of this confrontation is a land-tenure system through which the ‘ladinos’22 still dominate the indigenous. In the last decades a civil war of thirty years has alter, by its violence, the style of life of millions of people. Although the Mayans continue to be dominated, they live on a subsistence level from one year to the next. For example, to the natives, land is sacred and it’s more than the means to produce maize, they believe to be loaned by their ancestors. It, therefore, represents the base upon the individual Maya and family life and the community’s socio-religious structure. This contemporary confrontation, where approximately seventy-percent of Guatemala’s arable land is held by the twenty-percent of the population, leads to the destruction of the contemplation of rites evolved from the Mayan habits together with the liturgical elements of the traditional Spanish Catholicism. Meanwhile recalling that for the Maya the forces of nature and destiny are capricious and most be propitiated with sacrifice, the only explanation some Maya have undoubtedly interpreted this tension of the armed-conflict with is the retribution for their sins.
Appendix
The story of Maximón
“Long time ago ,lived a dozen shamans (ajkunes) who commanded the thunder and lighting. Six of them were old married men and the other six where young and single. The single ajkunes schemed to overpower their six elders by bewitching and seducing their wives. When the elder shamans discovered this, they took preemptive vengeance with cosmic- bodies and guarded their wives with a magical being. In the deep forest they found an enormous tree, constantly praying over it and incensing it, they felled it and carved it as the patron idol of traitors. As the tree took form it came to life. The six older akjunes used spells to transform Maximón into a woman, giving him the appearance of their six wives, and sent him in turn to each of the young traitorous shamans. The disguised Maximón impassioned them driving them insane with lust and despair, until the young ajkunes surrendered..”23
The story of Hun-Hanuhpu
The Popol Vuh’s tale tells the story of the descent of Hun-Hanuhpu into the underworld where he was defeated and sacrificed and where these lords took his head and placed on a dead tree. The instant his head touched the tree, abundant foliage and fruits came into life. Consequently Mayas believe that just as Hun-Hanuhpu’s head, the dead corn seeds corn planted beneath the earth will germinate and sprout new life from the dead.
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Allen J. Christenson. Iconomania: studies in visual culture. The Symposium Issues: Spaces of Transformation: Precolumbian Antecedents for Modern Highland Mayan Ceremonialism. [on-line] (cited without date). To consult in the World Wide Web:
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The term Maya refers not to the classic Mayas, but a new type of society that had emerged. These new populations still conserved traits from Mayan origin (like the agricultural techniques, the measurements of time, and the same root of their different languages), and they had acquired new characteristics as a result of a period of supremacy and expansionism. These new changes rose in the city-states that brought the emergence of new settlements in forms of power supported mainly by wars. In other words they appeared as social militarized organizations denoted as fortress-cities. In those times there were large migrations of nahual-speaking tribes originated from the gulf and high-plateau of Mexico.
Religious Syncretism and its Consequences in Mayan Society J. Putnam
The two perspectives where taken from: Yoshida, Shigeto Lo maya en el sincretismo religioso: el caso de los mayas yucatecos. "Simposio: Re-creación de las fronteras étnicas." Pg. 2.
Quetzal (quetzalli) A tropical climbing bird living in the regions of Central America.
Quetzalcoatl, or other times referred as Kukulcan, the chief Maya god of the Sun.
6 These centers belong to specific indigenous communities, for example Chinautla belongs to the Poqoman area, Santa Apolonia to the kaqchikel territory and Rabinal the achi’ area.
7 Nixtamal: Indigenous word that refers to the corn dough made for the tortillas (corn pancakes).
8 Religious Syncretism and its Consequences in Mayan Society J. Putnam
9 Cofradias: brotherhoods
10 Fournier Merlinda. The World & I Online: Mayan Catholicism in Chichicastenango.
11 Judas of Iscariot: the betrayer of Jesus
12 One of the Native language spoken by the Mam, one of the Mayan populations.
13 The entire story of Maximon can be read on the Appendix pg.
14 Tzutuhil: A Mayan community
15 aguardiente: is a liquor made out of sugar cane
16 atole: is a non-alcoholic drink made with water and corn-flour
17 fiambre: is a type of Spanish stew made of meat or fish, vegetables, olives and capers.
18 Christenson Allen J. Precolumbian Antecedents of Modern Highland Mayan Ceremonialism.
19 Popol Vuh is the sacred book of the Quiches (a Mayan population) which is considered to be the best source of the ancient Mayan highland cosmology. Its written texts describe the creation of the world and the role of the gods in maintaining life.
20 The entire tale of Hun-Hanuhpu can be read on the Appendix pg.
21 Civilian rule was restored in Guatemala only in January 1986
22 ‘ladinos’: westernized Guatemalans.
23 Mendelson Michael E. Los Escandalos de Maximón.