Mays

The Highland Maya: A Culture of Color, Contrast, and Co-existence

During my six weeks of research conducted mainly amongst the indigenous residents of the Guatemalan highlands, I encountered a syncretic world full of seemingly incoherent forces that somehow came together in a harmonious way. My attempt to understand and plumb the depths of this rich reservoir of relationship between belief and practice, meaning and behavior, is what follows. With reference to their religion, markets, and agriculture, as well as medicinal and ceremonial goods, it consists of a blend of field notes and journal entries along with input from other anthropological texts. I investigate the power and implications of the representation and interpretation of meaning in the lives and ceremonies of contemporary Maya. The writing alternates between present and past tense, partially in an attempt to mimic the ancient authors of the Popol Vuh; most of the excerpts from my field notebook are kept in the present tense, as they were written.

Mythology and Meaning

A man wearing an otherwise unassuming plain button-down shirt and slacks, but with the unmistakable red scarf of a shaman wrapped around his head, leans over a raised trough filled with the ashes of countless ceremonies and pours a bag of sugar onto the altar in the shape of a cross inside a circle, with a dot in the center as well as in each quadrant. He then places a dozen balls of pine resin and bark on top of this compass which will act as the base of a pyramid of ritual goods. Also included in the sculpture are four white eggs, various kindling sticks and hardwood chips, white, red, green, and yellow candles, tallow off-white candles made from animal fat, sweet-smelling rosemary bundles, and a little more sugar for good measure. Before lighting the fire he blesses the matches and addresses the four cardinal directions, praying to each. As the fire comes to life, he begins reciting an almost endless stream of Quiche and Spanish words, breathing life into the flames which look as if they are growing with the speed and intensity of his discourse. He feeds and controls it with his voice, addressing all the saints, sacred places and volcanoes, pausing to answer his cell phone and then resuming without batting an eye. His two clients begin chanting as well, clutching their own multicolored bundles of candles, and once the fire matures, taking bound black candles destined for the inferno and stomping on them with their heels. The shaman periodically manipulates or blows on the flames, turning around and grinning at us with his gapped and gold-accented smile whenever it bursts into a great ball of multi-hued fire. At one point the flames begin crackling, spinning and spiraling in a spectacular way, letting the shaman know how his offering is being received. I watch in fascination as I desperately try to keep up, scribbling down as many notes as I can about the ceremony. But I know I am only getting a snapshot of it in my notebook, though I fill several pages, and I am left with far more questions than answers.

During the ceremony described above, which took place on the roof of the high-ceilinged resting place of the crowned-skeleton El Rey San Pasqual, I was able to piece together some of what was going on with the help of my broken Spanish, my brilliant professor, and interruptions and asides from the priest-shaman himself. After visiting a tienda of ceremonial goods a block away, when the idea of a comparative study on candle color meanings and the production and distribution of ceremonial plants was just a shadowy possibility in my mind not yet formed, I entered the shrine with a small green candle I had purchased. Olintepeque, called San Jorge by the Spanish, is the site of the first confrontation between Quiche warriors and the conquistador Pedro Alvarado with his guns and his Tlaxcalan army. Totally unprepared for such an enemy, the Indians were massacred and the local river was dubbed the “River of Blood”; this signified the beginning of the end of the Quiche empire and perhaps of the Maya as a sovereign people altogether. In light of this, the town seemed like a fitting location for a folk saint associated with death and who may himself be a modern manifestation of a pre-colombian death god. The atmosphere of the room was very different than that of the sun-drenched traditional Maya wedding that we had just walked through a few streets away, full of vibrantly dressed female elders with their scarves folded atop their heads. A single altar with modest rows of closely packed candles and veladoras sat parallel another altar behind it, littered with wax but empty of candles. Some of the veladoras had writing identifying them as petitions to dominate your spouse, protect you from evil, or give you success in business. I offered my little candle, too absorbed in the act to give any thought to the meaning of what I was doing.

Before the rooftop ceremony, the petitioners had to ask permission down below from San Pasqual, and had to undergo ritual cleansing in preparation for the main event that would take place upstairs. The shaman’s day name was “Ahpu”, which he translated as “blowgun”, and incorporated into his own particular ritual technique when interacting with the fire. Not only did he spray liquor on the participants in uniquely fantastic way, but he also got on his hands and knees and cleansed the altar with a breath of air; he explained this as blowing away all the other prayers and petitions that were there as a precautionary measure, because you never know what other people have been praying for. He then proceeded to light four candles placed in a square formation for the cardinal directions. The two ladino (at least in appearance) clients were a middle-aged woman and an elderly man, coming to San Pasqual in the hopes of expelling violent murderous drug gangs from their town, and to protect a relative or relatives who were under threat of kidnapping and death by the gangs. These enemies were represented by the bundles of black candles that they vigorously pounded and threw to the flames. They had chosen to come on 13 K’at, “the net”, a very powerful calendar day on which one should petition to break through one’s entanglements, defeat what is holding one back, but also a day to bind one’s enemies. For the Maya, each day has a special meaning and significance depending on the day lord and number, giving one something specific to reflect on or strive for every day of the week.

During a follow up visit, I would later get a chance to talk with this shaman, named Antonio, about his ritual and ceremonial knowledge, as well as learn a little about the true meaning of “participant-observation”. His take on the significance of the various candle colors was very different than that of another practitioner I had met, Vilma, who performed a ceremony for a group from my Spanish school. Although they both built their fires in a very similar way, beginning with a cardinal compass of sugar and a base of pine balls and using many of the same materials, words, and motions during their prayers and blessings, it seemed that they both had unique styles as shamans in addition to slightly different religious perspectives on the world. When I asked Antonio about this apparent conflict of belief and practice between shamans purporting to practice the same religion, he was unperturbed; he said it simply depended on the person, the place, and the petition, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Participant-observation

I awake from a sleepless night filled with fever and chills, head and body aches, gas and diarrhea; the last thing I feel like doing is taking a bumpy ride by chicken-bus to Olintepeque to visit a place I have already been to. But I want to go, and it is my last week in Guatemala, so I suck it up, drink some liquid Pepto and embark on my journey to see San Pascualito for the last time. It is the day 11 Tz’ikin, a day to ask for money but also to rid your life of bad influences and evil forces; it seems as good a day as any to ask for healing. I arrive at the shrine to see several ceremonies being conducted by different shamans, two or three on the rooftop are already in full swing. I spot Antonio, and take a seat next to him. Antonio is 71 years old, was born in nearby Pachaj, and has been on the shaman’s path for 44 years. He has 23 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. He has kind but tired eyes, two gold bottom teeth separated by a wide gap, a gray mustache with a touch of black in the middle, and is about 5 feet tall. He’s wearing a sweater over a striped polo, a colorful baseball cap that looks to be from the early 80s and reads “OUTSIDE magazine, field staff” across the front. He has his típica woven shoulder bag with his shaman’s headscarf tucked inside.

I start with a little small talk before I explain that I’m interested in learning about the significance of different ceremonial goods, the meanings of different candle colors and plants used in ceremonies. He asks me if I want to become a curandero, but I tell him I simply want to learn, that I hoped to work in South or Central America one day, and I am studying here in order to share knowledge that people like him possess with people in my country. Without being prompted, he begins telling me his own interpretations of candle colors and their meanings, as well as veladoras. Eventually I bring out the four small candles that I had bought (3 yellow, 1 white) and ask if he will help me offer them, that I don’t know what to do. I give him 20 quetzales, a meager sum. Before beginning, he takes off his hat and leads me up in front of San Pasqual. He crosses himself, holding my candles bundled together like a wand, and I do the same. He begins waving the candles around my body and gently pushes me down to my knees (perhaps so that he could reach my head). I go down on one knee, putting myself in an exceedingly uncomfortable position ensuring that I am in intense pain within minutes, but I look at it as helping me stay focused; for much of the short ritual I am in my head, thinking to myself this is really happening, I must look ridiculous, what am I doing, this is awesome, but I need to just experience it. I try looking up at San Pasqual to concentrate on being in the moment.

He interrupts his steady, rhythmic stream of words to ask my name, to which I answer “José” and, without missing a beat, he goes right back into his creole prayer; he invokes Quiche day names and addresses the “Padre” and San Pasqual, asking on behalf of “hermano José”, periodically waving the bundle of candles around my head and body in circles and sweeps. At one point he blesses the four sides of my head, grasping my skull with both hands, first the front and back, then the sides, all while firmly holding the bundle of candles. He finishes with a circling motion of the candles around my head, counting up to 11 Tz’ikin, similar to what Vilma did for each day lord in her ceremony on 10 Imox. All the while I am doing all I can not to stand up in pain for my knees and foot. Relieved when we finally walk back to the altar on the floor, he lights my four candles in a perfect square for each cardinal direction after a whispered prayer.

I couldn’t believe what had just happened, but Antonio seemed unfazed by what was probably only a 10 minute ceremony and sat back down on the bench where we talked a little more. After asking about what I do in the U.S., he surprised me when he ended up asking me if I could help him obtain a VISA. Another shaman, dressed in a plain striped shirt with an elegantly patterned collar, a scarf hung over his shoulder, a simple black beanie on his head and large black-framed glasses, and wearing the traditional wraparound skirt I had seen men wearing in San Antonio Palopo, was placing white candles all in pairs on the altar (which Antonio explained as symbolic of unity, possibly for a family) and reading from a book. He continued reading aloud until all of his tall candles had burned flat down to the surface of the altar, blackened wicks floating in hardened pools of wax.

Ceremonial Goods: The Significance of Colors and Plants

My original intention when developing my research plan was to focus solely on medicinal and ceremonial plants; I fantasized about talking to shamans and participating in rituals, doing serious ethnobotanical research and delving into the world of pre-colombian medicine. I eventually realized that I didn’t really have the botany training I needed in order to achieve this in English, let alone in Spanish or Quiche, and I didn’t have the opportunity to investigate the gathering or processing of plant materials or incense. My only connection to the plants was through the ceremonies I witnessed, the tiendas that supplied them, and, of course, the agriculture that surrounded me. Though it wasn’t necessarily the exact aspect of Maya culture I thought I would be exploring, it turned out to be richer and more complex than I could have imagined. These subjects held many challenges of their own, not the least of which was having to rely heavily on my rudimentary Spanish to conduct interviews with vendors and shamans, not being able to rely solely on observation. As my professor don Mateo was fond of reminding me, “Ethnographic research is constantly being confronted by your own inadequacies”.

My inadequacies would confront me many times, but the above quote probably resonated the most with me after my first attempt at independent research involving an interview, when I went to the underground market by the Parque Central in Xela. I weaved through the largest meat market I’d ever seen, an underground hall of freshly butchered animals of all kinds, mixing with the smells of a stall selling vegetables and another selling dried herbs. I went to the first stall I came across selling ceremonial goods, one of three across from several overstocked shoe stores, with all the ambitions of discovering the local origin of all the ceremonial plants, the meaning and significance behind their use, the names and components of the “7 Montes”, the processing and production of various types of incense, and the dynamics of the trade in Pine products (leaves, sap, bark, resin, etc.). I ended up with almost nothing. The girl in ladino clothing who was running the stall, Patricia, couldn’t really understand my questions, and only had vague answers about the origins of the plants and herbs she sold, although she did say that some came from areas around Xela. She offered to tell me about the meanings of different colored candles but I declined. After all, what did candles have to do with plants?