Faces of Resistance: Maya Heroes, Power, and Identity [3 ed.] 0817319875, 9780817319878

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FACES OF RESISTANCE

FACES OF RESISTANCE Maya Heroes, Power, and Identity

EDITED BY S. ASHLEY KISTLER

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2018 by the University of Alabama Press All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press. Typeface: Sabon and Optima Cover image: Street art depicting a statue of Aj Poop B’atz’, San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala; photograph by S. Ashley Kistler Cover design: Designer Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-8173-1987-8 E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9189-8

For Chow

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: Maya Heroes, Resistance, and Identity S. Ashley Kistler 1 1. Tekun Umam: Maya Hero, K’iche’ Hero Judith M. Maxwell and Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma Chávez

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2. Unsung Heroes: Cahí Ymox, Belehé Qat, and Kaqchikel Resistance to the Spanish Invasion of Guatemala, 1524–1540 W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz 37 3. Discovering Aj Poop B’atz’: Collaborative Ethnography and the Exploration of Q’eqchi’ Identity S. Ashley Kistler 61 4. The Man at the Crossroads: Mapla’s Sojuel, Ancestral Guardian of Tz’utujil-Mayas Allen J. Christenson 81 5. Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross: Caste War Heroes in the Yucatán Peninsula Stephanie J. Litka 100 6. The Hero Cult of Carrillo Puerto Versus the Maya Heroes Who Were Not Heroes: Historical Memory, Local Leadership, and the Pathology of Politics in Yucatán Fernando Armstrong-Fumero 121

7. Heroines of Health Care: Germana Catu and Maya Midwives David Carey Jr. 137 8. Rebellious Dignity: Remembering Maya Women and Resistance in the Guatemalan Armed Conflict Betsy Konefal 157 9. “We Will No Longer Yield an Inch of Our Identity”: Antonio Pop Caal, 1941–2002 Abigail E. Adams 174 10. “There Are No Heroes”/“We’re All Heroes”: Kaqchikel Vendors’ Reflections on National Holidays and National Heroes Walter E. Little 190 References Contributors Index

241

207 237

Illustrations

Figure 2.1. Selected historical sites in Guatemala

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Figure 8.1. Indigenous queens condemn state violence in Panzós, 1978 165 Figure 8.2. Political street art, Guatemala

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Acknowledgments

First, and most importantly, I thank the contributors to this volume whose tireless efforts made this book possible. In Guatemala, I thank the people of San Juan Chamelco for sparking my interest in Maya heroic figures and supporting me in my research in the community since 2004. In the United States, I thank Ed Royce for his patience and mentoring and Norm Whitten, Rachel Newcomb, and Robinson Herrera for their feedback on my book proposal. I also thank Susan Harris for copyediting this volume and Bonny McLaughlin for her index. I extend the greatest of thanks to Wendi Schnaufer at the University of Alabama Press for her support of this project. I dedicate this volume to my dear friend, Wiliams Cu Can (Chow), who passed away suddenly in Chamelco in March 2014. Wiliams was my constant companion during my fieldwork in Chamelco, as I lived with his family in their home and he served as my assistant during my research on Aj Poop B’atz’ in 2005 and 2006. I will forever be thankful for his support, kind spirit, great sense of humor, and mischievous laugh. Wankat sa’ inch’ool, Chow.

FACES OF RESISTANCE

Introduction Maya Heroes, Resistance, and Identity S. Ashley Kistler

In the highland Guatemalan town of San Juan Chamelco, tales of sixteenthcentury Q’eqchi’-Maya leader Aj Poop B’atz’1 recount that the acts of this heroic figure changed the course of local history. According to Q’eqchi’ oral tradition, as Aj Poop B’atz’ watched Spanish forces invade and devastate western Guatemala, he faced a choice: fight, which would risk the death of his people, or accept the Spaniards’ arrival to his homeland in hopes of sparing his community. Recognizing the inevitability of Spanish invasion, he welcomed the Spaniards to Chamelco in peace. For this choice, he is revered today as a powerful symbol of Q’eqchi’ agency and identity. Today, more than 450 years after his death, his story remains a key part of community discourse and ethnohistoric memory in Chamelco. In local oral tradition, Chamelqueños attribute their strength, perseverance, power, and cultural authenticity to his gallant actions. Today Aj Poop B’atz’ is just one of many figures recognized by contemporary Maya groups as emblems of resistance and affirmations of indigenous cultural legacies. During more than ten years of ethnographic and ethnohistoric fieldwork in Guatemala, I learned through conversations with community members, scholars, and activists that other indigenous communities in Guatemala and Mexico celebrate similar figures as representations of their historic power and indigenous agency and the persistence of indigenous culture in the face of national and global challenges. Stories of Tekun Umam, Gonzalo Guerrero, and Jacinto Kanek, among others, abound in official historical discourse, indigenous oral tra-

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dition, colonial records, written documents, anthropological work, and popular culture. These figures are commemorated by countless statues, poems, newspaper articles, and paintings and in written accounts of regional history, community members’ oral narratives, and national celebrations. Nevertheless, not all such figures are celebrated widely or accepted as heroic by the region’s indigenous communities. Figures afforded this status by some may hold a markedly different status for others. Some figures celebrated in state politics, including Tekun Umam or Felipe Carrillo Puerto, have been the subjects of widespread controversy as heroes imposed on Maya life through national hegemonies (see chapters 1, 6, and 10 of this volume). For example, although Guatemala has celebrated its “national hero,” Tekun Umam, annually on February 20 since 1960 in accordance with national law designating this day “Día de Tecún Umán”2 (Tekun Umam Day), many indigenous Guatemalans do not recognize this figure as important or heroic (see Maxwell and Cuma Chávez, chapter 1, and Little, chapter 10, this volume). Contributors to this volume contemplate who and what Maya groups have deemed heroic throughout their history, though the chapters presented here offer diverse approaches to and stances in doing so. Some contributors examine heroic figures in their historical and biographical context, while others take an applied approach to examining the contemporary significance of these iconic leaders. Some contributors explore the ways in which Maya communities have held up heroic figures as symbols of resistance, while others examine heroic figures that did not resist colonial influence but rather accommodated foreign intervention in Maya life. Contributors explore how heroic figures embody and model contemporary indigenous values, qualities, and aspirations and consider how Maya groups draw on these figures as empowering cultural memories that link them to their extraordinary past. In contrast, a few contributors consider how the Guatemalan and Mexican states have appropriated and promoted figures such as Tekun Umam and others as heroic symbols of nostalgic indigenous authenticity, erasing Maya agency, autonomy, and value. In this volume’s final chapter, Walter Little questions whether the concept of “hero” is even a part of Maya worldviews. Although the chapters presented here offer differing and, at times, contradictory perspectives on Maya heroes, the essays unite in exploring the cultural significance of and controversies surrounding these classic agentive characters remembered through Maya oral history, in state propaganda and colonial records, and as part of revitalization projects led by “Maya” scholars and foreign anthropologists, among other means.

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History and Historicity in Maya Life Following centuries of persecution and oppression, many members of contemporary Maya groups use historical memory to generate and fortify their indigenous identities, reconnect with their history, and ground their practices, beliefs, and morality in the authenticity of their indigenous past. The processes through which history is created and the ways that indigenous groups challenge official histories constructed by dominant hegemonies have been the focus of a great deal of recent anthropological inquiry in the Maya area and beyond. Whitehead (2003:xi) suggests that history is never a “factual” account of past events but rather reflects the “experiences of a given group and the cultural significance of recalling the past.” As a result, multiple historical accounts may emerge from the same past events. Sahlins (1981, 1985) and Whitehead (2003) term this process of creating history “historicity.”3 Foucault (1980:133) states that those who produce knowledge dominate the oppressed by creating “regimes of truth.” Trouillot (1995) states that the information left out of official histories, or “silences,” often holds greater meaning for the dominated than historical facts. As a result, subaltern communities produce alternative historical narratives to encode important cultural information and convey political messages. Connerton (1989) and Benjamin (2003) similarly explore how societies create collective memory through historical reconstruction and commemorative ceremonies. Scott (1990) argues that indigenous groups often challenge the official histories created by national hegemonies by creating “hidden transcripts.” Although subaltern communities may appear to believe dominant truths perpetuated by national hegemonies, they unify against them through folklore, gossip, songs, or other narratives that serve as forms of resistance. For many Maya communities, stories of many historical figures, even ones shaped by national hegemonies and external interpretations of indigenous life, serve as “hidden transcripts” of resistance. The works of Bourdieu (1990), Shore (1996), and Sommer (2006), among many others, argue that culture is the result of agency and intentional action. Sommer (2006:1) defines cultural agency as “a range of social contributions through creative practices.” Agency, then, refers the ability of social actors to make lasting and meaningful impacts on their society, in constructing identity, defining cultural practice, and creating value. In Fischer’s (2001) work on Maya identity politics, he writes that scholars must consider how dominant ideologies and power relations shape the creation of culture. For example, the use of Maya as an ethnic designa-

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tion has been heavily critiqued by scholars studying the region as essentialist and the result of national and international hegemonies that seek to “erase or valorize Maya cultural difference” (French 2010:6; see also: Restall 1998; Fischer 1999, 2001; Hervik 1999; Castañeda 2004; Hervik and Kahn 2006; Beyyette 2017). Colonial governments, church officials, national politics, and even indigenous activists have used Maya as a homogenizing and false designation to imply a common core of experience, history, and practice among Mayan language–speaking communities. While many contemporary residents in this region may self-identify as Maya based on perceived biogenetic descent from the ancient Maya or shared history, languages, or cultural traditions, they did not identify in this way historically, instead preferring to be recognized according to local or regional connections, such as the municipio (municipality) of their birth and/or residence or their ethnolinguistic affiliation to one of approximately thirty Mayan languages (Tax 1937, 1941; Warren 1978; French 2010; Beyyette and LeCount 2017). In recent years many indigenous citizens in the region have adopted this designation to denote their membership in a broad, collective community with shared values, history, experience, and politics (Cojtí Cuxil 1994, 1997, 2006; French 1999, 2010; Fischer 2001; Warren and Jackson 2002; Little 2004a; Goldín 2006; Bastos 2012; Samson 2017). A faction of pan-Maya activists popularized this term as a political strategy to unify diverse Maya communities into a single pueblo (people) (French 1999, 2010:5) and build a critical mass of people fighting for indigenous rights. Identifying as Maya has become a form of resistance for many. As a result, many indigenous residents of this region identify both as Maya and according to their territorial or ethnolinguistic affiliations. Nevertheless, despite the acceptance and use of this collective term of identity by many Maya in the twenty-first century, their diverse communities are not static, unchanged/unchanging, or uniform in their lived experiences. They have experienced and continue to experience historical acts and national hegemonies in unique ways. The extent to which each Maya community interacted with Spanish or other European colonists, experienced forced conversion to Christianity, was targeted by state-sponsored violence, has become integrated into the global economy, or has accepted and adopted new, syncretic cultural practices varies widely (Little 2004a; Goldín 2006). Maya culture is dynamic and flexible, having persisted despite centuries of external contact, oppression, and violence precisely because of its ability to embrace changes and integrate them into established ways of life. The term “Maya” as used throughout this book, then, does not imply a uniformity of experience, worldview, or practice. Instead, the

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contributors to this volume and I recognize and consider how unique experiences and historical circumstances of the Maya communities we discuss influence their understandings of heroism and perceptions of heroic figures. When possible, we refer to each group using their preferred form of self-identification and not by the generic designation of Maya. We occasionally use “Maya,” however, in a way that is consistent with the established body of scholarly literature as a collective referent to the members of Mayan language–speaking communities who share similar history and values. To address this issue further, contributors have included a note in their chapters to clarify the intent that grounds their specific use of the Maya designation. For many in Maya communities, ethnohistory represents a form of power (Clendinnen 1987; Wilson 1995; Warren 1996, 1998; Carey 2001; Montejo 2001, 2005; Kistler 2010, 2013). Although shaped in part through colonial ideologies and national hegemonies, historical memory has long served as a form of agency in Maya communities. Clendinnen (1987) argues that for the colonial Maya of Yucatán, historical memory provided a means of resisting Spanish domination by linking their lived realities to the strength of their past. Many contemporary Maya activists do the same, using historical narratives to generate a Maya identity grounded in historical memory. Warren highlights the significance of learning Maya history for a group of intellectuals who translated segments of the sixteenth-century chronicles Annals of the Kaqchikels. She writes, “Culturalists are reviving the heroic imagery of Maya warriors in an attempt to deal with the passivity they see as one of the scars of Ladino racism and its language of inferiority for indigenous populations” (1996:100). Her work reveals that, though written by colonizers, Spanish colonial manuscripts hold value for Maya activists attempting to reconstruct and reconnect with their community’s history. Both written and oral ethnohistories play an essential role in constructing Maya historical understanding. Since pre-Columbian times, Maya groups have used written language to preserve their history. Whereas ancient Maya elite recorded extensive hieroglyphic texts, colonial Maya groups recorded their cosmologies under Spanish supervision in the Annals of the Kaqchikels, the Books of Chilam Balam, and the Popol Vuh. Maya activists consider written documentation, even when written by non-Maya authors, as key in proving their historical importance, yet oral tradition continues to be a key form of education and resistance in most Maya communities (Montejo 2005). For residents of some Maya communities, stories of prominent indigenous figures, regardless of their origin, help to define indigenous agency by embodying the core values of in-

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digenous life. Nevertheless, the authenticity of these histories is sometimes called into question, as Maya understandings of their past have invariably been altered, first by Spanish colonialism and later by government efforts to disempower the Maya. Numerous scholars explore the authenticity of Maya historical understanding, revealing that the concept of authenticity itself is both complex and convoluted. Fischer (1999, 2001) explores how essentialized representations of historical Maya identity help to establish the authenticity of cultural practice. Maya activists and others learn about Maya history and integrate historical practices into their contemporary ways of life by studying ancient and colonial Maya texts, often interpreted through the lens of outsiders, including archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers. Fischer (2001:116) writes that “the efforts of Maya leaders to construct and promote viable elements of a pan-Mayan identity are fundamentally conditioned by received cultural norms and by desires to remain true to a perceived Maya past. Successful new elements are widely adopted precisely because they are seen as somehow continuous with an established tradition (it perhaps in ways that appear ironic to foreign observers), and thus essentially authentic.” Although this historical knowledge becomes integrated into Maya life through cultural change and exchange, it is nonetheless regarded as authentic. Hobsbawm’s (1983) work on the “invention of tradition” provides a theoretical foundation for understanding these arguments, as does Sahlins’s (1993:21) concept of the “indigenization of modernity.” In Hobsbawm’s seminal work (1983), he states that indigenous communities regularly invent traditions as part of resistance efforts during political movements, rebellions, or other situations of oppression. Hanson (1989) similarly argues that invented traditions are a routine cultural practice, as most cultural discourse has been invented by some stakeholder at some point in time. Although such traditions may not be a factual part of a community’s history, they gain legitimacy when they are perceived as such (Hobsbawm 1983; Hanson 1989; Sahlins 1993). Sahlins considers the authenticity of tradition in his exploration of how indigenous communities respond to globalization. When faced with global changes, indigenous communities adapt in ways consistent with established cultural logics, Sahlins posits. He suggests that in many indigenous societies, people embrace capitalism, modernity, and development to reinforce long-standing cultural practices and beliefs and define contemporary identities. He states, “The very ways societies change have their own authenticity, so that global modernity is often reproduced as local diversity” (1993:2).

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McAllister (1996) further explores questions of authenticity in her work on Guatemala’s Rabín Ahau pageants. For many, these folkloric pageants present authentic representations of Maya culture, as judges evaluate competitors on their understanding of indigenous language and culture. McAllister suggests that the images of Maya life highlighted in these pageants come from national hegemonic views of Maya life. Contestants must perform invented images of Mayaness to be deemed authentically Maya and crowned as winner. McAllister (1996:107) states, “Authenticity . . . is always emergent and never more so than when the authentic representation is not an artifact, but a person, a producer of representation.” While many believe that folkloric pageants oppress Maya communities by imposing national ideas of indigenousness on them, others suggest that pageants elevate Maya culture to the forefront of national consciousness. Event speeches provide candidates with an opportunity to express political views and lobby for Maya rights (Konefal 2010). The images of Maya life presented during these pageants, then, both empower and oppress Maya communities (Konefal 2010). These works on the complexity of authenticity in Maya life, among many others, reveal that Maya practice, including Maya historical memory and notions of heroism, have been inextricably altered by many historical forces, including perceptions of indigenous and national hegemonies.

Heroes and Heroism in Maya Discourse and Memory The chapters in this volume present analyses of interconnected themes related to the place of Maya communities in Latin American societies, including their acts of resistance to or accommodation of colonialism and globalization, their marginalization from official histories, their interactions with state politics and hegemonies, their lived experiences of ethnic and political oppression, and their agency and identities. Contributors examine the stories of those individuals who earned heroic status in Maya discourse for having led acts of resistance or accommodation during the sixteenth-century Spanish invasion, in independence-era rebellions, and throughout the contemporary battle for Maya equality. They also consider those individuals who have been elevated to heroic status by state politics.4 This volume looks diachronically at Maya notions of heroism and considers the historical forces that have acted on, shaped, and challenged these ideas. In examining Maya perceptions of these figures, either as symbols of indigenous power and resistance or as controversial representations of state hegemonies, contributors explore the role of Maya leaders in fighting for indigenous autonomy in colonial times, during the Guatemalan

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Civil War, and beyond. They consider how the Guatemalan and Mexican governments have appropriated and created indigenous heroes as part of “official” national histories and have shaped Maya communities’ understandings of their own past. Contemporary Maya groups’ recognition of those ancestors who bequeathed them sacred rituals and practices as heroic is another focus of this collection. Finally, contributors examine the agentive, and sometimes conflictive, work of the leaders of the Maya resurgence movement in Guatemala in revitalizing pan-Maya spirituality. We define a “hero” as a figure, whether a historical person or mythological character, revered by a group at some moment in its history and recognized in part for his or her personal assets, including wisdom, intelligence, strength, abilities, or bravery. Throughout Latin America and around the world, heroic figures serve as widely recognized symbols of cultural or national identities (e.g., Eva Perón in Argentina [Fraser and Navarro 1996], Ayrton Senna in Brazil [Kapadia 2010], Gandhi in India [Easwaran 2011], Haile Selassie for the Rastafari [W. Lewis 1993], and Jumandy for the Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon [Uzendoski 2005, 2006]). Nevertheless, who or what a community deems heroic is shaped by many interconnected factors, including, among others, local values, gendered norms, social hierarchies, political ideologies, historical forces, and colonial and national hegemonies. Contributors to this collection consider what Maya communities in Mexico and Guatemala have defined as heroic at distinct historical moments and how they do so today. Maya notions of heroism have varied considerably over time, having been defined in novel ways by distinct Maya groups at different points in time. Definitions of heroism are constantly fluid, changing, shaped by national and local interpretations of state politics and local values and norms. They are open to and up for debate. How Maya communities have defined heroism has been shaped, in part, by the national hegemonies that have marginalized them for centuries, alienating them from their history and culture, limiting their historical understanding, educational opportunities, and political power and relegating them to the lowest levels of their countries’ social hierarchies. The celebration of certain historical figures as heroic has been imposed on Maya communities historically and continues to be imposed today. Although the Maya with whom I have worked rarely use the word “hero,” except to reference Tekun Umam, Guatemala’s national hero controversially promoted by the Guatemalan government as a representation of indigenous resistance and used to marginalize the Maya, they do recognize and revere other individuals as having a unique status that transcends time because of their personal characteristics, including humility,5 their sacrifice

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for their communities, and other feats. The stories and understandings of these individuals may have been altered or even originally constructed by Spanish colonial hegemonies or national political agendas, although these individuals have nevertheless become a part of Maya oral discourse and are recognized by the Maya communities that share their stories as individuals worthy of emulation. Thus, while the term “hero” (héroe) and notions of heroism may have been introduced to Maya communities through colonial or Western ideologies, these categories have come to play a valued role in Maya discourse and memory throughout history. In fact, stories of notable figures have played an important role in Maya ethnohistories, agency, and resistance. The essays presented here examine the myriad factors that have shaped who and what the Maya have viewed as heroic from the colonial era through the present. Armstrong-Fumero and Little suggest in their chapters that the Mexican and Guatemalan governments have elevated historical figures to heroic status to seem sympathetic to their countries’ indigenous populations while repressing indigenous rights. For these reasons, some national heroes promoted through state hegemonies, including Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Mexico and Tekun Umam in Guatemala, are the subjects of great controversy. Local gendered norms also shape how Maya citizens classify heroes, as the masculine bias emphasized by the Spaniards during the colonial era and perpetuated in Ladino values have led many Maya communities to prioritize male over female heroic figures in historical discourse. In fact, when writing this introduction, I found it difficult to find stories of female heroines in Maya discourse or the published body of academic literature on this topic. Although Adelina Caal (Mamá Maquín) became a symbol of indigenous resistance during the 1978 protest in Panzós, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala (see Konefal, chapter 8, this volume), few works have been written about her. Despite Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s Nobel Peace Prize and her continued work with the Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum for Maya education, human rights, and political equality, her aspirational status is highly contested within Maya communities because of the controversy surrounding her testimony (Stoll 1999, Arias 2001). While such renowned figures remain important in Maya oral and written tradition, few published works explore their prominence as cornerstones of Maya historical memory and resistance. Although several books present brief accounts of Maya heroes in their discussion of other facets of Maya life, including Victor Montejo’s Maya Intellectual Renaissance (2005), W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz’s “Strange Lands and Different Peoples” (2013), and Greg Grandin, Deborah T. Levenson, and

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Elizabeth Oglesby’s edited collection, The Guatemala Reader (2011), no other works bring together stories of Maya heroes from Guatemala and Mexico and across time. Only Victor Montejo’s El Q’anil (2001) focuses exclusively on a legendary Maya heroic figure, examining a mythological Jakaltek-Maya figure as a symbol of his community’s indigenous identity. In contrast, this collection presents a diachronic critical look at heroic figures from across the Maya area. Thus, the contributors to this volume examine Maya life through a unique lens, analyzing the controversies surrounding the celebration of national heroes and exploring heroic figures and their stories as a way that many Maya communities connect with their past, define their present, and legitimize their place in their countries’ historical and political landscapes.

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Maya Communities in Historical Perspective The indigenous communities of Mexico and Guatemala have faced innumerable challenges to their cultural identities and have shared a narrative of oppression over the last five hundred years, from the subjugation of the contact and colonial periods to the brutality of state-sponsored violence and the introduction of new global technologies. Not all Maya communities confronted these events firsthand or experienced these encounters in the same ways, but the history of most contemporary Maya groups has been shaped by them in some way. I do not presume a uniformity of experience in this historical background or present a complete account of Maya history but rather aim to situate the stories and significance of the agentive figures explored in this volume within key historical moments in this shared history of oppression, trials, and violence. The arrival of Spanish forces in Mesoamerica in the mid-1500s presented a significant challenge to Maya communities of the time. The indigenous population of the region, which is estimated to have been more than one million inhabitants during the pre-Columbian era, fell to a fraction of its previous size within a single generation of the invasion due to the effects of armed conflict and the spread of new diseases introduced by Spanish soldiers (Todorov 1999; Townsend 2003). After invading Maya communities in southern Mexico in the early 1500s, Pedro de Alvarado and his forces moved southward into western Guatemala, seizing control of the Maya communities there (Lovell 2010). Many Maya groups faced drastic cultural and political changes during Spanish colonialism. As Lovell (2010:110) writes, “The Spaniards introduced various institutions to implement and meet their imperial expectations.” Two of the institutions with the greatest impact on Maya life were

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encomiendas, a grant of land, labor, and tribute given to Spanish settlers; and congregaciones, or the resettlement of rural Maya groups into centralized Christian communities (Lovell 2010). Recipients of encomiendas were awarded not only the goods produced on their assigned plots but also the labor of those who resided on the land. Maya living on encomienda land worked essentially as slaves for landowners until the system was abolished in the eighteenth century. Those Maya resettled into congregaciones were forced to convert to Catholicism and live under the watchful eye of the Spanish settlers. Not only were these residents ripped from their land and forced into reservation-style communities but they were required to pay tribute and provide manual labor for the Spanish Crown. As many Maya were coerced into accepting Spanish culture and religion, they faced the loss of key elements of their own culture, as long-standing practices were lost or forced underground at the penalty of death. Nevertheless, colonial efforts were not led by the Spaniards alone: indigenous residents often helped to lead such initiatives, as Lovell and Lutz write in chapter 2 of this volume and other sources suggest. The colonial era officially ended with the independence of Mexico and Guatemala from Spain in 1821; yet, this independence did not mean freedom for Maya communities. In addition to facing marginalization from the countries’ new, independent governments, they faced new battles for their land as European immigrants continued to flock to the region in pursuit of fertile land on which to cultivate crops for export. In Yucatán, Mexico, Spanish landowners continued to run haciendas (plantations) as they had for centuries before Mexican independence (Wells 1997). Immediately after independence, agricultural production on these haciendas centered on cattle, corn, and sugar. It later shifted to the cultivation and processing of the henequén (sisal) plant, a central focus of hacienda life and the Yucatecan economy in the late nineteenth century. In many parts of the region, Maya laborers worked as indentured servants on haciendas until the early twentieth century, suffering harsh working conditions, abuse from overseers, and economic exploitation (Alston, Mattiace, and Nonnenmacher 2009). Some Maya communities in Guatemala, especially those in Alta Verapaz, faced similar circumstances. Lovell (2010:122) writes, “Land was transformed from a cultural into an economic resource, wrestled from community and spun into commodity, by liberal desires to capitalize on Guatemala’s untapped potential as a producer of coffee.” Near Cobán, German immigrants established plantations dedicated to the cultivation of sugar, coffee, and cardamom (King 1974; Diaz 1996; Henn 1996). Tending to these plantations required extensive manual labor and landown-

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ers forced the region’s residents to work for them. This example is just one of many that demonstrate the oppression and repression that some Maya communities faced during this era. Despite numerous uprisings and rebellions (King 1974; Lovell 2010), including the Caste War of Yucatán (Rugeley 1996; Dumond 1997; Gabbert 2004b), the exploitation of Maya laborers continued in various forms in Mexico and Guatemala for generations. In Guatemala, Maya communities also suffered directly or indirectly from nearly forty years of state-sponsored violence. In 1954, a coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Pres. Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, ending a ten-year period of democracy. Árbenz became president in 1951 after helping to lead the October Revolution in 1944. This revolution overthrew the country’s longtime dictator, Jorge Ubico, whose policies had regarded the country’s Maya as an obstacle to modernization. During Ubico’s fourteen-year rule, his government seized much of the agricultural land used by Maya farmers in Guatemala to force them to support Guatemala’s industrialization (Way 2012). As president, Árbenz sought to help them regain this land. He introduced a radical agrarian reform legislation, Decree 900, which required the United Fruit Company to sell the government more than four hundred thousand acres of unused agricultural land for redistribution to campesinos (farm workers), despite some farmers’ opposition to the land reform process (Carey 2011). The United Fruit Company lobbied for support from the US government, which, after deeming Árbenz a threat to national security, orchestrated a covert CIA-backed operation, PBSUCCESS (Schlesinger and Kinzer 2005), to remove him from power. On June 27, 1954, Árbenz resigned from the presidency. The six years that followed Árbenz’s resignation was a time of instability and insecurity in Guatemala, as a series of military governments led the country. The Guatemalan Civil War officially began on November 13, 1960, when a group of young military officers attempted to lead a coup against the state (Grandin 2004). Following this failed attempt, the officers retreated to the mountains, where, in time, they founded the country’s first guerrilla organization, the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR). Over the next three decades, the army tried to suppress groups like FAR, among other forms of opposition, and targeted those people and communities they identified as subversive. They feared the empowerment of indigenous communities and labeled those who continued to engage publically in indigenous practice as “subversive.” The army massacred entire communities, disappeared, tortured, and raped people in the name of protecting

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national security. There were as many as two hundred thousand deaths throughout the country during the war (Carmack 1988; Perera 1993; Schirmer 1998; Lovell 2010; Adams and Smith 2011). In addition to this bloodshed, many Maya citizens suffered the suppression of indigenous practice, the lack of available educational materials focused on Maya history, and the loss of language and culture. Though the civil war ended almost twenty years ago, its legacy defines life in Guatemala today. Great inequality exists between the Ladino (nonindigenous) and indigenous sectors of the country’s population. Way (2012) argues that long-standing social barriers, such as discrimination and alienation, continue to fragment Guatemalan society. Konefal (2010) likewise argues that Guatemala has long been portrayed as a country of “two bloods”: Ladino and Maya. The latent tensions between the two groups have led to a lack of a national identity and the continued disenfranchisement of the Maya community in the national political landscape. The majority of Guatemala’s current-day population is indigenous; most of the country’s politicians are not because of the lack of opportunities for indigenous political advancement. The Maya resurgence movement, led by activists from throughout the country, challenges long-standing power dynamics and seeks to unite diverse Maya communities into a single nation fighting for the same cause: Maya equality. Amid the widespread terror of Guatemala’s military regimes in the 1980s, Maya activists who sought to regain the rights and culture lost during the civil war founded the movimiento maya (Maya movement) (Cojtí Cuxil 1994, 1997, 2006; Asociación Maya Uk’u’x B’e 2005a, 2005b; Adams 2009; Konefal 2010). Throughout its history, the Maya movement has battled internal conflict, as different factions of activists have taken distinct ideological approaches in their fight for equality (Konefal 2010; Samson 2017). Nevertheless, since the inception of this movement, many activists, often with differing viewpoints, politics, and agendas, have worked to conserve Mayan languages as integral to their communities’ cultural identities, fight for bilingual education, establish Guatemala’s national Academia de Lenguas Mayas (Academy of Mayan Languages), generate indigenous agency, and seek political representation. Nevertheless, different ideological positions, political agendas, and revitalization strategies have resulted in turmoil and tensions within the Maya movement and have at times impeded its progress (Vanthuyne 2008; Adams 2009; Little and Smith 2009; Pallister 2013; chapters 8 and 9, this volume). Distinct groups hold conflicting ideas about what activists should prioritize in their work, who should be included in their efforts, and what

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approaches they should take. Bastos (2012:155) reflects on the challenges Maya activists have faced in bilingual education efforts, in the revitalization of Maya spiritual practice, and in national politics. He argues that an increased focus on multiculturalism “clashes with already existing ethnic ideologies—that is, social representations of difference—in Guatemala; these other ideologies are the product of centuries of domination and appropriation by subjects, which makes it difficult for the messages and activism of this new, multiculturalist ideology to be accepted by their desired audience.” These conflicts were in part responsible for the defeat of the 1999 Indigenous Rights Referendum in Guatemala, as Konefal (2010) reports. Hale (2005) states that in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, many local residents reject established ethnic categories such as Ladino or Maya altogether. This disassociation from a pan-Maya, or even Maya, identity presents yet another challenge for the Maya movement today (Hale 2005). Conflicting ideas about activism and revitalization shape how Maya groups perceive the leaders of this movement. While Maya activists and others supportive of resurgence efforts recognize leaders like Antonio Pop Caal (see Adams, chapter 9, this volume) or Guatemala’s indigenous pageant queens (Konefal 2010; chapter 8, this volume) as heroes for their fight for indigenous equality, others reject this special status. These differing ideas of heroes and heroism reveal that for Maya communities, who and what constitutes a hero has been fluid, shifting and adapting throughout time in response to historical experiences, changing values, and state and local politics.

Organization of the Volume This collection consists of ten chapters, written by twelve scholars of the history and culture of Maya communities in Mexico and Guatemala, based on their original ethnographic, archaeological, ethnohistoric, historic, archival, or linguistic research. Together, the essays examine more than ten figures recognized in the oral and written traditions or political movements of Maya groups or, in some cases, by official national histories. The volume presents accounts of figures who lived during key moments in the region’s history, from the colonial era to the Caste War and Guatemalan Civil War and during twentieth-century indigenous activist movements. We find it important to highlight figures from each of these eras, and not just those participating in recent activist movements, to achieve a chronological understanding of Maya notions of heroism. Each contributor takes a unique approach to examining how Maya groups have defined heroism

Introduction / 15

at different key historical moments and according to their unique sociopolitical circumstances; yet, all chapters unite in their analyses of the stories and cultural importance of these heroic figures and their controversies. This volume is loosely organized in chronological order.6 In chapter 1, Judith M. Maxwell and Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma Chávez take a critical look at Guatemala’s controversial national hero, K’iche’ warrior Tekun Umam, who battled Spanish conqueror Pedro de Alvarado in the early sixteenth century. Tekun Umam’s very existence is contested because of conflicting accounts of his life and actions, but he was named Guatemala’s national hero in 1960 and is commemorated today by statues that represent him, a national holiday, and his image printed on the new Guatemalan currency. Maxwell and Cuma Chávez use historical documents, artistic works, oral histories, and interviews with Guatemalan colleagues to examine the story of Tekun Umam and his importance. In doing so, they also address the controversy surrounding Tekun Umam as a symbol representing Guatemala’s indigenous communities and promulgated by national hegemonies. W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz examine the stories of two Kaqchikel leaders, the Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox and the Ahpoxahil Belehé Qat, who resisted Spanish forces in the early sixteenth century. Although Tekun Umam is widely celebrated as Guatemala’s national hero, Lovell and Lutz argue that Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat are better candidates for such recognition. In their chapter, they revisit the work of historian Daniel Contreras and others to look at the information about these heroes recorded in colonial-era chronicles. In doing so, they offer new perspectives on Kaqchikel colonial resistance and give a detailed look at Cahí Ymox’s and Belehé Qat’s strong leadership and the Kaqchikel community’s lengthy battle against Spanish invasion. In chapter 3, S. Ashley Kistler examines the narratives that Q’eqchi’Maya residents of the highland Guatemalan town of San Juan Chamelco tell of town founder Aj Poop B’atz’, who worked to protect their community during the sixteenth-century Spanish invasion. A vital part of contemporary life, Aj Poop B’atz’ transcends time to serve as a model of Q’eqchi’ morality and symbol of Q’eqchi’ identity for many Chamelqueños, who strive to rebuild their indigenous identity following the Guatemalan Civil War. Since 2006, Kistler and her Guatemalan colleagues have worked to collect information about Aj Poop B’atz’s life, examine his twenty-firstcentury significance, and contribute to community efforts to revitalize Q’eqchi’ history. They collaborated with Chamelco’s municipal government to establish a holiday honoring Aj Poop B’atz’, hosted an ethnohis-

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toric symposium in his honor, and wrote a bilingual children’s book about his life for use in Chamelco’s schools. Kistler explores the link between Q’eqchi’ historical knowledge, power, and identity. Allen J. Christenson’s work (chapter 4) examines the story of Mapla’s Sojuel, a nineteenth-century figure from the Tz’utujil-Maya community of Santiago Atitlán. Sojuel is renowned for his strength and supernatural transcendence, and many Atitecos identify him as the source of their contemporary power. The practices and rituals that Sojuel left behind help to ensure the stability of the universe and the persistence of Tz’utujil life. Christenson argues that Sojuel’s regenerative role makes him liminal, as he is recognized as both a mortal human and an “ageless being.” In chapter 5, Stephanie J. Litka explores the life of Yucatec-Maya7 leader Jacinto Pat and the importance of the symbolic Talking Cross of Yucatán. Based on her long-term fieldwork in Yucatán, Mexico, and ethnographic interviews conducted in the region in 2015, Litka explores why contemporary Maya residents of the region identify Pat, a hacienda owner of Maya descent who fought for indigenous rights during the Caste War (1847– 1901), and the Talking Cross, which gained prominence during the war as a symbol of Maya resistance, as heroic. Litka examines Pat’s political involvement and looks at how his fight for indigenous equality and eventual demise help to build to his repute. Her study of this prominent figure and of the Talking Cross reveals how Maya communities use stories of historical and mythological figures to build historical memory and define their contemporary identities through the legacy of their past. Fernando Armstrong-Fumero’s contribution to this volume (chapter 6) examines the place of another iconic figure, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the discourse of contemporary Yucatec-Maya communities. According to local discourse, Carrillo Puerto used his work as an activist and his later political career as governor of Yucatán to fight for indigenous equality, women’s rights, and agrarian reform. Born of mixed descent, Carrillo Puerto claimed descent from sixteenth-century indigenous leader Nachi Cocom. His fluency in Mayan helped him to build a strong connection with rural indigenous communities in Yucatán. In commemorating him, national rituals and school curriculum celebrate Carrillo Puerto’s Maya heritage and self-sacrificing nature. Nevertheless, the local leaders who fought alongside him are absent from official national histories and are instead recognized as power-hungry, violent men who exploited those around them. Armstrong-Fumero explores the distinct ways that Carrillo Puerto and his collaborators are portrayed and how these portrayals reflect the processes that shape Mexican historical memory. Recognizing

Introduction / 17

these processes, he argues, is important as new indigenous political identities develop in Mexico through changes in the country’s national politics. Germana Catu, a well-known Maya midwife, helped to mediate conflicting approaches to health care, as Guatemalan authorities sought to integrate biomedical practices into Maya communities, as David Carey Jr shows in chapter 7. Through his analysis of historical documentation and oral history, Carey suggests that Catu, like other indigenous midwives, not only fought to maintain indigenous medicinal practices but sought to teach those outside of Maya communities about the value of such practices. By defending their livelihood and indigenous practices in this way, Maya midwives like Catu thwarted the state’s attempts to take away their autonomy. In exploring the life of this outstanding Maya heroine, Carey’s work reveals that both gender and ethnicity played important roles in defining public health and the practice of medicine in Guatemala. Using information recorded in historical documents, newspaper accounts, and speeches, in chapter 8 Betsy Konefal explores the valiant actions of the women who led resistance efforts during the Guatemalan Civil War. Following the 1978 massacre of Q’eqchi’-Maya farmers by the Guatemalan military in Panzós, many indigenous women took a public stand against oppression. Konefal examines the stories of several prominent Maya women, including Mamá Maquín, a community organizer killed during the massacre in Panzós, Guatemala; Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum; and Guatemala’s young pageant queens (reinas indígenas), who used pageant speeches to speak out against the repressive state in which they lived. Konefal argues that while these women might not have defined themselves as heroines, the prominence they achieved by bringing national attention to the Maya makes them noteworthy. Based on many years of fieldwork in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, Abigail E. Adams presents in chapter 9 the life story of Antonio Pop Caal, a prominent Q’eqchi’-Maya intellectual and founding leader of the Maya resurgence movement, who was brutally murdered in 2002. Attending seminary in Spain with the intention of becoming a Dominican priest, Pop Caal left the order because its theology conflicted with Maya spirituality. Back in Guatemala, he studied to become a Maya spiritual guide and led Maya cultural preservation efforts. After graduating with a law degree from the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City in the early 1980s, Pop Caal dedicated his life to serving Guatemala’s indigenous communities, both spiritually and legally. Returning to live in Alta Verapaz, he helped many Q’eqchi’ residents connect with elements of their indigenous identities that

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had been lost during decades of oppression. Today, Pop Caal is revered by many for his work to revive Maya spirituality. In this volume’s concluding chapter, Walter E. Little considers the question of how contemporary Maya communities define the concept of hero today and how many view this designation as problematic. The Kaqchikel handicraft vendors with whom Little has worked for years remain, as he says, “cynical” about the term “hero,” despite their economic involvement in two national holidays that commemorate national heroes. In discussing the correlation between their economic roles and their views of heroes, he explores why many Kaqchikel posit, in a seemingly contradictorily way, that “there are no heroes” and that all Mayas “are heroes.” Their critique of heroes not only challenges national hegemony but also gives insight into how the vendors use their economic participation to counter state and community patriarchy. By selling their goods to those outside the Maya community who commemorate these holidays, these vendors reject Ladino notions of indigenousness as tied to heroes and assert their own status as heroes.

Notes 1. In Q’eqchi’, the word “Poop” is pronounced as the English word “pope.” 2. We use modern Mayan orthographic tradition in the writing Tekun Umam’s name throughout this volume, but we use the old spelling of his name when discussing the national holiday that celebrates him, in accordance with official spelling of the holiday’s name. 3. I use the term “historicity” to refer to the making of history or the process of rewriting history based on alternative interpretations of historical events. 4. Due to the laconic nature of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions and passage of almost five hundred years between the florescence of the Classic Maya kingdoms and the arrival of the Spaniards, it is nearly impossible to identify those figures deemed heroic by the ancient Maya. While the hieroglyphic inscriptions give us an idea of which individuals were famous in ancient Maya politics, we have little information about their lives and or about any actions that would give them “heroic” status (Stanley Guenter, personal communication). For this reason, this volume does not include an analysis of Classic Maya heroes. 5. Western conceptions of heroism rarely highlight humility as a characteristic that elevates one to heroic status, but many Maya communities identify as heroic those who embody this trait, among other personal attributes. Stories of Aj Poop B’atz’, Mapla’s Sojuel, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and Kaqchikel market vendors highlight the value of humility as a characteristic worthy of recognition.

Introduction / 19 6. Throughout this volume, contributors offer in notes the original language versions of quotations translated and included in the text. The English translations of these quotations appear in the body of the main text and were all completed by the contributors unless otherwise noted. These quotations come from ethnographic interviews and published sources in Spanish as well as several Mayan languages, including Kaqchikel, Yukatek, and K’iche’. When these quotations come from previously published sources in a language other than English, they are cited and referenced in the main text. When they come from ethnographic interviews, no reference information is offered, in keeping with standard ethnographic practice. No translations are offered in notes for sources originally published in English. 7. We use modern Mayan orthographic traditions to refer to the names of other Maya groups and languages throughout this book, but we use the older, standard spelling “Yucatec” to refer to members of the Yucatec community, in accordance with the contributors’ preferences. When referring to the spoken language of this community, we use the spelling “Yukatek.” See the note 1 in Armstrong-Fumero’s chapter in this volume for elaboration on this decision.

1 Tekun Umam Maya Hero, K’iche’ Hero Judith M. Maxwell and Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma Chávez

On the morning of February 2, 1524, the Spanish forces led by Pedro de Alvarado, known to the Maya as “Tonatiw,” faced an army of Maya1 on the plains of Urbina, outside of Xelajub’ No’j, Guatemala. K’iche’ troops amassed from the communities of Xelajub’ No’j, Tamub’, Ilokab’, Uwila’, Ch’ulimal, Ab’ala’ Tz’ikin, Saqiya’, Pa Chiki’, Kabraqän, Tz’ab’iq’aq’, Chi Ajpub’, Raxacha’, Tukurub’, Koyo’, Saqkorowach, Saqmolob’, Tab’ij, Kaq’alaj, Xitk’aj, Poqom, Q’ojom, Chi Ch’ali’, and Utatlán. The Título Koyo’i’ (Carmack 1973:283) records that “mawi ajilam chi winäq, chuy, k’alab’, uq’o’”2 (the indigenous army [was so numerous] that the units of eight thousand, twenty, and four hundred could not be counted). The Título de la Casa Ixquin-Nehaib3 puts the size of the forces brought by the K’iche’ leader from Q’umarkaj, Tekun Umam, alone at ten thousand. A tremendous battled ensued, culminating in the confrontation of the two war leaders, Tonatiw and Tekun Umam. Tekun Umam slew Tonatiw’s horse, beheading it, then transformed into his nawal4 (spirit animal) and attacked Tonatiw from the air. Tonatiw, however, threw his lance through the bird’s breast. Falling to earth, Tekun Umam returned to his human form. Two attack dogs set upon the cadaver, but Tonatiw called them off. The Título Ixquin-Nehaib asserts that Tonatiw, taken by the beauty of Tekun Umam and his regalia, had his Tlaxcalan allies christen Xelajub’ No’j as Quetzaltenango (walled city of the quetzal). After Tekun Umam’s death, the K’iche’ were routed. The river Olintepeque ran red with blood. Tekun Umam’s bravery and prowess are recorded in three colonial era

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documents: the Título Ixquin-Nehaib, the Título Koyo’i’, and the Título de Ajpop Huitzitzil Tz’unun. These documents are summarized by Carmack (1973) and Carmack and Mondloch (2007). Dominican friars of the era made him a protagonist of their dance-drama auto de fé “La Conquista,” representing a heroic struggle doomed to fail against the espada y cruz (the sword and cross) of the Spaniards. He passed into legend, story, and song. In 1960, as the thirty-six-year genocidal war was brewing, Tekun Umam was declared a national hero by the Guatemalan government. Land for a monument was bought the following year and a colossal statue erected. The statue was moved to grace the Avenida Roosevelt, a major artery in the capital, Guatemala City, in 1965. His image was engraved on paper currency. Tekun Umam became a symbol of Guatemala. The meaning of this symbol is still contested, but his name and image are spread throughout the country. Some scholars reject Tekun Umam as a historical figure; others argue that he should represent Maya values and peoples but not the uneasy amalgam that is the modern nation. Others uncritically accept his image in public spaces and sing his anthem on February 20, while ignoring the values he embodies and (re)presents to the Guatemala people (see Little, chapter 10, this volume, for an additional discussion of the Tekun Umam holiday and controversy). Still others create community art and graffiti, using his visage to decry injustice, corruption, and impunity.

Tekun Umam Historical Sources Although Tekun Umam’s image is well known, appearing on public monuments, extra-urban buses, buildings, and the Guatemalan currency, some scholars, among them Lovell and Lutz (2013), Luján Muñoz and Cabezas Carcache (1994), and Lovell and Lutz (chapter 2, this volume), reject the idea that he was a real person. Lovell and Lutz (2013) criticize Ruud van Akkeren’s (2004) synthesis of early colonial documentary accounts and his conclusion that Tekun Umam was a historic personage. Three extant colonial documents give accounts of the battle at Pa Chäj. A fourth, Título del Ajpop Kecham, mentioned by Fuentes y Guzmán, is lost. A letter written by Tonatiw (Pedro de Alvarado) to Hernán Cortés two months after the encounter, recounts the battle and the death of one of the K’iche’ leaders: “In this [battle], one of the four men of this city of Utatlán died”5 (Alvarado 2000:20). Alvarado does not mention this leader by name. None of the extant títulos (documents) do. Rather they use the title “Tekun.” This title is probably etymologically related to the Nahuatl root //tekw-// (lord) and combined with //-(V)n//, a productive

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morpheme in K’iche’, which derives proper nouns and epithets from the names of days or offices. Other examples include “Tojin” (a proper name for a child born on the day Toj) or “Chajin,” a proper name for someone who serves as a guardian or guard, from //-chaj-ij// (to guard, protect, tend). The Título de Totonicapán (Carmack and Mondloch 2007) lists “Tekun”6 as a title of one of the quatripartite rulership under the K’iche’ king K’iqab’. Tekun, then, is a title rather than a name, per se. Unfortunately, “Umam,” likewise, is not a name, but a possessed noun, //u-// (his)7 + //-mam// (grandson). Two of the títulos refer to this hero simply as “Tekun.” The Título K’oyo’i’ adds the information that this holder of the office is the grandson of K’iqab’: “Great strong leader Adelantado Lord, the grandson of the K’iche’ king Don K’iqab’”8 (Carmack and Mondloch 1983:folio 36). The títulos do not record the proper name of this leader of the K’iche’ forces at the battle of Pa Chäj. His title of office and a relationship term have become his cognomen. The three extant títulos and the secondhand account rendered by Fuentes y Guzmán concur on many of the events of the fateful confrontation of the K’iche’ forces under Tekun Umam and the Spaniards led by Pedro de Alvarado (Tonatiw); there is some variation in detail. The nature of the avian nawal’s9 transformation from Tekun Umam is variously represented. His military tactics and the collaboration of other lineages are differently outlined by the authors and align with the land claims being made in these legal documents. The encounter with the mounted Tonatiw and Tekun Umam’s death by lance stroke are consistently recounted. All three remark on the beauty of Tekun Umam’s battle regalia. Two attribute the bestowal of the Nahuatl place name “Quetzaltenango” to Tonatiw’s admiration of his bravery and form. All also dwell on the tremendous loss of life suffered by K’iche’s after the defeat of their leader. The títulos give a rich description of the great confrontation between the K’iche’ and Spanish forces, and each highlights the duel of Tekun and Tonatiw. Notice the variations and similarities in the narration of this conflict in the excerpts that follow. The Título K’oyo’i’ records that Tekun Umam was ruling at Totonicapán (Chwi Miq’ina’) over the Tzijb’achaj canton. Before departing to defend the nation, he was feted for seven days. He joined forces with the leaders of other K’iche’ cities in Xelajub’,10 where they set forth to engage the Spanish troops. Seeking out his counterpart—the Spanish Adelantado (a noble Spanish title) Pedro de Alvarado—Tekun Umam, as a powerful warrior, transformed himself into his spirit animal pair, a bird. The K’oyo’i’ does not specify that the bird was a quetzal, though his battle dress in human form included quetzal feathers. As a bird, Tekun Umam attacked his

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mounted opponent, Tonatiw. On his first pass, he immobilized Tonatiw by beheading his steed. On his second swoop, however, Tonatiw pierced him with a lance, killing him. Gazing on his fallen foe, Tonatiw remarked on his raiment, particularly the three crowns11 and the quetzal plumes he wore. The K’oyo’i’ records that Tonatiw then asked his Nahuatl allies what the name of the nearby city was. After they replied, Tonatiw decreed: “Very good then, Quetzaltenango it is said, because here died a great captain, a fierce leader. . . . Let it be so-called henceforth”12 (Carmack 1973:303). The Neha’ib’ Título states that Tekun Umam arrived with ten thousand troops. He and the Iskin-Neha’ib’13 leader parlayed with Tonatiw, who was willing to accept a surrender, but Tekun Umam rejected this ultimatum and the battle began. After three hours of combat, Tekun Umam became an eagle14 to reach and confront Tonatiw. In his first attack, he beheaded Tonatiw’s mount. On the second attack, Tonatiw drove his lance through the bird’s breast. Falling to earth, Tekun Umam regained his human form, and Tonatiw was enthralled by the beauty of his form and his raiment. The Neha’ib’ (Recinos 1957:90) states, “Since the Adelantado [Alvarado] saw that this Indian was very handsome and that he wore three crowns of gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds and pearls,”15 he called off the attack dogs that were about to savage the body. Moreover, Tekun’s cadaver “was full of quetzal and other beautiful feathers, and for this reason the name ‘Quetzaltenango’ was given to the town, because there was where the captain Tekun died”16 (Recinos 1957:90). The third título, Huitzitzil Tz’unun (Gall 1963),17 records that Tekun Umam arrived with a host of troops and thirty-three standard-bearers. The Huitzil Tz’unun reports that not twice, but thrice, Tekun Umam in his avian18 form took flight and attacked Tonatiw. On his first pass, he did not manage to engage his enemy. On the second, he incapacitated the horse, beheading it. On the third, he was slain by Tonatiw’s lance. Although the document records Tekun Umam’s regalia, including three crowns (Gall 1963:45), “one of gold adorned with emeralds, another of plain gold, and another of brilliant stones,”19 nothing is noted of Tonatiw’s reaction to his attractiveness, his raiment, or his valor. The valor may be implied by the summary (Gall 1963:46): “Don Pedro de Alvarado, when the people of Don Tekun saw that he was dead, [the Spaniards] began to gather and pacify the troop of people that followed him.”20 The fourth título, Xekul, known through the writing of Fuentes y Guzmán (1969), recounts more battle strategy in general than the specifics of the culminating confrontation. Fuentes y Guzmán has Tekun Umam as the son of K’iqab’, noting that with K’iqab’s death he bequeathed rulership

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to his oldest son, Tekun Umam (Fuentes y Guzmán 1969). Paz Cárcamo (2006) notes that the K’iqab’, who, with the military support of Kaqchikels, greatly extended the borders of the K’iche’ nation, died in 1475, fifty years before the invasion. However, Fuentes y Guzmán identifies four K’iche’ rulers having the name or title K’iqab’. Assuming roughly twenty years for a generation, Tekun Umam could well be the –mam (grandson) of the famed Ajaw, K’iqab’. Fuentes y Guzmán recounts the battle of Tekun Umam and Tonatiw briefly and notes that Tekun Umam had transformed himself into “the form of an eagle or quetzal . . . that was arrayed in beautiful and luxuriant green plumes, decorated with resplendent jewels, gold and fine gems”21 (Fuentes y Guzmán 1969:94). Fuentes y Guzmán also states that others K’iche’ warriors had sufficient spiritual power to become their nawals: “Various forms of serpents and other reptiles”22 (Fuentes y Guzmán 1969:94). Tonatiw, unfazed by the attacks of the giant eagle/ quetzal and still mounted in this version of the history, killed the bird with a thrust of his lance, thus ending the life of Tekun Umam. The colonial documents attest to the presence of a great K’iche’ captain, one of four mentioned in Tonatiw’s letter to Cortés. The three extant indigenous documents identify him with the title of Tekun. In the K’oyo’i’, it is further specified that he is “umam rey K’iche’ Don K’iqab’.” The closest we come to having a name to associate with this title and kinship term is a note in Fuentes y Guzmán (1969:57), based on the now missing Xekul, that “the name of this prince was Tecún Umán [sic] and his surnames were ‘Tanub’ and ‘Zequechul.’[sic]”23 Tamub is an attested lineage name and appears among the K’oyo’i’ list of K’iche’ peoples who followed Tekun Umam to the battlefield. Zequechul appears as a ruling family surname in other contexts. Ximénez (1967) notes that Tonatiw later took two princes, Sinakan and Sekechul (see Lovell and Lutz, chapter 2, this volume), captive, carrying them off with his army to avoid their further resistance and agitation in Guatemala. But these surnames did not become attached to the legend that grew from the deeds of this K’iche’ captain, who, eschewing a submissive peace, led his people into a battle that left hundreds dead and rivers running red with their blood. The Legend(s) Two basic variants of the legend of Tekun Umam stand out, each with its own political and ideological connotations and trajectories. One version, once promulgated by the Guatemalan school textbooks, had Tekun Umam on foot facing Alvarado, who was mounted on his horse. In this version, Tekun Umam was unfamiliar with horses and riders and, thinking this being a centaur, beheaded the horse expecting to kill the being.

Tekun Umam / 25

This version conveniently overlooks the fact that the Maya had already had experience with horses and their riders, having seen both separately and together, even having tethered and fed the animals. It likewise omits the fact that Alvarado and Tekun Umam had parlayed before the battle, both on foot. This version of the story displays Tekun Umam as brave but ignorant, a characterization that is then projected surrogately on all Maya people. The bravest and best Maya warriors proved inadequate before the superior position of the Spaniards. The other variant, one linked to national and Maya pride and identity, focuses on the quetzal, Tekun Umam’s nawal. Paintings often depict Tekun Umam in his war regalia, quetzal plumes streaming from his headdress, and a quetzal flying over his head. In this version, Tekun Umam does not himself become the bird but fights on the ground in human form, with his spirit pair as his standard-bearer. When Tekun Umam falls, the bird, formerly a uniform regal green, lights on Tekun’s mortal chest wound and stains his own breast. To this day, the male quetzal’s bright red breast serves as an emblem of Tekun Umam’s lifeblood given for his people. Moreover, it is said that the quetzal cannot live in captivity. It is a symbol of freedom. This image accords with Tekun’s famous refusal of Tonatiw’s terms of surrender and servitude. In this version, the quetzal symbolizes Tekun’s valor and his determination to live free or die and has come to stand for Guatemalans’ love of liberty and valor. Interestingly, in neither version does Tekun Umam become the quetzal. Other colonial Maya documents attest to kipus, kinawal24 (the spiritual power, the transforming ability) of their leaders, especially the warriors. Fuentes y Guzmán (1969:94) reports that in battle K’iche’s “tried to use the art of enchantment and nawals: taking on this occasion the devil.”25 As intellectual acceptance of the possibility of physical transformation into one’s animal pair became less prevalent, Tekun’s relationship with his nawal morphed into one of kindred spirits and symbolic allegiance. As Maya educators gained a voice within the Ministry of Education, the racist first version of the legend was taken out of textbooks. The second version, although not printed in schoolbooks, remains a powerful narrative of resistance and love of liberty. National Hero In 1960, the Congreso de la República de Guatemala enacted the Decreto de Ley 1344 declaring Tekun Umam to be a national hero and “symbol of the defense of the Guatemalan nationality.”26 Historian J. Fernando Juárez y Aragón, introducing this bill, declared: “Respected Representatives: Tecún Umán [sic] embodies the authentic figure of the National

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Hero, but it yet remains for the Congress of the Republic, interpreting faithfully the thought of the people that it represents, to consecrate the eminent figure of the man [who is] the Guatemalan symbol and to institute a cult to the memory of this abnegated fighter who sacrificed his life in the cause of liberty”27 (Paz Cárcamo 2006:15). The bill passed and February 20 was declared “Tekun Umam Day.” This passage was a culmination of a rising tide of support for recognition of Tekun as a heroic symbol. In 1959, teachers at the Escuela Nocturna de Adultos Número 4 chose, from a list of possible school names generated by the ministry, the name Tecun Uman [sic] for their school. Profs. Antonio Ruíz Silva and Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Fajardo lauded this choice, penning a manifesto published by the Ministerio de Educación Pública. In the introduction to this manifesto, they characterize Tekun Umam as the most appropriate candidate, given that he was the first to defend “our soil from the foreign invasion, with a ferocity worthy of his race and worthy of the cause, he preferred to die rather than be a slave”28 (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959:5). Citing Fuentes y Guzmán, Recinos, Casteñeda Paganini, and the Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, they present a coherent narrative of a brave noble who gave his life for liberty and sovereignty. They designate his father as Oxi’ Kej and give Tekun’s title as “Hereditary Prince of the Crown” (Príncipe Heredero de la Corona) an office that carried with it the position of Commander in Chief of the K’iche’ Armies (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959:7). They recount his battle strategies: dividing his forces in three columns, with himself directing the fighting from the center. Putting a positive spin on the horrific indigenous losses, they state that Tekun and the K’iche’ forces were close to winning the day, although the cadavers of the dead hampered their freedom of movement in the fray. However, after the fateful confrontation with Alvarado, K’iche’s were vanquished and retreated, leaving behind “thousands of cadavers and among them that of the worthy descendant of K’iqab’, the prince TECUN [sic], WHO DIED FOR THE FREEDOM OF HIS HOMELAND”29 (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959:11). They refer to the legend of the quetzal: “We all know the legend of the death of the Quetzal, in the precise instant in which TECUN [sic] died, symbolizing thus our sacred bird given that: with the death of our leader, liberty also died, since the Quetzal cannot live in captivity, and for this great reason, [the quetzal] graces our flag representing thus the liberty of our nation”30 (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959:11). They concur with Salvador Falla, whom they quote: “TECUN UMAN [sic] is an historic legendary hero, whose name deserves to be perpetuated as a national

Tekun Umam / 27

monument”31 (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959:12). In closing, they come back to the moral refrain of Tekun Umam as a national symbol as the man who “WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING IN DEFENSE OF AMÉRICA AND OUR RACE”32 (Ruíz Silva and Martínez Fajardo 1959: 13). Notice the identification with nation and race. Tekun Umam in Dance Part of the lore of Tekun Umam is distilled from various librettos of performances of the dance-drama “Baile de la Conquista.” In 1957, Barbara Bode (1958) collected texts of the dance from seven communities: Concepción Chiquirichapa, Chichicastenango, Sacapulas, Cantel, Coatepeque, Rabinal, and Cobán. Many more have been recorded and published since. Cohodas (2014) uses the Bode collection transcripts and those from fourteen more communities. García and Izard (1991) studied the “Baile de la Conquista” as it was performed in the towns surrounding Lake Atitlán, adding another seven texts to the corpus and recording the last known dates of presentations in these towns. The speeches of Tekun Umam and Pedro de Alvarado place their characters in their historic trajectories. In the dance, as currently performed by the Grupo Folklórico San Cristóbal, Totonicapán (García and Izard 1991:407), Tekun declaims: “Strength and valor must obscure the power of my realm, so that I should not be denied vengeance, as I intend to raze all [the enemy troops]. To succeed, I need courage. To the battle once more, to capture as prisoners the invaders! Strength and valor, Tecum [sic], courage! Strength and life’s blood will run for the indigenous people, for their bold nobles. My homeland will one day see me in the azure of the sky as a bird in flight. Suspended on high, I will dig my sepulcher with the glory of the quetzal.”33 Note here that Tekun presages his death, while affirming the strength and courage emblematic of his heroism. He links himself to the quetzal in flight and in death (García and Izard 1991:407). Alvarado, speaking to his army, states, “Let the Spanish troops enter [the battlefield] with subtleties and deceits, we are gaining towns but you know that the Mams and Kaqchikels are skillful. . . . But before the blood and fire we must offer this [military] action to God and the Holy Spirit”34 (García and Izard 1991: 407). Rather than the courage and strength invoked by Tekun Umam, Tonatiw incites his troops to stratagems and deceits, warning them against the prowess of the allied indigenous forces. His final appeal is to two-thirds of the Christian trinity, reinforcing the moral lesson intended by the colonial priests who adapted the Spanish dance drama called “Moros y Cris-

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tianos,” celebrating the liberation of Spain from the Moors, to the viceroyalty of New Spain. This clarion call to and affirmation of conversion to Christianity appears in most versions of the dance, a consequence of the defeat of Tekun Umam and with him the old order. In the Castro Blanco (1962:200) text, one of Tekun Umam’s lieutenants, seeing his lord slain by Tonatiw, proclaims: “From today on I want to follow Alvarado’s religion. I want to be baptized and to be a true son of that humble lamb who died crucified.”35 Even as Tekun Umam dances his way to inevitable defeat, falling in performance after performance to the lance of Alvarado, he proclaims the values he embodies: strength, liberty, and the will to defend his people and his homeland. Performers, who see themselves as reenacting the past actions of their ancestors and those of the invaders, declaim their continued allegiance to these principles. Audiences, who may include skeptics of the historicity of the (re)enactment, hear an allegory that affirms shared and aspired-to ideals. Tekun Umam in Song In addition to these dance performances, many songs have been written in honor of Tekun Umam. Ixnal Cuma Chávez recalls the folk paean to Tekun Umam she learned as a child first attending school in 1974: “Tekun Umam, K’iche’ prince, brave captain, national hero. Tekun Umam, today I sing to you. I want to recall your glory again. You are in the jungles and the mountains, in the valleys forever. Your image is awesome, beloved son of the quetzal.” Luis and Rocael Hurtado, marimbistas (marimba players) from Xelajub’ No’j, exalt Tekun Umam with these lyrics: Our father, Tekun, your image is the embodiment of loyalty that in the dawning of the people shines where the Indian wrote liberty. The drum of the war dance sounds that in your breast, Tekún, was kindled. And it tells us in your millennial message that the nation in your faith dawned. Chorus: And it tells us in your millennial message that the nation in your faith dawned, because you raise the Indian banner where the K’iche’ people flourished. The central values embodied by Tekun Umam are exalted here again: loyalty, liberty, and the willingness to defend one’s homeland. Though it might seem paradoxical that indigenous resistance to invasion is lauded

Tekun Umam / 29

here, it is in the context of an inevitable, preordained defeat of indigenous lifeways. Notice that the K’iche’ people are cast as participants in a glorious past. Having once “flourished,” they give way, in the following verses of the song and in lived experience, to Christianity and Eurocentric acculturation. Many Mayas contest this relegation to the past. Burgos-Debray (1983: 229) quotes Rigoberta Menchú Tum as arguing that “Tecún Umán [sic] is a K’iche’ hero who is said to have fought against the Spaniards and been killed. So then the schools have a celebration each year. They remember [Tekun Umam Day] as the national hero of the K’iche’s. But we don’t celebrate that, because, in the first place, the elders tell us that, that hero is not dead. . . . For us it is a rejection to say that he was a hero, who fought and died, since they narrate the events in the past tense. They [non-Maya Guatemalans] commemorate his anniversary as something that represented the fight from those [long-ago] times. But for us the fight still exists; moreover, suffering still exists.”36 Tekun Umam in Poetry As early as 1949, Miguel Angel Asturias, poet laureate and Nobel literature prize winner, likewise penned an ode to Tekun Umam: “Tecún Umán [sic], he of the green towers, he of the tall green, green, green towers, and in Indian file, Indians, Indians, Indians, innumerable, like a hundred thousand leaf-cutter ants: ten thousand archers on cloud feet, a thousand shotslingers on aspen feet, seven thousand blow-gunners and a thousand axe blades on each summit, a butterfly wing fallen in an anthill of warriors” (Asturias 1949). This opening paints Tekun Umam as a scion of nature and leader of prodigious armed forces. The second stanza brings in the nawal quetzal and presages the death that inevitably awaits Tekun Umam and his Maya followers, men of corn, in the final verses: “Tecún Umán [sic], he of the green feathers, he of the long green, green feathers, he of the green, green, green, green, green feathers, Quetzal of various forms and wings mobile in battle, in the winnowing of the cobs of the men of corn that shelled are picked at and pierced by birds of fire, in the net of death among the loose stones” (Asturias 1949). Poets continue to find inspiration in the history of Tekun Umam. Yanes (2013) writes, “Pedro de Alvarado assassinated you, but your dreams did not die. Your desire for peace and liberty lived and united the Guatemalan people.”37 This modern paean casts Pedro de Alvarado as a villain. Rather than bravely facing Tekun Umam in personal combat, Tonatiw is

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characterized as an assassin. Tekun Umam as a symbol of peace and liberty now unites all the Guatemalan people. He is no longer a K’iche’ hero but a national one. “Tecún Umán [sic], national hero, symbol of unflagging defense, valiant fighter until the end, for your attributes you are admirable”38 (Yanes 2013). The Distaff Side Although unmentioned in the colonial documents, oral histories (Ajpub’ García Ixmatá, personal communication) also commemorate the heroism and wisdom of Tekun Umam’s wife, who is known simply as María Tekun. After the death of her husband, María Tekun gathered the families of the fleeing K’iche’ troops and retreated with them to the mountain fortification between Chwi Lay (Chichicastenango) and Tz’olöj Ya’ (Sololá). In this mountain refuge, she offered her people wise counsel and quiet leadership. With time, the families in exile returned to their homes and adjusted to life under Spanish rule. María Tekun remained in her mountain haven. When her people needed disputes adjudicated or wanted advice, they would trek to the hilltop to consult her. The mountaintop where she held court is known as Pixab’äj (Counsel Rock). Faithful petitioners still seek her advice there, performing ceremonies and invoking the intercession of the day patron Oxlajuj No’j39 (Thirteen Thought). Marriage is a rite of passage to adulthood for both modern and historic Maya communities. Our hero could not have held the title Tekun were he a bachelor. In the cofradía (saint’s day brotherhood) system, leadership is invested in a couple. Tekun Umam’s wife would have shared his title and responsibilities for the community. Unfortunately, we do not know anything about her family ties, so we cannot even adduce a relationship title, riy (her/his granddaughter), for her. María was ascribed to her post hoc as a sobriquet, but this strong woman is the necessary complement to Tekun Umam. In K’iche’ terms, “María Tekun ja utz’aqaat Tekun Umam” (María Tekun is the complement/completion of Tekun Umam).

Tekun Umam Today and Tomorrow Tekun Umam is an acknowledged national hero, incarnating the values of bravery, love of freedom, and self-abnegation for the good of one’s nation. Ironically, the nation that now hails him as a symbol and role model is not a K’iche’ or an indigenous state but one that is just beginning to entertain inklings of interculturality after thirty-six years of genocidal warfare in which thousands of Maya, Tekun Umam’s cultural heirs, were massacred. Otzoy (1999) asserts that, whereas he was clearly a K’iche’ cham-

Tekun Umam / 31

pion, the values he espoused are distorted when mapped onto the political and social reality then current in Guatemala. Still, Cuma Chávez40 recalls the February 20, Tekun Umam Day, school celebrations, standing by her desk singing “Tekun Umam, Principe K’iche’.” Although the song was not accompanied by a history lesson or reference to the 1524 battle, she recalls feeling a tiny thorn pricking her heart. Singing this hymn to bravery and courage, she sensed a connection that the teachers did not elucidate. She is convinced that Guatemalan schoolchildren, especially those of indigenous descent, need to know the history of this hero. They should know that he was the grandson of K’iqab’, governing peacefully in Totonicapán until called to defend the K’iche’ polity, and that his people feted him for seven days before sending him off at the head of legions to join the arrayed army in Xelajub’ No’j (Quetzaltenango). They should learn that he and other leaders met with Tonatiw prior to the battle and that he, speaking for the indigenous forces, eschewed surrender and acceptance of the Spanish terms. They should learn of his generalship, as detailed by Fuentes and Guzmán, culminating in the duel with Alvarado. They should learn of the bloody rout of the K’iche’ troops after Tekun Umam’s death. A Maya-friendly, intercultural school textbook would elucidate this history. The curriculum developers for the Dirección General de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural may now be able to draft such a book and distribute it to the schools, although the intercultural curriculum drafted in 2003–2004 still characterized Maya culture as “folklore” and pre-K textbooks had explicit exercises that were designed to teach Maya children that their central cultural tenet, that everything in the universe is sentient, is “absurd.” Failing a consciousness raising among the Ministry of Education writers, any of a number of Maya-operated editorial houses41 could bring out limited editions. Kawoq Cuma Chávez (personal communication), a Maya spiritual guide, believes that the quetzal should also be included in the relation. He finds the image of the nawal bird, formerly emerald green, alighting on its spirit pair’s chest and becoming henceforth stained with Tekun Umam’s blood, imbibing at the same time his fierce dedication to freedom, to be compelling and essential to understanding the values to be cherished, with or without a belief in transmogrification. Ixnal Cuma Chávez further holds that this history is of vital interest to adult Mayas, who have been divorced from their histories by Eurocentric education. Finally, Tekun Umam, with his female coessence, María Tekun, can, in fact, serve as symbols, role models, and mentors for all Guatemalans. As Maya couplet structure dictates naming women before men,42 María Tekun and Tekun Umam are Guatemalan national heroes.

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Conclusion Some scholars question the historicity of the Tekun Umam legend, but early colonial sources, both indigenous and Spanish, record the existence of a K’iche’ ruler and war leader who headed the K’iche’ forces at the battle of Pa Chäj. Although we do not know this K’iche’ lord’s day-name in the Maya ritual calendar (the name of the day of his birth) or his lineage name, we do know that he was regarded as the grandson of the famous K’iche’ Ajaw K’iqab’ and that he held the rank of Tekun. The identifying phrase “Tekun, umam K’iqab’” (earl, the grandson of K’iqab’) has been shortened to “Tekun Umam.” Killed on the field of battle in a determined effort to defeat the Spanish forces led by Tonatiw, Tekun Umam has become a symbol for all Guatemalans, both descendants of the resisting Maya and heirs of the invading Spaniards. He is taken as a symbol of courage, determination, and a love of liberty. The Congress of the Republic of Guatemala officially named Tekun Umam a national hero in 1960 and declared February 20 “Tekun Umam Day.” Before this nomination was made, the Guatemalan armed forces had conducted a study of his life and legend and had deemed him an appropriate candidate to become this national hero, a symbol to unite the nation. Since colonial times dancedramas sponsored by the Catholic Church as well as individual artists and poets have (re)presented Tekun Umam as a model of male pulchritude, indomitable spirit, and unflagging devotion to one’s people, nation, and freedom. Modern Maya scholars and leaders, such as Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Irma Otzoy, problematize the co-option of Tekun Umam by nonMaya, pointing out that Guatemalans of Maya descent are still engaged in a battle for their freedom and identity (Otzoy 2011). Wilhelm (1994:187) notes that some Kaqchikel teachers even deny his existence. María Tekun, Tekun Umam’s wife and complement, has not been recognized by the Guatemalan government or invested with heroic status, but in popular lore, she is revered as a worthy helpmate and leader in her own right, who led her people into a retreat when she advised and counseled K’iche’s under her care. Despite the popularity of the legend of the freedom-loving quetzal acquiring its red breast from its spirit pair Tekun Umam, the recorded history of Tekun Umam’s leadership in Totonicapán, Xelajub’ No’j, and on the plains of Pa Chäj is largely unknown and untaught in Guatemala. The school song in his honor is not supplemented with an examination of the history behind his heroic stand for liberty. The strength, wisdom, and resilience of his wife and his people are also absent from the official record. Nonetheless, Tekun Umam is a hero of the K’iche’ people, of the

Tekun Umam / 33

Maya people in resistance by extension, and of the Guatemalan government by official decree.

Notes 1. The term “Maya” here refers to peoples whose ancestry can be traced to the proto-Maya communities that flourished approximately 4000 years BP. The specific ethnic and lineage affiliations are as listed. 2. K’iche’ text is given in the modern official orthography rather than in the colonial script. 3. The full title of the título is Titulos de la casa Ixquin-Nehaib, Señora del Territorio Otzoya (Recinos 1957). For brevity, henceforth in this chapter, we refer to it as Ixquin-Nehaib. 4. The K’iche’ sources identify the bird as the kot (águila). But his battle raiment was studded with quetzal feathers and he is assumed to have a quetzal totem as well. 5. Original (Spanish): “En ésta murió uno de los cuatro señores de esta ciudad de Utatlán.” 6. K’iqab’ is mentioned by name, the other leaders by title: Qawisimaj, Tekun, and Tepepul. Both Tekun and Tepepul have Nahuatl origins. 7. //u-// is unmarked for gender of the possessor in K’iche’. In this context, we know it would translate as “his” since the reference is K’iqab’, a male K’iche’ ruler. 8. Original (K’iche’): “Nima rajpop achij Adelantado Tekum, umam rey K’iche’ Don K’iqab’.” Note: We have standardized the spelling of the K’iche’ lord’s name to what is most consistently represented in indigenous sources. 9. Some indigenous peoples of North and Central America believe in and practice nawalism. When Maxwell worked in San Mateo Ixtatán from 1973 to 1976, everyone in town knew at least one person who could transform. Cuma Chávez reports that a neighbor in Jun Ajpu’ (Santa María de Jesús), who regularly became a cat, died in 2014. Lakhota warriors may be able to become their spirit pairs if their connection is strong. An adept may be able to transform into more than one type of animal (Makato, personal communication). 10. Quetzaltenango. Quetzaltenango is a Nahuatl name, as the K’oyo’i’ título later states. The K’iche’ name for this city is Xelajub’ No’j. Unlike most Mayan place names, which have given way in public signage and official maps to the Nahuatl designators, Xela remains in active use, appearing on bus route labels and urban signs, and immortalized in popular song. 11. The K’oyo’i’ does not describe these crowns. The Neha’ib’ provides more detail. 12. Original (Kaqchikel): “Utzb’ala’ keje’ Ketzaltenanco b’acha rumal mixkam jun nimakapitan, tzay ajaw, . . . xawi are’ chub’inaa.” The modern

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

34 / Maxwell and Cuma Chávez name of this place is Quetzaltenango, a word that has the following origin: //ketzal-// (quetzal) + //tenam-// (walled city) + //-co// (a locative). Notice that in this document the Nahuatl name was already in use for the town. Alvarado simply affirms that this name should henceforth be taken as a paean to the fallen hero. The Neha’ib’ Título implies that the name was ab novo in aweful respect for Tekun Umam and regard for his physical beauty. 13. Izquin Nehaib in the colonial orthography. 14. The document specifies “eagle” as kot. 15. Original (Spanish): “Como vido el Adelantado que era muy galán este indio y que traía estas tres coronas de oro, plata, diamantes y esmeraldas y de perlas.” 16. Original (Spanish): “Venía lleno de quetzales y plumas muy lindas, que por este le quedó el nombre a este pueblo de Quetzaltenango, porque aquí es donde sucedió la muerte de este capitán Tekun.” 17. Huitzitzil is a Nahuatl name, based on huitzitzil (hummingbird) //witzil-// (hummingbird) //-C2V1// (diminutive.) Tz’unun is the K’iche’ word for hummingbird. This título supplies the lineage name in both Nahuatl and K’iche’. 18. Huitzitzil Tz’unun does not specify the type of bird. 19. Original (Spanish): “Una de oro guarnecida de esmeraldas, otra de oro solo, y otra de lúcidas piedras.” 20. Original (Spanish): “Don Pedro de Alvarado, y visto que por su gente del Don Tekun como ya era muerto se empezaron a recoger y a pacificar la máquina de gente que le seguían.” 21. Original (Spanish): “La forma de águila o quetzal . . . águila, que se vestía de hermosas y dilatadas plumas verdes, adornada de resplandecientes joyas, de oro y piedras finas.” 22. Original (Spanish): “Varias formas de serpientes y otras sabandijas.” 23. Original (Spanish): “El nombre de este príncipe era Tecún Umán [sic], y los apellidos, Tanub’, y Zequechul.” 24. See, for example, the Kaqchikel Chronicles (Maxwell and Hill 2006: 50) in the Xajil Chronicle, “Ja öq xuk’üt runawal, rujaleb’al ronojel ajlab’al.” “Then all the warriors manifested their nawal power, their transforming power” or referring to Q’aq’awitz’ as he prepared to have Kaqchikels settle with other K’iche’an groups along the Atitlán basin: (Kaqchikel) Kani xemakamo ruchinamit öq xik’o chi kaj Q’uq’uko rujaleb’al. “Immediately, his chinamït was frightened when he passed through the sky as the transform of Quetzal Eagle” (121). Notice here that this nawal is a quetzal-eagle blend, perhaps the same avian avatar associated with Tekun Umam. 25. Original (Spanish): “Trataron de valerse del arte de los encantos y naguales: tomando en esta ocasión el demonio.” 26. Original (Spanish): “Símbolo de la defensa de la nacionalidad guatemalteca.” 27. Original (Spanish): “Señores Diputados: Tecun Uman (sic), encarna la figura auténtica del Héroe Nacional, pero hace falta, que el Congreso de la

Tekun Umam / 35 República, interpretando con fidelidad el pensar del pueblo que representa, consagre la egregia figura del hombre símbolo guatemalteco e instituya el culto a su memoria el abnegado luchador que sacrifice su vida en aras de la libertad.” 28. Original (Spanish): “Nuestro suelo de la invasión extranjera, con la fiereza digna de su raza y digna de la causa, él que prefirió morir antes que ser esclavo.” 29. Original (Spanish): “Millares de cadáveres y entre ellos él del digno descendiente de Quicaba [sic], el príncipe TECUN, QUE MURIO POR LA LIBERTAD DE SU PATRIA.” 30. Original (Spanish): “De todos nosotros es conocida la leyenda de la muerte del Quetzal, en los precisos instantes en que moría TECUN [sic], simbolizando así nuestra ave sagrada que: muerto nuestro caudillo, muere con él la libertad ya que el Quetzal no puede vivir en cautiverio, y por ese gran motivo embellece nuestra bandera representando así la libertad de nuestra patria.” 31. Original (Spanish): “TECUN UMAN [sic] es un héroe histórico legendario, cuyo nombre merece ser perpetuado con un monumento nacional.” 32. Original (Spanish): “QUIEN SACRIFICÓ TODO EN DEFENSA DE AMÉRICA Y NUESTRA RAZA.” 33. Original (Spanish): “Fuerza, valor, hay que ocultara, y de mi reino la fujanza. No me neguéis la venganza, porque todo pretendo arrazar [sic]. Para poder lograr, me es necesario el valor. A de nuevo en el combate; traer por todo rescate prisionero al invasor. Fuerza, valor, Tecum [sic] valentía; fuerza, sangre raudal que correrá por el mansehual, por su atrevida hidalguía. Mi patria verá algún día que yo en el azul del cielo como ave sacan mi vuelo. Suspendido en las alturas cavaré mi sepultura con gloria por el quetzal.” 34. Original (Spanish): “Que entra la tropa de España con sutilezas y mañas, vamos ganando los pueblos pero ya sabéis que son diestros los Mames y Kaqchikeles. . . . Pero que antes que a sangre y fuego tengamos que someter a Dios y Espíritu Santo esta acción se ha de ofrecer.” 35. Original (Spanish): “Yo desde hoy quiero seguir la religión de Alvarado. Ya quiero ser bautizado y ser hijo verdadero de aquel humilde cordero que murió crucificado.” 36. Original (Spanish): “Tecún Umán [sic] es el héroe quiché [sic] que se dice que peleó contra los españoles y luego lo mataron. Entonces en las escuelas hacen una fiesta cada año. Recuerdan el Día de Tecún Umán [sic] como héroe nacional de los quichés [sic]. Pero nosotros eso no lo celebramos porque, en primer lugar, dicen los papás, que ese héroe no está muerto . . . para nosotros es como un rechazo decir que fue un héroe, que peleó y murió, pues, lo narran en el pasado. Se celebra su aniversario como algo que representó la lucha en aquellos tiempos. Pero para nosotros existe la lucha todavía y más que todo existe el sufrimiento.” 37. Original (Spanish): “Pedro de Alvarado te asesinó, pero tus sueños no

36 / Maxwell and Cuma Chávez murieron. Tu anhelo de paz y libertad vivió [sic] y la población chapina unieron [sic].” 38. Original (Spanish): “Tecún Umán, [sic] héroe nacional, símbolo de defensa incansable, luchador valeroso hasta el final, por tus atributos eres admirable.” 39. Oxlajuj No’j is the day patron of the main altar on the mountaintop. It is possible that María Tekun herself was born on a No’j date. It is also possible that the No’j energy was already immanent in the area, making it a propitious site to locate the community in exile and the seat of judgment. This mountain has been leased to a mining company, and although Maya spiritual daykeepers (ritual office holders) successfully blocked the dynamiting of the hillside for five years, the judicial stay has expired. 40. Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma Chávez, coauthor of this chapter, specified here in distinction to her brother cited below. 41. Leading presses include Nawal Wuj, Cholsamaj, Maya Wuj, Q’anilsa, Saqb’e, Saqil Tzij, and Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala. 42. E.g., te’ej tata’aj (mothers, fathers); qati’t qamama’ (our grandmothers, our grandfathers); xtani’, alab’oni, ixoqi’, achi’a’ (girls, boys, women, men).

2 Unsung Heroes Cahí Ymox, Belehé Qat, and Kaqchikel Resistance to the Spanish Invasion of Guatemala, 1524–1540 W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz

Even though his very existence is disputed, the K’iche’ lord Tekun Umam exercises a hold on the national psyche of Guatemala like no other figure, Maya or non-Maya, in the country’s dark, embattled history (see also chapters 1 and 10, this volume). Reputed to have been slain by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in man-to-man combat on the plains of Quetzaltenango in 1524—Alvarado, although never one to miss an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, makes no mention of this feat— Tekun Umam has been seized on to embody the causes of parties as ideologically contrary as the Guatemalan army and Maya peoples who lobby for indigenous rights in a nation forged from the outset on their exploitation and exclusion.1 Overlooked in the search for a national hero are Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat, two Kaqchikel rulers who spearheaded opposition to the Spanish invasion after their K’iche’ counterparts had capitulated.2 Following a short-lived alliance, much misconstrued and misinterpreted, as skewed in the Maya imaginary as in Guatemalan historiography writ large, Kaqchikel resistance lasted more than five years (1524–30) only to flare up again as the 1530s unfolded, there being no concession on the part of heavy-handed Alvarado to lessen the native burden. The combative stance of the Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox and the Ahpoxahil Belehé Qat, known respectively to the Spaniards as Sinacán or Sinacam and Sequechul or Sacachul, was acknowledged by historian Daniel Contreras (1965) fifty years ago, but his championing of their heroic role has not gained widespread resonance, not least in Guatemala itself.3 We seek to advance the

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case made by Contreras by reprising pertinent data engaged by us previously and also by recourse to extracts from the Libro Segundo de Cabildo, which documents the proceedings of the city council of Santiago de Guatemala spanning the years between 1530 and 1541.4

Documentary Sources and Historical Context The source materials at our disposal are scant, a miniscule part of a much more voluminous body documenting K’iche’ culture and civilization. Carmack (1973) remains our best guide to their provenance, critical analysis, inherent worth, biases, and limitations and the challenges posed by any reading or interpretation. Foremost among them are the Kaqchikel annals known as the Memorial de Sololá, translated deftly into Spanish by Adrián Recinos in 1950 and then into English with Delia Goetz in 1953. Recinos and Goetz (1953:117) tell us that Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat “were elected kings on the day 1 Can [August 11, 1521] after the death of the kings Hunyg and Lahuh Noh,” who succumbed (as had so many) to a “truly terrible” epidemic that “enveloped our fathers and grandfathers” some two years before, an outbreak of sickness that may have been smallpox, measles, influenza, or pulmonary plague, or a devastating combination of two or more of them (Lovell 2001). Besides Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat, Borg (2003:23) informs us, the Kaqchikel community had two other rulers, an Ahpotukuché and an Ahporaxonihay, “who had considerably less power than the Ahpozotzil and the Ahpoxahil.” Cahí Ymox (Four Lizards) was the head of the Zotzil amaq’ (lineage), Belehé Qat (Nine Loads of Corn) head of the Xahil clan. Iximché lay at the heart of the Kaqchikel homeland (fig. 2.1) and exercised its authority, by force if necessary, over a hinterland that embraced Jilotepeque and Sacatepéquez as well as Tzololá, whose kin were “often defensively hostile,” indicating that “being Cakchiquel” (as Borg 2003:37 puts it) “did not mean being on good terms with Iximché.” While the Ahpozotzil and the Ahpoxahil each resided in separate royal quarters at Iximché, the latter did so beholden to the former. The tables were turned, however, when it came time to record for posterity: composing the Memorial de Sololá became exclusively an undertaking of the Xahils, the scribes Francisco Hernández Arana and Francisco Díaz in particular, who took care to list the accomplishments of their clan or lineage over those of Zotzils, one of several factors to bear in mind when consulting the source. Cahí Ymox is thus afforded less attention at critical junctures in the Kaqchikel narrative than one would like, all the more so given his actions (and his fate) after the demise of Belehé Qat, who predeceased him.

Figure 2.1. Selected historical sites of Guatemala; courtesy of Jennifer Grek Martin

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Their ascent to joint if unequal leadership meant that they had ruled for almost three years prior to meeting Alvarado and welcoming him, face to face, in Iximché on April 12, 1524. Alvarado, the Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:121) states, appeared “well disposed toward the kings when he came to the city,” and for good reason: “There had been no fight,” which made him “pleased when he arrived.” His pleasant disposition was not to last long. What led Kaqchikels, with Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat at the helm, first to court the Spaniards and side with them, only to reverse course after barely six months? We contemplate Mesoamerican contact scenarios before considering what precipitated that dramatic turnaround, examining differing views of how the Kaqchikel rebellion is portrayed in contemporary sources. Turning to indigenous records as well as Spanish ones, we complement the dominant European version of events by articulating the uprising from a native point of view, leaning especially on the Memorial de Sololá. We reconstruct the uneven course of conquest, as much an indigenous enterprise as a Spanish one, which saw Jorge de Alvarado temporarily assume command after his brother, Pedro, left to attend to personal matters and affairs of state in Spain in 1526. With the return from Spain of Don Pedro—Kaqchikels called him “Tunatiuh” or “Tonatiw,” meaning “The Sun,” so identified on account of the conquistador’s fair hair and handsome complexion—we chart Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat’s surrender to him in 1530. The laying down of arms, however, proved fleeting: after the ignominious death of Belehé Qat in 1532, Cahí Ymox once again rallied his people to rebellion, giving his all in an ill-fated bid to free them from colonial subjugation.

The Kaqchikel Alliance Why did Kaqchikels initially choose to cast their lot with the Spaniards? In the conquest of Mexico, Tlaxcala aligned itself with the Spaniards against their powerful enemies, Aztecs, and thereafter played a critical role in the successful Spanish campaign. The Tlaxcalan-Spanish alliance endured and had consequences far beyond central Mexico. Their prominence in Alvarado’s army led to Tlaxcalans afterward being exempted from the onerous taxes and labor obligations imposed on Guatemala’s indigenous communities, albeit a special status that they had to lobby hard to maintain (Matthew 2012). Kaqchikels, usually with pejorative implications of being traitors to indigenous resistance, have been referred to as the Tlaxcalans of Guatemala (Polo Sifontes [1977] 2005; Matthew 2007; van Akkeren 2007). The comparison is as unflattering as it is inaccurate.

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Certainly, the two polities shared similar concerns. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, both were in conflict with strong neighboring states. Tlaxcala, however, was in a far weaker position in relation to rule from Tenochtitlán than Kaqchikels were with respect to K’iche’s, for the situation in Guatemala at Spanish contact had become a contest between equals. The Kaqchikel decision to side with the Spaniards is difficult to resolve. How, for example, did Kaqchikels assess their rivals—K’iche’s, Tz’utujils, and Pipils—against the might of the Spaniards? How could Kaqchikels have known that the Spaniards would come and stay, when the more familiar Aztec strategy in their pursuit of empire was to govern indirectly from a distance? Could they have known that the Spaniards would focus for the most part on the business of tribute and commerce after subjugation had been attained? While all possible motives may elude us, in the early months of conquest, the Kaqchikel alliance proved to be a viable strategy for survival compared to what happened to K’iche’s, who fought the invaders on their arrival and paid dearly for it. We do well to remember that the breakaway people from Iximché bore nothing but animosity for their former masters, K’iche’s, so aligning themselves with a third party intent on subduing their arch enemies would have had logical appeal. In two letters to Hernán Cortés, his commanding officer and exalted mentor, Alvarado is unforthcoming about whether Kaqchikels fought alongside the Spaniards and their Mexican allies in the opening battles of conquest. Kaqchikel engagement on the Spanish side is not registered until after the fall of Utatlán, when Alvarado asked their leaders to send him reinforcements to consolidate control over the K’iche’ capital and surrounding countryside. The Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:120– 21) confirms compliance: “Soon a messenger from Tunatiuh came before the kings to ask them to send him soldiers: ‘Let the warriors of the Ahpozotzil and the Ahpoxahil come to kill the Quichés [sic],’ the messenger said to the kings. The order of Tunatiuh was instantly obeyed. Only the men of the city went; the other warriors did not go down to present themselves to the kings. The soldiers went three times . . . to collect . . . tribute from the Quichés [sic].” These lines hint at what Kaqchikels might have expected from casting their lot with the Spaniards, even if they do not reveal the rationale for doing so entirely: appear to obey orders, negotiate terms, serve as accomplices if not co-conquistadors, and function thereafter as collectors of tribute rather than be obliged to pay copious amounts of it. “How local elites drew on Mesoamerican traditions of alliance formation to deal with the Spanish invasion,” assert Michel Oudijk and Matthew Restall (2007:43–44), is “the real story” of the conquest. They draw on Ross Hassig’s depictions of “pre-conquest political organization and im-

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perial strategy” to shed light on contact situations whereby “members of such alliances were not centrally controlled” and did not share “a common ethnic identity” but instead sought to function as “special-purpose institutions, arising from perceived needs and persisting as long as needs were satisfied.” Restall (2010:191) also observes that, in the Aztec empire as well as during the war that brought about its calamitous demise, “Mesoamerican city states were aware that forging an alliance with an imperial aggressor might help preserve their status.” His observation certainly fits the Kaqchikel case. Asselbergs (2004:95–96) concurs. “When the Spaniards arrived,” she notes, “they were immediately incorporated into this Mesoamerican system. Their arrival was regarded by many as an opportunity to establish a new alliance through which they could turn the existing socio-political relationships to their advantage.” Furthermore, she asserts, “indigenous communities did not regard their [subjugation] to the Spanish Crown as a humiliation, but instead as an alliance of two equal forces [that], together, would be able to conquer other communities.” Again, her reasoning helps us understand better Kaqchikel maneuvers. Oudijk and Restall (2007:57) emphasize that native texts like the Memorial de Sololá, imperfections and all, portray “a far more complex process of alliances and negotiations” and proffer a view of colonial confrontation in Guatemala “as a continuation of pre-colonial processes of conquest and domination,” which augment our analysis. In his ruminations on Kaqchikel actions, Francis Polo Sifontes ([1977] 2005:44–45) sets up “premises” and “hypotheses” that allow him to envision two “alternative” responses to the invasion. He lays them out as follows: Option 1: Voluntary submission to Spanish rule, which for indigenous peoples entailed (1) paying tribute with men, in order for them to participate in the conquest of other territories; (2) paying tribute in gold, as dictated in the terms of surrender; and (3) paying tribute in provisions so as to feed the invading army, an onerous obligation given the many such mouths to feed. Option 2: Involuntary submission through force of arms, which thereafter entailed (1) the enslavement of members of the vanquished group, branded as slaves of war later sold at public auction to enrich the victors; (2) paying considerable tribute in gold; and (3) seizure of goods and provisions. Polo Sifontes ([1977] 2005:13, 45) argues that Kaqchikel actions caused them to suffer the consequences of both options, in effect a “double pun-

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ishment” for first having aligned themselves with the Spaniards only subsequently to revolt and be defeated. While other native polities in Guatemala chose Option 2 and fared accordingly, he contends that “on Cakchiquel [sic] shoulders the burden of conquest fell twice,”5 adding that “the Cakchiquels [sic], feisty and inured to war, were probably exploited by the Conquest even more than any of their neighbors.”6 If the precise date of the Kaqchikel alliance cannot be pinned down, we are on firmer ground as to when collaboration ended and resistance began: August 26, 1524. That was the day, the Memorial de Sololá records, “we abandoned the city of Yximché,” the Kaqchikel stronghold, and “scattered ourselves under the trees” to “fight against Tunatiuh” (Recinos and Goetz 1953:124–25). What triggered such a radical volte-face, and what were the long-term implications for Spanish goals?

From Friend to Foe By all accounts, Pedro de Alvarado had an explosive temperament. Recinos’s biography of the conquistador furnishes abundant examples of how Alvarado’s volatile behavior not only eroded native welfare but also jeopardized Spanish interests. A case in point are his actions after his return to Iximché on July 21, 1524, following an unsuccessful foray with his then Kaqchikel allies to conquer what is today western El Salvador. Incensed at returning from the campaign with insufficient booty and hurting badly from a wound to his leg, an agitated Alvarado (Recinos and Goetz 1953:123–24) issued the Kaqchikel elite with a demand for gold: “Then Tunatiuh asked the kings for money . . . as they did not bring [it] to him immediately, Tunatiuh became angry with the kings: ‘If you do not bring with you all of the money of the tribes, I will burn you and I will hang you,’ he said to the lords.” The text continues: “The kings tried to have the amount reduced, but Tunatiuh did not consent: ‘Get the metal and bring it within five days. Woe to you if you do not bring it! I know my heart!’ Thus, he said to the lords.” A dramatic sequence of events ensued, involving “an agent of the devil.” The Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:124–25) informs us: “They had already delivered half of the money to Tunatiuh when a man, an agent of the devil, appeared and said to the kings: ‘I am the lightning. I will kill the Spaniards; by the fire they shall perish. When I strike the drum, [everyone] depart from the city. This I will do on the day 7 Ahmak [August 26, 1524].’ Half of the money had already been delivered when we escaped.” Their lords listened to, and believed in, “that demon.” The Kaqchikel account continues: “On the day 7 Ahmak we accomplished our flight [and] abandoned Yximché. ‘Tuna-

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tiuh will surely die at once,’ they said. ‘Now there is no war in the heart of Tunatiuh, now he is satisfied with the metal that has been given him.’” The “agent of the devil,” most likely a warrior-priest or soothsayer, however, failed to deliver: Alvarado did not die, nor was he “satisfied with the metal” given him. And he had plenty of war still left in his heart, even if the toll of the expedition to El Salvador, along with the departure of many native allies back to Mexico, prevented him from waging it with the requisite force to bring about a speedy end to the Kaqchikel insurrection. The Memorial de Sololá states: “Ten days after we fled from the city, Tunatiuh began to make war upon us. On the day 4 Camey [September 5, 1524], they began to make us suffer. We scattered ourselves. . . . All our tribes joined in the fight against Tunatiuh. The Spaniards . . . went out of the city, leaving it deserted.” By insisting that they deliver an inordinate amount of tribute or suffer the consequences for not doing so, Alvarado’s actions turned allies into enemies and an asset into an adversary and sparked a costly insurrection that was to drag on for years.

The Kaqchikel Rebellion The Kaqchikel rebellion is one of the murkiest episodes in Guatemalan history. From early times, views of it have varied significantly. Even Francisco Vázquez (1647–1714) and Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán (1643– 1700), close friends, fellow chroniclers, and criollos, born in Latin America with near pure European descent, have markedly different comments, although they both share valuable information. Regarding the Memorial de Sololá, Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:74) may have consulted the source while composing his chronicle for he invokes key passages from it.7 He cites Kaqchikel record keepers in one excerpt: “They write that before them appeared a Caxtok, the one who deceives, and in their word and belief means the devil, and he said to them: ‘What do you expect from the few strangers that have stayed in Almolonga? Tonatiúh has left already for Spain, and many foreigners (this is how they refer to Spaniards) have gone with him. What are you afraid of? I am the flash of lightning. I will make dust and ashes of them, I will wipe them out. Do you wish to live as the slaves of such cruel people?’”8 Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:40) makes clear that he is extracting this information from an indigenous source. “So it is written in their accounts by the Indians themselves,” he records. “Caxtok, devil and deceiver, well his false promises it was that caused these rebellions and inopportune disturbances.”9 Judging from translations into Spanish made by Recinos (1950:129)

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and Simón Otzoy (1999:187) of an identical or similar passage, Vázquez captures a sense of the Kaqchikel text reasonably well. The same cannot be said, however, of his reading of other contemporary sources. He dates the rebellion as having ignited in 1526, not 1524, because of excesses inflicted not by Pedro de Alvarado but his brother Gonzalo. The turmoil occurred, he alleges, after Pedro had departed Guatemala. “That gentleman” (este caballero), Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:73–74) writes of Gonzalo, “sought to take advantage of the opportunity to enrich himself. He imposed on the well-populated town of Patinamit [Iximché] an abnormal levy of tribute.”10 This demand, the Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz, 1953:129) makes clear, was made by Pedro, not Gonzalo de Alvarado, and took place in 1530, not 1526. According to Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:40, 77), Gonzalo and his men were so hard pressed when Kaqchikels rebelled that they were forced to retreat to Quetzaltenango and nearby Olintepeque. There they are said to have licked their wounds, awaiting the return of their commander in chief. Pedro de Alvarado led what Vázquez depicts as a veritable reconquest of Kaqchikel country by targeting Nimaché, the “Great Forest,” a mountainous redoubt to the east of Tecpán, Guatemala, where the two leaders of the uprising were hiding out, “rebellious and obstinate” to the end. The Ahpozotzil and the Ahpoxahil, however, proved no match for Alvarado. Both Kaqchikel kings, Vázquez declares, were “emprisoned, they were trophies of victory, . . . until the year 1540.”11 He is adamant about Alvarado’s “noble and Christian intentions”: even though the leaders of the revolt were “evil and obstinate,” they were neither “hanged” nor “burned” but kept alive, “and it is believed that Alvarado would have taken them with him” on a voyage he planned to make to the Spice Islands. In the Recordación florida, the version of events offered by Fuentes y Guzmán ([1690–99] 1882–83, 2:155–63) shortly after Vázquez penned his chronicle may be summarized as follows. In 1526, Kaqchikels—led by Cahí Ymox, whom the Spaniards referred to as Sinacán or Sinacam, and K’iche’s, led by a king called Sequechul—joined forces and rebelled, their belligerent actions creating havoc in towns that remained loyal and obedient, often “disrupting the entry of provisions into the [capital] city of Goathemala”12 from their base atop a mountain near Quetzaltenango. The uprising took place when Pedro de Alvarado was in Spain. Pedro de Portocarrero, serving as acting governor, assembled an army that advanced toward Quetzaltenango to crush native unrest. A strategic assault caused “disarray and confusion” among the rebels, but they capitulated only after “valiant resistance” (valiente resistencia). Recruited by Portocarrero from towns friendly to the Spaniards, a “goodly number of Indian

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bowmen” are said to have played a decisive role. Among those who surrendered were Sinacam and Sequechul, who were taken captive and imprisoned “for fifteen years, until Don Pedro de Alvarado left for the Spice Islands or the Molucas.”13 After Vázquez and Fuentes y Guzmán had their say, Francisco Ximénez —born, raised, schooled, and made a member of the Dominican order in Spain, and so of a very different outlook than the two criollo cronies— took both chroniclers to task for their portrayal of the rebellion, erroneous on several crucial points. Ximénez has especially severe criticism to level at Fuentes y Guzmán. A manuscript copy of the former’s Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala (1715–20) is housed in the Biblioteca Provincial de Córdoba, close to Ximénez’s birthplace in his beloved Écija. In it, Ximénez indicates he had the work of his two predecessors in mind when he was composing, for he makes mention of them repeatedly in his text. “Not all native groups rose up,”14 he states. “The Quiché [sic] region did not rise up, nor did they have a king called Zequechul [sic]. This person would have been some other powerful Cacchiquel [sic] ruler.”15 Ximénez ([1715–20] 1929–31, 1:152–53), however, who had the Popol Vuh to draw on but not, it seems, the Memorial de Sololá, is himself not above reproach, for he too considers the revolt to have begun in 1526, regarding it “as little more than a ploy to gain some respite from tyranny”16 and chastising Vázquez and Fuentes y Guzmán for depicting it otherwise. Kaqchikels tell a different story. So, too, does Daniel Contreras.

Constructing a Counternarrative Contreras (2004c:54) laments that “the account of the war against the Spaniards takes up hardly ten brief paragraphs in the Memorial de Sololá, without going into much detail. What it has to say, however, is of particular importance because information is accompanied by dates that anchor the rebellion properly in time.”17 Even though the Kaqchikel account is at odds with the chronology of the chroniclers, he considers it “the more reliable source,”18 indicating that rebellion “broke out in 1524 and was still going on in 1530.”19 Contreras regrets, however, that “the authors of the Memorial de Sololá did not include entries about the resistance of other native peoples who, according to the chroniclers, also rose up in arms, following the Kaqchikel example,”20 among them the Poqomams of Mixco, the Pipils of Cuzcatlán, a group of Tz’utujils in the Atilán region, and Mam peoples in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. We do well to work with the extant sources as diligently as possible, listening to native voices as we place their testimony alongside the better-known Spanish record.

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Contreras (2004a:70–76) takes issue with Fuentes y Guzmán’s depiction of the Kaqchikel uprising as the embryo of the “Fiesta of the Volcano.” Instead, it should be called the “Dance of the Conquest of Guatemala,” which he insists it is. In a dance representing the conquest of Guatemala, he asserts, “the character who, for historical reasons, ought to represent Guatemala was the Apozotzil [sic] Kahi’ Imox, also known as Sinacán, the most notable indigenous leader of his time.”21 Contreras stresses that “the hero of the modern and better-known “Dance of the Conquest,” Tecún Umán [sic], had but the briefest moment of glory, falling in one of the first armed confrontations. Most certainly he never got to know [Pedro de] Alvarado, who found out about the death of the Lord of Utatlán after he had fallen on the field of battle, not in man-to-man combat with him. Had that been the case, Alvarado would surely have informed Cortés. Legend and folklore have converted he who we suppose was named Tecún Umán [sic] into a heroic symbol of indigenous resistance against the Spaniards.”22 In Contreras’s view, a man worthier of hero status has been passed over. “Almost no-one today remembers the Apozotzil [sic] Kahi’ Imox, the rebellious Sinacán,” he rues, “but during the colonial period his name was never forgotten, nor his act of rebellion, as each year on the occasion of royal festivities was celebrated what Fuentes y Guzmán called ‘the admirable and splendid Fiesta del Volcán,’ which evoked the struggle of Sinacán and B’elehe’ K’at, the leaders of the Kaqchikel revolt.”23 Contreras finds support for his counternarrative in the work of Recinos (1952:105), who states: “It is clear that the demands and threats of Alvarado were what sparked the Cakchikel [sic] rebellion. So great they were that they obliged his former friends and allies to abandon their homes and flee to the mountains. Too late did the trusting lords comprehend that they had sacrificed the freedom of their people.”24 Recinos (1953:19) points out that “Spaniards themselves denounced Alvarado for his extortions as well as his acts of violence against the natives, and thus originated the criminal proceedings instituted in Mexico in 1529.”25 For his part, Alvarado denied any wrong doing, defending himself with a mix of denial and assertions of his own: “I declare that I never abused the lords. . . . If they did give me some gold, I could receive it, it was because I was entitled to it. . . . I did not compel anyone to deliver gold. I deny this reason why the Indians rose up in arms. . . . This they do commonly, resorting to crude warfare, . . . digging pits with stakes placed at their bottom, covering the tops of them with branches, earth, and grass, into which horses fell and Christians were killed or wounded.”26 On the last point, native scribes (Recinos and Goetz 1953:125) agree, documenting their offensive thusly: “Then the Cakchiquels began hostilities against the Spaniards. They dug holes

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and pits for the horses and scattered sharp stakes so that they should be killed. Many Spaniards perished and the horses died in the traps. . . . The Quichés [sic] and the Zutuhils [sic] died also. Only thus did the Spaniards give them a breathing spell.” The fighting that broke out in September 1524 either resumed or was already underway again a year later, for the Memorial de Sololá records that “the war with the Spaniards continued.” By this time, Alvarado “had moved” the base of Spanish operations “to Xepau,” a place that Contreras (2004a:55–56) reckons lay some seventeen kilometers north of Iximché. From an encampment at Xepau, the Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:125–26) acknowledges, “they made war on us and killed many brave men.” To Xepau in the spring of 1525 came much-needed reinforcements in the form of two hundred Spanish soldiers under the command of Pedro de Briones, sent by Cortés from Honduras with a number of native auxiliaries. While Pedro de Alvarado headed off in an unsuccessful attempt to rendezvous with Cortés, Briones joined ranks with Gonzalo de Alvarado and Diego de Rojas in keeping up the onslaught against Kaqchikels. (Recinos 1952:112–13; Kramer 1994:42). Rojas claims that the Spaniards made some gains, to such an extent that, on Don Pedro’s return to Xepau, a Kaqchikel delegation went to meet him with overtures of peace. If this did occur—the Memorial de Sololá is mute—nothing came of it (Kramer 1994:42). What the Kaqchikel account (Recinos and Goetz 1953:126) does state is the following: “Then Tunatiuh left Xepau and began hostilities against us. . . . On the day 4 Camey [February 7, 1526] he burned the city; at the end of the sixth month of the second year of the war he accomplished it and departed again.” With Iximché in a state of near ruin, Alvarado again left Guatemala to meet up with Cortés, only to about-face at Chuluteca (Choluteca) when a party of Spaniards headed by Luis de Marín told him that Cortés had headed back to Mexico from Honduras by sea, sailing from the port of Trujillo to deal with a series of issues detrimental to his interests. On Alvarado’s return, so Bernal Díaz del Castillo (as rendered by Alfred P. Maudsley, in Mackie [1924:122]) informs us, “he sent twice to summon the people of Guatemala and other pueblos in the neighborhood to make peace,” but to no avail. A stalemate of sorts (Recinos and Goetz 1953:126) is intimated in the Memorial de Sololá: “During the course of this year [March 29, 1526, to June 2, 1527] our hearts had some rest. So also did the kings Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat. We did not submit to the Spaniards, and we were living in Holom Balam.” From their refuge at Holom Balam, in the mountains near Iximché, the Kaqchikel leadership could reflect on

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over two years of resistance. Their strategy was to have mounted a guerrilla insurgency, waged in the terrain they knew best, the hills and the forests, not on open ground or valley floors. Kaqchikel hearts, however, were not to be at rest for long.

Sibling Cooperation Even though Kaqchikels had yet to yield and parts of Guatemala not penetrated lay beyond Spanish control, Alvarado decided that his top priority was to return to Spain and secure recognition for his accomplishments to date and crown approval of more to come. In August 1526, he left for Mexico on the first stage of a mission that would not see him back in Guatemala until April 1530, an absence of three years and eight months. On his departure, he named Pedro de Portocarrero and Hernán Carrillo as interim commanders until his brother Jorge arrived from Mexico to take over as captain general. Jorge de Alvarado’s role in the conquest of Guatemala has long been overshadowed by that of Pedro, although important correctives have set straight the historical record, the work of Wendy Kramer (1994) foremost among them. Jorge arrived in Olintepeque in March 1527 with a massive army made up of between five thousand to six thousand native allies, “Central Mexican conquistadors,” in the words of Asselbergs (2004:87). Among them was a sizable contingent from Quauhquechollan, a town near Puebla that paid tribute to Jorge in goods, services, and warriors. Its members made their own conquest narrative in the form of a pictographic account that relays their prominent role, under Jorge’s banner, in the Guatemalan campaign. Depicted on a painted cotton cloth measuring 235 by 325 centimeters is the “base camp” that Jorge set up first at Chij Xot near Comalapa before moving on to Chimaltenango, “from which they undertook various campaigns of conquest” (Asselbergs 2008:167). The spatial data of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan mesh nicely with the more temporally minded bulletins (Recinos and Goetz 1953:126–27) of the Memorial de Sololá: “One year and one month had passed since Tunatiuh razed [Iximché], when the Spaniards came to Chij Xot. On the day 1 Caok [March 27, 1527] our slaughter by the Spaniards continued. The people . . . continued to fight a prolonged war. Death struck us anew but none of the people paid the tribute.” Jorge figured that Kaqchikels should be his primary target. Although he is not mentioned in the above extract by name, it was his forces, with Portocarrero up front, that were responsible for an intensification of hostilities. Besides “a prolonged war”

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against Kaqchikels, Jorge also fronted other campaigns—at Jalpatagua on the Pacific coast, in the Verapaz region, and throughout the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes.27 Three years after Pedro’s defeat of K’iche’s at Utatlán, the Spaniards had yet to decide on a site suitable for constructing a city that would function as their capital. Jorge forged ahead on that too, founding Santiago in Almolonga on the lower slopes of Agua volcano on November 22, 1527, near a place known to Kaqchikels as “Bulbuxyá.” “During this year, while we were busy with the war against the Spaniards,” the Memorial de Sololá registers, “they abandoned Chij Xot and went to live at Bulbuxyá,” stating also that while “the war continued. . . . none of the people paid the tribute” (Recinos and Goetz 1953:127; see also Luján Muñoz and Cabezas Carcache 1994). Within two months, however, Spanish gains and Kaqchikel capitulation in at least one locale changed that for the very next entry in the Memorial de Sololá runs: “Here in Tzololá, on the day 6 Tzíi [January 12, 1528] the tribute began. Heavy suffering we endured to free ourselves from the war” (Recinos and Goetz 1953:127–28).28 Was it now considered a better option to abandon a guerrilla war and pay the price of peace by furnishing tribute, no matter how burdensome? Would it be possible, somehow, for hostilities to cease and a new accord to be struck? Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat struggled with this dilemma for two more years, until word reached them that Tunatiuh was back in their midst. A time of decision arrived with him.

Return and Surrender In serving the crown, Jorge de Alvarado secured more of Guatemala in the years he was charged with governing the kingdom (1527–29) than when his brother Pedro first ruled (1524–26). It is no accident, however, that it was on Pedro’s return from his sojourn in Spain that Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat chose to surrender. As leaders molded in a Mesoamerican tradition that emphasized the forging of treaties and strategic, geopolitical thinking, they well understood that Pedro, not Jorge, was the authority with whom to negotiate. The Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953: 128–29) records a meeting of historic import: “During the course of this year [1530] the kings Ahpozotzil and Ahpoxahil presented themselves before Tunatiuh. Five years and four months the kings had been under the trees, under the vines. On the day 7 Ahmak [May 7, 1530], the kings went forth. . . . Many lords joined them, [the] grandsons of the chiefs, the sons of the chiefs, a great number of people. . . . Tunatiuh rejoiced in the presence of the chiefs when he saw their faces again.”

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Whatever arrangements Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat had in mind that would favor their people as a result of surrender made little impact on Alvarado. He may have “rejoiced in the presence of the chiefs,” but even an impressive show of numbers, to say nothing of the pomp and ceremony that accompanied the arrival of the Kaqchikel kings at Santiago in Almolonga, deterred him from his course. Alvarado had come back from Spain elevated to the status of “Adelantado,” most emphatically “supreme governor.” He exercised his augmented powers the way he knew best: by demanding crippling amounts of tribute, extreme even by his rapacious standards. The Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:129) records: “During this year [1530] heavy tribute was imposed; four hundred men and four hundred women were sent to wash [for] gold . . . by order of Tunatiuh, all the people extracted the gold.” The words “all the people” signal precisely that: Alvarado’s terms of surrender decreed that members of the nobility should labor and pay tribute as much as the common folk. For Belehé Qat, the imposition was not only demeaning but fatal. “During the two months of the third year which had passed since the lords presented themselves,” the Kaqchikel account states, “the king Belehé Qat died; he died on the day 7 Queh [September 24, 1532] while he was washing [for] gold.” Belehé Qat’s death, far from being cause for regret to Alvarado, afforded him another opportunity to assert his authority. Rather than wait for Kaqchikels to name Belehé Qat’s successor, the Adelantado picked one himself. His choice was Cablahuh Tihax, a son of Belehé Qat also known as “Don Jorge,” who had accompanied his father when he surrendered to Alvarado and who was to serve as a compliant Ahpoxahil for another three decades. Custom and protocol, however, had been thrown to the wind: “After the death of [Belehé Qat], Tunatiuh came here [to Sololá] to choose a successor to the king. The lord Don Jorge was installed. . . . There was no election by the people to name him. Tunatiuh talked to the lords and his orders were obeyed, for in truth they feared [him].” It all proved too much for Cahí Ymox, who fled the confines of the Spanish capital and sought solace (Recinos and Goetz 1953:130) in the ruins of the old court at Iximché: “During this year [1533] the king Cahí Ymox, Ahpozotzil, went to live in the city. The desire to go away came to the king because the tribute was imposed on the lords as well as on everyone else, and therefore the king had to pay it.” What Cahí Ymox did next has never been ascertained. The Memorial de Sololá makes no reference to him for another seven years. Resorting to the use of circumstantial rather than direct evidence, Contreras argues that Cahí Ymox fomented a second Kaqchikel uprising, one that may have had more widespread impact than the first. His hypothesis

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is not well-known, although Francis Polo Sifontes ([1977] 2005:81–85) was inspired by it, becoming one of its most enthusiastic advocates.

Rebellion Reprised Contreras initially presented his argument in a little-cited article published in 1965, reiterated it in 1971 in a source at least as difficult of access, and reprised it four decades later, stating “Sinacán [Cahí Ymox] took refuge in his old Tinamit [Iximché], disgusted with the new way of life. . . . He was obliged once again to take up arms against the Spaniards”29 (Contreras 2004a:70). Contreras draws on the works of the chronicler Vázquez, who retrieved pertinent data from the Libro Segundo de Cabildo. Given up as lost—Contreras (2004c:62) and Polo Sifontes ([1977] 2005:84) both state this loss to be the case as far as they and other scholars knew—its whereabouts and that of the Libro Tercero de Cabildo have now been established (Kramer, Lovell, and Lutz 2014). While we await the transcription of the Libro Segundo de Cabildo to read its contents in full, we can dip into it and see how close Vázquez’s distillations are to the original. His inclusion of five key entries in his massive colonial history, all dealing with native insurrection, allows us to speculate whether or not three of them, certainly one, allude to Cahí Imox and a second Kaqchikel rebellion. The first cabildo excerpt predates the flight of Cahí Ymox from Santiago in Almolonga. Though his plight is not directly implicated, data relayed contextualize succinctly the situation in which the Spaniards found themselves. “Dated November 1 and April 14, 1531,” Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:39) writes, “Because of him leaving to make war on Indians who have risen in revolt, the Adelantado [Pedro de Alvarado] names as his Lieutenant the Accountant of the Royal Treasury, Francisco Zorrilla [sic]. This is [preceded by mention of] Captain Diego de Alvarado and his troops who, having returned gutted and destroyed from wars waged in the service of His Majesty, need to be made welcome and extended care and attention.”30 We know from other sources that the campaign led by Diego de Alvarado, Pedro’s cousin, was fought in what is today Verapaz, to the north of Kaqchikel country. Vázquez omits from his transcription, however, the difficulty Diego’s men encountered in receiving assistance of any kind. In a move designed to help no beleaguered soldiers find accommodations, the city council ruled that any Spanish resident found to act in such an uncharitable way would incur a fine levied so as to help meet the expenses associated with providing assistance. The second extract may well have had in mind the campaign to root out Cahí Ymox, as it coincides with his being at large. Dated, according

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to Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:39), April 21, 1533, it runs: “Two captains of the wars, Diego de Rojas and Pedro Portacarrerro, alerted with others of the regiment, have been named to lead the war against the Indians, which is considered a matter of urgency.”31 Both Rojas and Portocarrero had fought against Kaqchikels during the previous decade and would have been familiar with the terrain in which Cahí Ymox had taken refuge. They were seasoned commanders for such a mission. The entry in the Libro de Cabildo (Hiersemann 1913:418/239, folios 50r and 50v) is actually dated four days later than Vázquez states, is more expansive, and conveys a palpable sense of crisis. It mentions how the recruitment efforts of Rojas and Portocarrero were frustrated by the unwillingness of their fellow Spaniards to rally to the cause, the city council minutes registering that “instructions to serve in the said wars are not being obeyed.”32 In the third cabildo excerpt, carrying the dates March 2 and 21, 1534, Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1:39) informs us that Cahí Ymox still roamed free and Alvarado, restless and ever on the lookout for more promising horizons, had set sail for Peru with ambitions of wresting control of part of the Spanish conquest there from Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. The venture would all but ruin him, as it did the lives of thousands of Kaqchikels who perished while building the armada or during a treacherous passage across the Andes in Ecuador. Vázquez relays that Alvarado again appointed his brother Jorge to govern in his absence: “Since the Adelantado is forced to leave frequently for war, since the Indians rebel each day against their royal service; since he can’t be in the city seat, for this reason, he names Jorge de Alvarado as his Lieutenant.”33 Jorge is recorded as having appeared before the city council to confirm his brother’s designation of him as acting governor. His powers, in theory at any rate, were somewhat constrained. The Libro de Cabildo (Hiersemann 1913:418/239, folio 64r) states categorically that he was “not authorized to remove Indians [held as a tributary award] from anyone.”34 It also states that “in the absence of the government or in the event of his death, Francisco Surrilla [sic] will take up the same charge as his Majesty.”35 One year later—according to Vázquez ([1688] 1937, 1: 39) on January 4, 1535—the fourth extract that the chronicler furnishes once more pertains to when Alvarado was in Peru. He was about to return to Guatemala, having negotiated with Pizarro and Almagro the conditions on which he would not contest their dominion, sealed with an exchange in his favor of one hundred thousand pesos.36 Three and a half months before the Adelantado next set foot in Santiago, the cabildo took note of widespread insurrection: “Many towns on the coast, as well others closer to the capital city, have refused to furnish labor and have rebelled against the

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Spaniards; war is in the offing, so as to avoid what happened in previous years, when more than twenty Spaniards were killed, Gonzalo Ronquillo should sally forth as leader with a band of men, since Jorge de Alvarado is engaged in waging other wars, and the Adelantado, at present, is not in Guatemala. These and similar rebellions are occurring all too often.”37 The minutes of the city council identify one of the groups Jorge fought as “los chirrichotes” (ignorant, foolish ones), who were responsible for the killing of “many Christians” (Libro Segundo de Cabildo; Hiersemann 1913:418/239, folio 72v).38 The council expresses fear of a “general uprising” (alçamiento general) along with concerns about safeguarding Spanish lives and property. Some good news, however, either awaited Alvarado on his arrival back in Guatemala or would have been cause for celebration soon thereafter: the capture of Cahí Ymox and Quiyavit Caok, a lord who may have assumed the office of Ahpoxahil in exile after the death of Belehé Qat. Their capture, Polo Sifontes ([1977] 2005:81) states, took place “in the vicinity of Comalapa”39 around 1535. The two leaders were imprisoned in Santiago, never to be released. Despite the insistence of the city council and royal officials that Alvarado stay put and deal with alarming native unrest, within a year he was off again, first to Honduras and then to Spain. Although most of Honduras remained unconquered, Alvarado considered he had achieved enough there to lay claim to it. In August 1536, he set sail from Puerto Caballos, yet another ambitious project consuming him, as if the debacle of Peru had never occurred. He would absent himself from Guatemala, much to Kaqchikel relief, for three more years.

Fallen Heroes On September 16, 1539, Alvarado reappeared before the city council of Santiago de Guatemala, letting its members know of his enhanced credentials, which included being appointed governor of the province for a further seven years. Eight months later, on May 19, 1540, he presented himself once more, on this occasion to relay his intention to construct a second armada that would cross the Pacific, as his Peruvian fleet was supposed to, and reach the Spice Islands and the mainland beyond. An almost word-for-word transcription from the minutes of this meeting constitutes a fifth such item that Vázquez lifted from the Libro Segundo de Cabildo. It expresses manifest preoccupation about what the imprisonment of the “kings of Guatemala” might precipitate:

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Your Lordship holds as prisoners Cinacán [sic] and Sachil,40 kings of Guatemala; and your Lordship is about to set sail with his armada, because these Indians have always been rebellious, it is feared that their being kept alive will incite others to rebel, and that this may trigger an uprising, one from which the country could be lost; [city council pleads] with your Lordship to take them with him as part of the fleet, or alternately, if there is reason to do so, then punish them. Were they to remain here, should they escape from prison, which they could easily do, there may be another revolt that would prove a great disservice to Our Lord God, as well as to his Majesty, sapping the strength of Spaniards to wage war, and causing their deaths.41 (Vázquez [1688] 1937, 1:39, transcribing Libro Segundo de Cabildo; Hiersemann 1913:418/239, folio 188) Alvarado is reputed to have said that he would do what he thought best, with God and the king and the good of the land and its pacification foremost in mind (Libro Segundo de Cabildo; Hiersemann 1913:418/239, folio 188). He reached a decision one week later, ruling out having two known troublemakers accompany him on his planned expedition. “On the day 13 Ganel [May 26, 1540],” the Memorial de Sololá (Recinos and Goetz 1953:132) records with chilling precision, “the king Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox was hanged by Tunatiuh, together with Quiyavit Caok.” The execution of other lords soon followed. Contreras (1965:45) assures that, “thus[,] the honorable members of city council were able to sleep in peace.”42 Their leaders dealt with summarily, there would be no third Kaqchikel uprising to match the tenacity of the first or the valor of the second. A peace of the dead ensued, but one from which Alvarado was fated not to profit. He never did reach the Spice Islands or even set sail for them, dying on July 4, 1541, from injuries incurred when another combatant’s horse fell on him during the Mixtón rebellion in Nueva Galicia in Mexico, where he had been drawn into action en route to his intended destination.

Conclusion The face of Maya resistance to Spanish intrusion in Guatemala is mythologized by the K’iche’ lord Tekun Umam, alleged to have been killed in man-to-man combat on the plains of Quetzaltenango in 1524 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. Enshrined as a Maya hero in elementary school texts and immortalized as such in the ritual drama

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known as the Dance of the Conquest, Tekun Umam has exerted an acclamatory hold on the popular imagination, to the detriment of more deserving, flesh-and-blood figures. Among these, as historian Daniel Contreras long has advocated, two Kaqchikel kings come to the fore because of the sustained and valiant opposition they mounted to the Spanish presence. The Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox and the Ahpoxahil Belehé Qat, referred to respectively by the Spaniards as Sinacán or Sinacam and Sequechul or Sacachul, together led a campaign of guerrilla warfare between 1524 and 1530. The truce that followed their surrender to Alvarado proved short lived: outraged at the harsh treatment meted out to his Kaqchikel subjects, which also resulted in the death of his compatriot Belehé Qat in 1532, Cahí Ymox fronted another uprising a year later, waging further hostilities until his capture in 1535 alongside Quiyavit Caok, a lord who may have assumed the mantle of Ahpoxahil office during the second insurrection. The two men were imprisoned in Santiago in Almolonga until their march to the gallows in 1540, the fate of other Kaqchikel lords too. A celebrated place for them, Cahí Ymox above all, has yet to be found in the annals of Guatemalan history.

Notes 1. For more on Tekun Umam, see Lovell and Lutz, with Kramer and Swezey (2013:12–14), and especially Paz Cárcamo (2006), who devotes an entire monograph to the controversy. Christenson (2016: 121–28) also has incisive commentary on the man he calls “Lord Tecum,” as does Chinchilla Mazariegos (2013). Our use of the term “Maya” embraces all those indigenous peoples in Guatemala who belong to the Mayan language family even if, in the early sixteenth century that is the temporal focus of our inquiry, they were never identified collectively as such but rather, generically, as “indios” or “naturales.” Contemporary discourse, however, both Maya and Spanish, often singles out specific allegiance or progeny, the two groups most pertinent for the study at hand being Kaqchikels and K’iche’s. 2. We render the names of these two men as they appear in the historical sources we reference. Contemporary Maya orthography, as deployed by Editorial Cholsamaj, a Kaqchikel publishing house, renders them Kaji’ Imox and B’eleje’ K’at, the names by which they appear in two timely titles by Paz Cárcamo (2006, 2014). 3. Borg (2003:25) states that the Ahpozotzil was “the principal ruler of Iximché” and that the Ahpoxahil, “the second ranking Cakchiquel king,” ruled Tzololá (now, Sololá), whose people and territory were rendered subject to Iximché in 1517. Although we spell the names of our unsung heroes as they appear in Recinos and Goetz (1953), we opt for Iximché, not Yximché,

Resistance to the Spanish Invasion of Guatemala / 57 in choosing how to spell the Kaqchikel capital and ancestral stronghold. The place name itself, Contreras (2004b:35–44) points out, properly refers to the territory in which the city was founded. “Our colonial chroniclers always called the capital of the Kaqchikel kingdom ‘Guatemala, Tecpán Guatemala, Patinamit, or Tinamit,’” he states. “No one called it Iximché.” The first to do so, in the nineteenth century, was Archbishop Francisco de Paula García Peláez (1785–1867). 4. Our exposition builds on chapters 2 and 3 of Lovell and Lutz, with Kramer and Swezey (2013:32–74), and chapters 2 and 3 of Lovell, Lutz, and Kramer (2016:79–160). We thank the University of Oklahoma Press and F&G Editores for permission to redeploy and recontextualize material. For more about the Libro Segundo de Cabildo, and also the Libro Tercero de Cabildo, the latter spanning the years from 1541 to 1553, see Kramer, Lovell, and Lutz (2014). Both cabildo books, long considered lost, have been part of the holdings of the Hispanic Society of America in New York for more than a century. 5. Original (Spanish): “El pueblo cakchiquel [sic] cargó dos veces sobre sus hombros la cruz de la conquista.” 6. Original (Spanish): “Los cakchiqueles [sic], pueblo luchador y aguerrido, se desangraron en la conquista probablemente mucho más que ninguno de sus vecinos.” 7. Luján Muñoz (2004:8) believes that the Memorial de Sololá was sent from the town of the same name to the Franciscan convent in Santiago de Guatemala, “perhaps when Francisco Vázquez was writing his Historia de la Provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Guatemala.” Hill (2014:39, 60) contends that the friar did not consult the Memorial de Sololá as one of his sources but rather “a diverse array of other documents written in the Kaqchikel language, alas unidentified and today now missing.” Swezey (1985: 161) notes that Vázquez “had access to many ecclesiastical documents and primary sources housed in the rich archive at the Franciscan convent, as well as to the city archive where the Libros de Cabildo and other civil records, now lost, were kept.” 8. Original (Spanish): “Es-criben ellos que les apareció un Caxtok, que es lo mismo que engañador, y en su frase e inteligencia significa el demonio, y les dijo: ¿Que esperáis con esos pocos extranjeros que han quedado en Almolonga? Ya Tonatiúh se fué a Castilla; y llevó consigo muchos de los extranjeros (así llamaban a los españoles). ¿Que teméis? Yo soy el rayo, y los haré a todos polvo y ceniza, y si vosotros acobardáis, a vosotros y a ellos aniquilaré. ¿Queréis vivir esclavos de gente tan cruel?” 9. Original (Spanish): “Así lo escriben en sus relaciones los mismos indios. Caxtok, demonio y engañador, pues sus falsas promesas los pusieron en estas rebeliones y alborotos intempestivos.” 10. Original (Spanish): “Quisiese aprovecharse de la ocasión para enriquecer. Impuso al numeroso pueblo de Patinamit [Iximché] un irregular tributo.”

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

58 / Lovell and Lutz 11. Original (Spanish): “Aprisionados, fueron trofeo del vencimiento,  . . . hasta el año 1540.” 12. Original (Spanish): “Impidiendo muchas veces la entrada de los mantenimientos á la ciudad de Goathemala.” 13. Original (Spanish): “Por quince años . . . hasta el embarco de D. Pedro de Alvarado para la Especiería ó las Molucas.” 14. Original (Spanish): “No se levantaron todos.” 15. Original (Spanish): “La parte del Quiché [sic] no se levantó, ni hubo tal rey Zequechul. Ese sería algún Casique poderoso del Cacchiquel [sic].” 16. Original (Spanish): “No fué más que retirarse a buscar en las asperezas alivio a tanta tiranía.” 17. Original (Spanish): “El relato de la guerra contra los españoles está escrita en el Memorial de Sololá en menos de diez párrafos breves, sin muchos detalles, pero tiene especial importancia porque va acompañado de fechas que sitúan correctamente en la historia esta rebelión.” 18. Original (Spanish): “Fuente más confiable.” 19. Original (Spanish): “Principió en 1524, y que no había terminado en 1530.” 20. Original (Spanish): “Los autores del Memorial de Sololá no hayan incluido noticia sobre la resistencia de los otros pueblos que, según los cronistas, se levantaron también siguiendo el ejemplo de los kaqchikeles.” 21. Original (Spanish): “El personaje que por razón histórica debía representar a Guatemala era el Apozotzil [sic] Kahi’ Imox, llamado también Sinacán, el líder indígena más notable de su tiempo.” 22. Original (Spanish): “El héroe del moderno y bien conocido del ‘Baile de la Conquista,’ Tecún Umán [sic], tuvo apenas un instante de gloria, al caer en una de las primeras batallas de la conquista. Seguramente no llegó a conocer a Alvarado, ni éste al Señor de Utatlán, pues supo de su muerte después de la batalla en que éste murió, y no en combate personal con él, pues si así hubiera sido éste lo hubiera informado a Cortés. La leyenda y el folclore convierten el . . . que se supone se llamaba Tecún Umán [sic], en el héroe que simboliza la resistencia indígena contra los castellanos.” 23. Original (Spanish): “Actualmente casi nadie recuerda al Apozotzil [sic] Kahi’ Imox, el rebelde Sinacán, pero durante la época colonial no se olvidó su nombre o su rebeldía, pues todos los años en ocasión de fiestas reales, dice Fuentes y Guzmán, se celebra una ‘admirable y espléndida Fiesta del Volcán,’ que recordaba la guerra y la prisión de Sinacán y B’elehe’ K’at, los caciques rebeldes.” 24. Original (Spanish): “Es evidente que las exigencias y amenazas de [Pedro de] Alvarado motivaron la rebelión de los cakchiqueles. Muy grandes debían ser unas y otras para obligar a sus antiguos amigos y aliados a abandonar sus hogares y dispersarse por las montañas. Demasiado tarde venían a comprender los confiados caciques que habían sacrificado estérilmente la libertad de su pueblo.”

Resistance to the Spanish Invasion of Guatemala / 59 25. The “criminal proceedings” that Recinos refers to are examined at length by Vallejo García-Hevia (2008). 26. Original (Spanish): “Digo que yo no hice malos tratamientos a los Señores de la dicha provincia. . . . E si me dieron algún oro, lo puede recibir, porque era el dicho pueblo de mi repartimiento . . . yo no les apremié a ello, e niego alzarse los dichos indios por no me dar el dicho oro . . . lo cual es muy común entrellos es alzarse cuando se les antoja . . . e creyendo que me fuera de allí e porque no pobláramos, se alzaron e estando allí nos dieron cruda guerra . . . hicieron muchos hoyos, puestos en ellos varas hincadas, las puntas arriba e cubiertos con tierra e con yerbas a donde cayeron muchos caballos e murieron e hirieron muchos cristianos.” 27. Kramer (1994:66) documents each of these forays with painstaking reference to primary sources that hitherto have escaped scholarly attention. See also Lovell ([1985] 2015:53–74). 28. Consultation of predominantly written sources convinced Swezey (1985) that the Tzololá of 1528 may well have been Cakhay, leading him to identify it as the “original location of Tecpán-Atitlán or Sololá.” Cakhay lies midway between Tecpán Guatemala and Patzicía. Borg (2003:25, 38) indicates that subsequent archaeological excavation “demonstrated that this site dated instead to the Classic period, and therefore could not have been the Late Postclassic center of Cakhay/Tzololá.” Prehispanic Tzololá “cannot be currently located using documentary sources alone,” she asserts, though “archaeology may yet do so,” if further excavation is pursued. Gall (1980:779) records a “sitio arqueológico” called Sololá, “discovered by Eduard Seler and explored by Edwin M. Shook,” to the north of present-day municipal and department capital of the same name. 29. Original (Spanish): “Sinacán [Cahí Ymox] se refugió en su antiguo Tinamit [Iximché], descontento con el nuevo sistema de vida . . . debió volverse a levantar en armas contra los castellanos.” 30. Original (Spanish): “Por causa de ir a la guerra sobre los indios alzados, el señor Adelantado [Pedro de Alvarado] nombra por su Teniente al Contador don Francisco Zorrilla. [Antes] se había dicho cómo volvió el Capitán Diego de Alvarado y sus escuadrones, desbaratado y destrozado, de las guerras en servicio de su Majestad, y se pidió les diesen acogida, y los cuidasen.” 31. Original (Spanish): “Se hace mención de haber nombrado dos Capitanes para las guerras, que fueron Diego de Rojas y don Pedro Portocarrerro y que se habían puesto en lista, hasta los del regimiento, por la urgencia de las guerras, que les daban los indios.” 32. Original (Spanish): “No obedescan los dichos mandamientos para yr a las dichas guerras.” 33. Original (Spanish): “Como el Adelantado es forzado salir frecuentemente a la guerra, por causa de los indios que cada día se alzan contra el real servicio: por lo cual no puede estar de asiento en la ciudad, por eso nombra Teniente suyo a Jorge de Alvarado.”

60 / Lovell and Lutz 34. Original (Spanish): “No pueda quitar yndios a ninguna persona.” 35. Original (Spanish): “En su absençia de la governaçion e por su fallesçimiento tenga el mesmo cargo de teniente el comendador Francisco Çurrilla [Francisco Zurrilla] contador de su magestad.” 36. The Cabildo Book registers the date as January 8. See Recinos (1952: 152) for details of the deal struck between Alvarado and his two rivals, Pizarro and Almagro. 37. Original (Spanish): “Muchos pueblos de la costa, así de los términos de la ciudad . . . se alzaron contra el real servicio y contra los españoles; y se previenen de guerra, y porque no suceda lo que años pasados que mataron a más de veinte españoles, atento a estar en otras guerras el Teniente Jorge de Alvarado, y ausente de la Gobernación el Adelantado, vaya con gente y por caudillo, Gonzalo Ronquillo. Y esto mismo y semejantes rebeliones se dicen con bastante frecuencia.” 38. Chirrichote may have been used in reference to groups of rebellious Q’eqchi’-Maya. 39. Original (Spanish): “En las inmediaciones de Comalapa.” 40. The chronicler misidentifies as “Sachil” one of the imprisoned kings, the text clearly stating he was called “Suchil.” We take Suchil to be the name Spaniards gave Quiyavit Caok. 41. Original (Spanish): “Su Señoria tiene presos a Cinacán y Sachil, señores de Guatemala; y que su Señoria se va ahora en su armada, porque estos indios siempre han sido rebeldes, y de su estada en la tierra se temen, que se levantarán y harán algún alzamiento con que la tierra se pierda; y por ende, que piden a su Señoria, que o les lleve en su armada, o si han hecho por que, haga justicia de ellos; porque de quedar ellos en la tierra, especialmente si se huyesen de la cárcel, que lo pueden bien hacer, se podía recrecer algún alzamiento de que se recrecería grande deservicio a Dios Nuestro Señor y a su Majestad, y de gran fatiga de guerra a los españoles, y muertes de ellos.” 42. Original (Spanish): “Así pudieron dormir en paz los señores del Cabildo de Guatemala.”

3 Discovering Aj Poop B’atz’ Collaborative Ethnography and the Exploration of Q’eqchi’ Identity S. Ashley Kistler

In San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, Q’eqchi’-Maya1 residents rewrite local history by telling narratives about town founder Aj Poop B’atz’. They depict Aj Poop B’atz’, a sixteenth-century Q’eqchi’ leader, as a wise man who befriended Spanish priests to protect his people from the devastation of conquest. Today, he remains a vital part of contemporary discourse and transcends time to serve as a model of Q’eqchi’ morality and representation of Q’eqchi’ identity for many Chamelqueños, especially those who follow Catholic or Maya religions or who are actively involved in local and national cultural revitalization efforts. Since 2006, I have worked with a group of community members to analyze oral narratives and written texts about Aj Poop B’atz. Through the stories that they tell, Chamelqueños transform Aj Poop B’atz’ from a historical figure into a mythological one who embodies an “authentic” Q’eqchi’ identity today, more than 450 years after his death (see the introduction to this volume for a more detailed discussion of the complexity of authenticity in Maya belief and practice). This chapter examines Aj Poop B’atz’ as a symbol of Q’eqchi’ value and authenticity, invoked by Chamelqueños to establish and legitimize their place in Guatemala’s history and contemporary social hierarchy. I argue that through our collaborative ethnographic project focused on Aj Poop B’atz’, my collaborators produce a new historical narrative, one that is based on indigenous historical understanding, highlighting Q’eqchi’ identity and value while challenging official Guatemalan historical discourse. Our analysis of oral histories and of a colo-

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nial document recording Aj Poop B’atz’s life assists my collaborators in constructing a historical Q’eqchi’ identity that transcends time and space. Here, I present our collaborative ethnographic research on Aj Poop B’atz’ as a case study of how some members of Maya communities embrace the stories of heroic figures to elevate their places in national social hierarchies and redefine indigenous identities challenged through centuries of oppression. First, I discuss our collaborative research in relation to literature on power, identity, and historicity. Second, I present the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ and give an analysis of his significance as an emblem of contemporary Q’eqchi’ identity. Finally, I examine my collaborators’ efforts to promote and revitalize Aj Poop B’atz’ in Chamelco’s historical consciousness. In doing so, I argue that stories of figures like Aj Poop B’atz’ serve as mediums of resistance for those members of Maya communities involved in cultural revitalization efforts today.2

Collaborative Ethnography in San Juan Chamelco Arriving in the municipio (municipality) of San Juan Chamelco, visitors see a striking image. In front of the town’s Catholic church stands a statue of a Maya warrior, identified in a mural below as “Don Juan Aj Poop B’atz’, cacique de caciques.”3 Aj Poop B’atz’ is similarly depicted on the town seal and by statues in other nearby towns. In 2016 he was even the subject of street art in Chamelco. Aj Poop B’atz’ remains at the forefront of local society through his physical presence in the town center and in the stories that many local residents tell. Many Chamelqueños attribute the relative peace they experienced during Guatemala’s thirty-six-year civil war, the absence of natural disasters in the region, and their cultural “purity” (pureza) to his ongoing protection. During more than a decade of fieldwork in Chamelco, I have heard many Chamelqueños attribute their strength and power to his legacy and identify themselves as his “grandchildren,” both in casual conversation in family settings and in formal speeches during public celebrations. As I collected narratives of Aj Poop B’atz’ during my early years of fieldwork in Chamelco, I became overwhelmed by their complexity and sought ways to understand their significance in contemporary life. Conversations with elders and activists revealed their interest in learning more about Aj Poop B’atz’, his historical importance, and the way Chamelqueños talked about him today, although they commented that they lacked both a forum for such investigation and a person to coordinate their efforts. I welcomed this opportunity to combine my efforts with the community’s expertise, knowledge, and resources.

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One evening, I discussed the challenge of investigating Aj Poop B’atz’ with local folklorist Oscar Fernández. He suggested that we hold a gathering for elders to tell their stories of this important figure. On August 31, 2006, the Grupo Aj Poop B’atz’ met for the first time at Oscar’s house. The group initially included the president of Guatemala’s national folkloric committee, a retired schoolteacher, Don Oscar, and me. Each participant lived in Chamelco and spoke Q’eqchi’ fluently. Over our years of work together, our group expanded to include a local painter and a former president of the Q’eqchi’ branch of Guatemala’s Academy of Mayan Languages. During the following months and years, our project gained momentum as we visited historical sites, viewed artifacts, collected historical documents, planned events, and shared our research with the community. Together, we embarked on a journey to discover Aj Poop B’atz’.

Historicity and Cultural Revitalization in Latin America That the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ remains largely absent from official accounts of Guatemalan history, does not appear in history texts, and is not taught to children in schools is the result of strategic efforts on the part of first the Spanish colonial forces and today the Guatemalan government to marginalize Maya communities by making it difficult for them to learn about their history. A few Spanish chroniclers and more recent historians wrote about “Cacique Juan Aj Pop’o B’atz’” in passing, stating that he was named “Lifelong Governor” of the Verapaz provinces of Guatemala (Baja and Alta Verapaz) in 1555 (Las Casas 1927; Remesal 1932; SaintLu 1968; Estrada Monroy 1979; Guerrero 2007), but their works do not detail his life and remain largely inaccessible to Guatemala’s indigenous community. Our research on Aj Poop B’atz’ allowed my colleagues to fill a void in their historical understanding and produce their own historical narratives by highlighting an ancestor who remains absent from most official discourse. Throughout Latin America and around the world, alternate historical narratives bolster movements of resistance and revitalization (Scott 1990; Trouillot 1995). In Adams’s (2001) research on Q’eqchi’ practice in Alta Verapaz, she argues that Q’eqchi’s transform historical leaders into mythological figures to redefine their history in response to centuries of oppression. In Chamelco, she states, Q’eqchi’ elders situate Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico in the mythology of the tzuultaq’a, (mountain spirits), regarding him as a manifestation of these spirits. Like the tzuultaq’a, Ubico brought both positive and negative change to Chamelco. While he constructed roads, his policies left the Maya hungry and living in poverty. By

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transforming Ubico into a Q’eqchi’ spirit and creating this alternate history, Chamelqueños present a historical narrative situated within their local ideologies to strengthen their historical identities. Another example of the political and cultural importance of alternate histories can be seen in the work of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia. A group of Aymara, Kichwa, and Uru activists united through this workshop to investigate and commemorate Santos Marko T’ula, a 1920s Aymara leader (Rivera Cusicanqui 1997). Through their historical investigations this group worked to revitalize indigenous identity in a political forum by publically disseminating the results of their research on local culture and history. Other scholars document similar phenomena throughout the region, including in the Amazon and the Caribbean (Farage 2003; Pérez 2003; Uzendoski 2005, 2006). The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia and many other historical revitalization projects in Latin America involve collaborative ethnographic and ethnohistoric components. Collaborative research endeavors between anthropologists and indigenous communities often serve as vehicles for exploring history, politics, and identity. Lassiter (2005:3) states that collaborative ethnography seeks to “develop ethnography along dialogic lines” and that anthropologists “have in their individual accounts shifted the dominant style of writing from authoritative monologue to involved dialogue between ethnographer and interlocutor.” In doing so, resulting ethnographic works represent the indigenous cultural perspective more holistically by engaging collaborators in the process of conceptualizing, executing, and reporting on research (Vasco 2002; Lassiter 2005; Rappaport 2008). By using these methods, anthropologists seek to produce rich and ethical ethnographies that support their interests and those of indigenous collaborators. Collaborative ethnographic projects have as an ideal the goal of having all participants work together as equals, but asymmetry in education, ethnicity, class, and other social factors sometimes creates asymmetrical relationships between researchers and within the research process (Bodenhorn 2012; Holmes and Marcus 2012; Lowe 2012; Goode 2013; Hale and Stephen 2013; Perry and Rappaport 2013; Phillips et al. 2013). Atalay addresses how this asymmetry shaped her participation in a communitybased archaeological project in Turkey: “Despite my efforts to interact as equal partners, the feeling that I was an expert remained. I spent some time in this uncomfortable space before I resolved this for myself. I came to understand that being equal partners does not mean that we have similar knowledge. The strength and beauty of a CBPR [community-based participatory research] partnership comes in the acknowledgement that both

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sides bring valuable knowledge to the table” (Atalay 2012:137). Recognizing the existence and inevitability of these power dynamics allows collaborators to overcome them and work toward balance and complementarity in their work (Atalay 2012). Making the results of collaborative projects accessible to members of the communities in which work is conducted is another important facet of collaborative projects and is one way to overcome this asymmetry. As academic writing is not always accessible to those outside of academia, collaborative projects seek other ways of disseminating research results, including nonacademic writing, websites, or forms of creative representation (Butler 2013; Hale and Stephen 2013). Making research results accessible in these ways can further assist historically marginalized communities in advancing existing efforts for cultural revitalization or empowerment.

Historical Knowledge, Identity, and Power in the Maya Area Few collaborative projects have been conducted in the Maya area; yet, many Maya communities view historical knowledge as a form of power, as discussed in the introduction to this volume and throughout its chapters (Clendinnen 1987; Smith 1990; Wilson 1991, 1995; Warren 1996, 1998). For many Q’eqchi’ residents of Chamelco, tales of Aj Poop B’atz’ serve as an authentic representation of the Maya past. Although the local Ladino community identifies Aj Poop B’atz’ as a mythological character, in Q’eqchi’ narratives, he becomes something much more: the embodiment of core cultural values, including intelligence, strength, compassion, and endurance. Through the narratives they tell, many indigenous Chamelqueños, and especially those who practice Catholicism or Maya religious traditions, convert Aj Poop B’atz’, a historical figure, into a mythologized one, who presents an authentic symbol of Q’eqchi’ identity and connects them to the Maya past. His value stems in part from his role in helping Chamelco to remain free for decades of the colonial forces that challenge indigenous authenticity today. Aj Poop B’atz’s absence from official discourse further legitimizes him as a symbol of Maya value because his story is known and shared primarily by members of the Q’eqchi’ community. While I initially thought that Chamelqueños’ interest in Aj Poop B’atz’ stemmed from the efforts of local activists to revitalize Maya culture after the civil war, community elders related that his story has been a crucial part of indigenous resistance for decades (Goubaud 1949). The community’s interest in Aj Poop B’atz’s does not stem solely from efforts to rebuild Maya identity but has helped to perpetuate a sense of Q’eqchi’ life through centuries of oppression. Chamelqueños identify this story as a form of in-

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digenous knowledge, built on Q’eqchi’ interpretations of the past. Nevertheless, as Maxwell and Cuma Chávez (chapter 1, this volume) and Little (chapter 10, this volume) discuss for Tekun Umam, the ways that Aj Poop B’atz’ is perceived today have likely been shaped by Guatemalan national hegemonies and interpretations of what constitutes authentic Maya identity, as well as the work of folklorists who have published fantastic accounts of his life (Revista de la feria de Alta Verapaz 1936; Quirim 1971; Portocarrero 1978; Estrada Monroy 1979; Terga 1982; Yaxcal 2003). Although the story of Aj Poop B’atz’, as Chamelqueños tell it, is likely not a factual account of events passed, what is important here is that many Chamelqueños recognize it as such, even if it has been reinvented, modified, or embellished over time, as Hobsbawm (1983) and Hanson (1989) suggest happens. While it would be interesting to compare stories of Aj Poop B’atz’ across decades and generations to see how they may have changed or been framed differently in response to new historical circumstances, it is nearly impossible to do so as stories of his life have rarely been recorded. Instead, we analyzed several dozen oral accounts of Aj Poop B’atz’, each slightly different from the rest, and the available written documents about his life. To examine Aj Poop B’atz’ as a symbol of Q’eqchi’ value and identity, I now turn to the ethnography of San Juan Chamelco.

Aj Poop B’atz’ in Chamelco’s History San Juan Chamelco is located in the highland region of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, and has more than forty-five thousand residents, 98 percent of whom identify as Q’eqchi’. Most Chamelqueños earn their living as farmers, although, increasingly, some seek jobs in Cobán or Guatemala City. Chamelco was officially founded by the Spaniards on June 24, 1543 (Gómez 1984), but it was home to a large Maya population throughout the pre-Columbian era (Granados 2004). During the early colonial period, the Spaniards designated Chamelco a pueblo de indios (Indian town), a semiautonomous political entity. Chamelqueños seek ways to honor the practices of their ancestors in contemporary life. Local residents argue that their culture remains authentic because of this colonial autonomy. One man explained that “Chamelco is very special. It's a very tranquil town. Right? The culture of the people is original. Right? Our values, morals, are deeply rooted, . . . precisely because Chamelco has a lot of originality. Because it hasn’t been invaded by people from other places. . . . If we want to take a real example, a pure representation of Alta Verapaz, it is here.”4 Chamelqueños

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tell narratives of their ancestors, identifying them as tough, hardworking individuals who endured circumstances more difficult than those contemporary residents must endure. Chamelqueños honor the ancestors by striving to emulate them. As a representation of all ancestors, Aj Poop B’atz’ is the model of value on which many Chamelqueños base their identities. Throughout my years of fieldwork in Chamelco, I noted that most of the adult community residents with whom I spoke could relate Aj Poop B’atz’s tale with ease. Elders shared that his story was told publically during community celebrations decades ago. As recently as forty years ago, cofradía (saint’s day brotherhood)5 leaders read the story aloud during public celebrations from old documents that they carefully guarded. As most of the participants in saint’s day celebrations are Q’eqchi’, rather than Ladino, such celebrations provided ideal settings for the performance of these narratives. Other Chamelqueños recall that their elders told them the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ during family celebrations or in the home. That the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ has primarily been told in controlled contexts has reinforced its role as a hidden transcript of Q’eqchi’ resistance. Not all Chamelqueños seek to connect with ancestral tradition or recognize Aj Poop B’atz’ as a figure worthy of heroic recognition. Most Catholic and Mayanist residents of the community characterize him as a valiant figure and the embodiment of identity and value; yet, most local evangelical Christians do not. Instead, they simply emphasize his historic role as Chamelco’s founder. Members of evangelical sects embrace church teachings as key to their personal and family identities and often seek to distance themselves from people and practices they identify as representative of their indigenous heritage (Adams 1999).

Aj Poop B’atz’: Life and Significance Although the exact information surrounding Aj Poop B’atz’s birth remains unknown, Chamelqueños state that he was born in a rural area near present-day Chamelco. He became the leader of the Q’eqchi’ people after the Spaniards abducted the cacique of Tezulutlán in 1529. Elders elected him to serve as their leader because, as one man explained, “they had to arrive at a consensus, they came up with criteria to elect a new cacique. One of these criteria was that he had to be a cautious man who was very careful. . . . One of them had to do also with age; another criterion was to have participated in war. . . . He had to know war and the other is that he had to be a strategic man, to be able to direct the army that they had then. There go a few [characteristics], but above all, [he had

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to have] the providence that a leader should have to be able to manage destiny. So, with these characteristics, and I think there were others, the election took place.”6 The council elected Aj Poop B’atz’ because he embodied Q’eqchi’ values. Aj Poop B’atz’ prepared to resist the Spaniards. While numerous Maya groups fell under Spanish rule, he kept his people free of Spanish domination by using magical powers and praying to the mountain spirits. The Spaniards soon forged alliances and expanded their presence throughout the region. To protect his people from conquest, Aj Poop B’atz’ made a strategic decision to invite the Spaniards to his home in Chamelco. During this first encounter, he accepted Catholic baptism, enabling the region’s peaceful settlement and protecting Chamelqueños from forced conversion and armed conflict. In 1544, the Spanish friars took Aj Poop B’atz’ to Spain to represent Mesoamerica’s indigenous population before the Spanish king, Carlos V (Estrada Monroy 1979). He traveled with seven Q’eqchi’ men, seven Spanish priests, and nine Spanish men. Elders suggest that the men walked through caves under the earth, flew through the air, or traveled by sea. With them, they took gifts for the Spanish monarch—quetzal feathers, birds, and textiles. After a long journey, the men arrived at the palace at night. Aj Poop B’atz’ lined the throne room with gifts, awaiting his audience with the king. In the morning, the king awoke to the birds’ songs and asked to meet Aj Poop B’atz’ immediately. As Aj Poop B’atz’ was presented, he was ordered to bow for the monarch. He refused. “One king does not bow for another king,” he stated. Stunned, Carlos V admired Aj Poop B’atz’s strength of character and gave him silver crosses, cloth, incense burners, and, most famously, silver bells for Chamelco’s church.7 Following this meeting, the men set off on their return journey. Chamelqueños tell distinct versions of the men’s trip, though they unanimously state that the journey to Chamelco was arduous. When they stopped to rest in a village just north of Chamelco, now known as Sa’ Campana (The Place of Bell), the largest bell sank, perhaps because its sound was so powerful that it would have deafened Chamelco’s residents. Other stories suggest that the bell did not sink in Sa’ Campana but was lost when the canoe that was carrying it overturned in the Polochic River. Returning to Chamelco, the Spaniards ordered Aj Poop B’atz’ to erect a cathedral to house the bells and be the town’s central place of worship. Many Chamelqueños state that he did so in one night, whistling at the spirits of the wood to fly into place. An old man from a rural community told me that Aj Poop B’atz’ called out to the forest animals for assis-

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tance, and he worked only at night because he was old and did not want to show his face. He later inaugurated the church with human sacrifices during a wa’tesink (inauguration ceremony).8 On August 3, 1555, in recognition of his power, the king named Aj Poop B’atz’ “Lifelong Governor” (Gobernador Vitalicio) of the newly established Vera Paz region (Archivo de la Iglesia Católica de Chamelco 1555). At the end of his life, Aj Poop B’atz’ entered a cave in the side of a sinkhole in the village of Chamil. Some elders state that he entered the cave to hide out of shame for the devastation the Spaniards wrought, and others state that he sought refuge because the Spaniards were pursuing him. Most Chamelqueños believe that he died in this cave, yet others state that he resides in it and returns to help Chamelqueños in crisis. Chamelqueños visit this site today to perform ceremonies to ask for his blessing during planting and harvest seasons. In 2006, candles, flowers, and incense marked this location as an active pilgrimage site. Through these narratives, Chamelqueños construct Aj Poop B’atz’ as a man who personifies Q’eqchi’ value. Among Q’eqchi’s, value centers on the idea of being “taken into consideration” (tomada en cuenta) for participation in public events and rituals and being “remembered” (recordado) by future generations (Kistler 2014). By demonstrating wisdom, morality, a hardworking nature, and compassion for others, one ensures that one’s own legacy endures in local history long after one is gone. Aj Poop B’atz’ attains great prominence in Q’eqchi’ life by embodying these valued characteristics. One woman expressed that he was, in some ways, like the town’s original mayor, but more powerful, because he “knew everything” (sabía de todo). “They say that he was the only man that had xwan xwankil (wisdom, power) here.”9 He demonstrated this power by resisting Spanish forces through supernatural means. People who mediate the spiritual and living worlds, such as healers, shamans, and Maya ritual leaders, are among the community’s most respected members. His manipulation of the spirit world garnered him respect. In 2005, Chamelco’s vice-mayor explained that Aj Poop B’atz’s contemporary significance stems from his vision of peace. “He was successful, never defeated, and the world honored this attitude of his.”10 He sacrificed himself by accepting baptism and working for the Spaniards to prevent the destruction of his community. Residents state that the civil war, earthquakes, and mudslides, which devastated other regions of the country, have had less impact on Alta Verapaz because Aj Poop B’atz’s legacy protects the region. His sacrifices for the Q’eqchi’ people cement him as an emblem of value. Although Aj Poop B’atz’ was a real person,

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he is more than a mere historical figure. Narratives of his life transform him from the purely historical into a mythological character who ensures the authenticity of Q’eqchi’ life. Community members relate that Aj Poop B’atz’s peaceful reception of the Spaniards prevented the ethnocide that decimated eastern Guatemala. One Q’eqchi’ man explained that Aj Poop B’atz’ “was one of the greatest men in this sense, as governor of Alta Verapaz. That . . . [he] knew how to defend . . . the town, because if not, really, if not for him, we would have different last names. We would be López, we would be García.”11 Chamelqueños live free of many of the hegemonic forces that have shaped nationalist interpretations of Maya identity because Aj Poop B’atz’ helped ensure their autonomy. A former mayor of Chamelco concurred, stating, “He left us . . . everything that we do, all of the activities that we do, well, as a Maya inheritance. We could say this, that everything our people do, I mean our activities, all of this, we have to do because that way is to remember his life.”12 In other words, Aj Poop B’atz’ fought so that Q’eqchi’ practices would persist and not be replaced by Christian or Spanish ones. By embracing the practices that he left behind, Chamelqueños, like Aj Poop B’atz, become authentic producers of Q’eqchi’ culture. Most importantly, Aj Poop B’atz’ serves as a mediator of two distinct systems of value: local Q’eqchi’ and Spanish, now Ladino, culture. In his negotiations with the priests and the king, Aj Poop B’atz’ accepted Spanish values to protect Q’eqchi’ life. Contemporary Chamelqueños likewise straddle two worlds, mediating Ladino values to preserve their own. Aj Poop B’atz’ has been a hidden transcript through which they do so. Although he was a historical figure, many Q’eqchi’ community members transform the reality of his life into a mythological metaphor for how they live today. In telling his stories, they are not concerned with remembering him with historical accuracy, but rather in a way that reminds them about core indigenous values.

Documenting Aj Poop B’atz’ Through our work, the Grupo Aj Poop B’atz’ sought to investigate Aj Poop B’atz’ to contribute to established local cultural revitalization efforts. While I recorded oral histories, other group members looked for written accounts of Aj Poop B’atz’ to legitimize his story before those who required written authority to prove his existence. Medina (2003) reports a similar phenomenon in his analysis of Ye’kuana territorial identity. Ye’kuana history had been preserved orally for generations, but members

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of the Ye’kuana community began to write their history to conform to national standards that prioritize written texts over oral histories. In contrast to the Ye’kuana example, though, Maya communities have long emphasized written tradition as essential to historical knowledge, as evidenced by the extensive hieroglyphic texts recorded by the ancient Maya in the pre-Columbian era. While oral histories are valued by contemporary Maya groups (Montejo 2005), they place increasing value on written records as national ideologies stress written documentation as necessary to validate historical fact and as literacy levels increase. My collaborators sought to legitimize local oral histories with written records to prove Aj Poop B’atz’s existence so that it could not be disputed by local Ladinos, municipal authorities, or anyone else. In our search for historical records, one group member recalled that a friend boasted that he had a colonial document about Chamelco’s history. Although his friend was murdered more than twenty-five years ago, we visited his son in October 2006 to ask whether he still had it. Initially, he said that he did not, but he eventually shared that he did in fact have it. Despite a few water stains and fading ink, the document was beautifully preserved. It was written in colonial Q’eqchi’, which legitimized its significance for my collaborators, as it was in their language and not Spanish.13 We photographed it and began its translation. The process of translating the document was difficult. Understanding the colonial Q’eqchi’ in which it was written did not prove to be as big a barrier as deciphering the script. Over several eight-hour sessions in the fall of 2006, two group members and I worked to understand the text. I repeated this process with a former president of the Q’eqchi’ branch of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas Guatemala during the summers of 2009 and 2014. In each instance, while we shared common goals, we differed in our approach to analyzing the document. However, our differing perspectives allowed us to situate the rich ethnolinguistic information we deciphered into a larger context of meaning, as we translated almost all of the document into contemporary Q’eqchi’ and Spanish and explored its significance to understanding the story of Aj Poop B’atz’. We marveled that the document’s detailed account of the journey of Aj Poop B’atz’ resembled contemporary oral history. With renewed vigor, my colleagues commented that the document authenticated Aj Poop B’atz’ for them. Before the discovery of this document, my collaborators believed that Chamelco’s interest in Aj Poop B’atz’ stemmed from the community’s growing involvement in the Maya resurgence movement. One group member confessed that he believed Aj Poop B’atz’ to be “just” a mythological figure, whose story was exalted by the Q’eqchi’ community. Our work, how-

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ever, changed their views. The document validated him as a symbol of Q’eqchi’ identity not just for the local community but also according to national standards of authenticity, which require written authority.

The Aj Poop B’atz’ Project Since initiating our work together, the Grupo Aj Poop B’atz’ sought ways to share our findings with the community. During a brief visit to Chamelco in 2007 and longer fieldwork in 2009, a member of my collaborative work group and I met with Chamelco’s administration to explore ideas. As we waited for our first audience with the mayor, the political weight of our research became evident to me. My colleague explained that our work gave something valuable to all Chamelqueños: it proved that Aj Poop B’atz’ was real and that Chamelco was built on his legacy. Although Chamelqueños often talked about him as a mythological figure, our research showed that his story, and the power of the Q’eqchi’ community as tied to him, could not be negated by local or national authorities. Our work should be recorded as an official part of Chamelco’s history. My colleagues sought to transform this hidden transcript of Q’eqchi’ resistance into a public one. In our 2009 meeting with municipal officials, we proposed that the municipal government designate August 3 (the date that the Spanish monarchy named Aj Poop B’atz’ as the first governor of Verapaces) as a holiday recognizing Aj Poop B’atz’. Later, we presented our proposal to the city council, whose members agreed to the holiday and to support a conference in honor of Aj Poop B’atz’ the following year. Elated, my colleague stated that this experience validated our work because it meant we could share the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ with a wider audience. In these meetings, my Chamelqueño colleague confronted institutions that represent Guatemala’s Spanish colonial legacy. By presenting our work to the mayors, he reinforced the Q’eqchi’ people’s rightful place in Guatemalan history. He used the written authority of the documents, a nationally accepted medium, and the strength of oral tradition, the Q’eqchi’ medium, to prove Q’eqchi’ perseverance. By grounding Q’eqchi’ life in the past, he demonstrated the enduring legacy of an authentic Q’eqchi’ identity. In doing so, he used Aj Poop B’atz’ to show that history and the production of history are sources of indigenous resistance in Chamelco. Shortly after my return to the United States in 2009, I received an email from my colleague’s son informing me that the municipal government had issued the official decree naming August 3 of each year Aj Poop B’atz’ Day. In a strange turn of events, they had put me in charge of the inau-

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gural celebration of this holiday, to be held the following August. While I assumed that they had done so in hopes that I would secure funding for the celebration and find the time to coordinate the event, it did seem odd that they had put me, and not my local colleagues, in charge. Considering Atalay’s (2012) and others’ discussions of asymmetry in collaborative research, it might seem that the local government named me as “director” (la encargada) of this inaugural event because they perceived me as an “expert,” based on my educational level and my status as a community outsider, despite the collaborative nature of our research and proposal to municipal officials. Throughout the year, I worked to secure financial support for the celebration because of the limited funds that Chamelco’s municipal government could offer. I returned to Chamelco in July 2010 with a large grant and two student assistants to begin preparations for this event. Throughout the month, my collaborators and I worked diligently to plan the first celebration, coordinate speakers, invite more than two hundred distinguished guests, and plan an accompanying ritual ceremony. We met with municipal officials, selected menus, and participated in press conferences and television, radio, and newspaper interviews. Our work during this time was truly collaborative: I did not prioritize my vision for the celebration over those of my collaborators or of the community members with whom we worked during this time. Instead, we worked in tandem to coordinate an event that would satisfy all of our hopes for the day. On August 2, 2010, my collaborators and I sponsored a public talk about Aj Poop B’atz’ for Chamelco’s schoolchildren, as we had noted that Chamelco’s schools offer few opportunities for children to learn local history. More than five hundred schoolchildren listened as we talked in the plaza in front of Chamelco’s Catholic church about Aj Poop B’atz’. This event reinforced the importance of finding a way to share our research findings and this important episode in Chamelco’s history with its children. More than two hundred community members, including leaders, village elders, elected officials, activists, and friends, gathered on August 3, 2010, for an ethnohistoric symposium honoring Aj Poop B’atz’. Throughout the morning, speakers delivered bilingual presentations (in Q’eqchi’ and Spanish) on the life, history, and importance of this historical figure. The day did not go off without a hitch—the inclement weather in the early morning hours led us to postpone the procession we had planned from the Aj Poop B’atz’ statue to city hall, we had to cancel the afternoon workshop we had planned due to a miscommunication, and the continued inclement weather resulted in low attendance—but it marked an important mile-

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stone for my colleagues, who said that it had initiated a process of rewriting the history and revitalizing the memory of their town’s great leader. The August 3, 2010, celebration was just the start of Chamelco’s efforts to reconnect with their history through the story of their great leader. Near the end of the 2010 celebration, Chamelco’s mayor spoke, reminding the community that although our collaborative group had initiated the tradition of celebrating the August 3 holiday, the responsibility to continue it now lay with them. My colleague Sebastian Si Pop, a former president of the Q’eqchi’ branch of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala), echoed these sentiments in his concluding remarks to the morning’s events. Chamelqueños have celebrated Aj Poop B’atz’ Day each year since its 2010 inauguration. The nature of the celebrations and sponsoring parties have ranged each year from a small ritual ceremony held at dawn in the town’s central plaza to a variety of historical and cultural activities. In 2012, a committee of interested community members, with support from the local Catholic church parish and the municipal government, sponsored a full day of events on August 3. Although I was not present for this celebration, I received a digital invitation and schedule of the day’s activities from friends in Chamelco. Events included a museum displaying the church artifacts allegedly gifted by the Spanish king to Aj Poop B’atz’, a series of dances, a reenactment of the Maya ballgame, an ethnohistoric symposium, and a street fair market with traditional foods and crafts. I heard from friends and colleagues in Chamelco that the event was a smashing success. The community’s efforts to “revive” (revivir) Aj Poop B’atz’ made the national newspaper in 2012, in a featured article in Nuestro Diario. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, the community continued the tradition of celebrating this day on a small scale, holding Maya ritual ceremonies or actas cívicas (civic acts) sponsored by municipal authorities, to commemorate their historic leader. In 2016 I had the opportunity to be in Chamelco for the August 3 holiday for the first time since its 2010 inauguration. When news of my upcoming visit reached those organizing the celebration, I received an invitation to speak before an audience of students and distinguished guests as part of an ethnohistoric panel, one of the many events planned to mark the day. A group of community members, headed by Sebastian Si Pop and another Q’eqchi’ activist, had formed a committee to oversee the August 3 celebration. During the weeks preceding the event, committee members participated in radio interviews and other press opportunities, met with local agencies to ask for financial support, coordinated with municipal authorities, and collaborated with spiritual leaders in anticipation of the fes-

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tivities. Although I offered my help with event preparations, the committee had things so well under control that they did not need, or want, my assistance. They worked to plan a variety of events to commemorate Aj Poop B’atz’, including folkloric dances, a reenactment of the Maya ballgame, the sale of traditional foods, a Maya religious ceremony, and the academic conference in which I was to participate. I was impressed to see how the celebration had grown since 2010 and the extent to which the community had embraced the tradition of celebrating this holiday. The committee received little financial support from the municipal government, so residents from throughout the urban center and some of Chamelco’s affiliated villages helped to support the committee’s work, including donations of cash, foodstuffs, and other material items for use in the ritual events. During my 2016 visit to Chamelco, I was invited to participate in many of Aj Poop B’atz’ Day festivities. On August 2, I accompanied a group of Chamelqueños to the village of Chamil, the town where Aj Poop B’atz’ died. There, the village council had organized a Maya ritual ceremony, public speeches by local officials, and a distribution of traditional foods in honor of Aj Poop B’atz’. With more than one thousand people in attendance, the event brought together many local residents in celebration of this historic figure. On August 3, I visited one of several elementary schools in Chamelco’s urban center that were holding assemblies in commemoration of Aj Poop B’atz’. At the San Agustín neighborhood school, children sang songs, read poems, recounted local history, and even dressed up as Aj Poop B’atz’. These events, among many others that marked the 2016 celebration of the August 3 holiday, revealed that celebrating Aj Poop B’atz’ had become an integral part of local historical memory in Chamelco. Throughout the preparations for the 2016 celebration of Día de Aj Poop B’atz’, members of the organizing committee expressed their interest in finding a government organization, such as the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, or a nongovernmental organization (NGO) whose work focused on cultural and linguistic revitalization to sponsor and coordinate future Aj Poop B’atz Day celebrations. Doing so, they posited, would cement the celebration’s place in Q’eqchi’ cultural life. While a dedicated group of committee members had sustained the celebration over the last six years, they would not be able to do so forever. Finding an organization to oversee the celebration officially would ensure the holiday’s longevity, they said. After the 2016 celebration, however, I followed up with one organizer and activist to see whether the committee had been successful in securing an organization to take on this responsibility. My colleague shared that the group decided not to pursue a formal sponsor for Aj Poop B’atz’ Day,

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as they were afraid that the bureaucracy of doing so might change the meaning and practice of celebrating the day. Converting this hidden transcript into a public one was risky, as it might lead the story and celebration of Aj Poop B’atz’ to be appropriated, and subsequently changed, by hegemonies. Instead, the committee decided that the celebration should remain in the hands of the community moving forward. While celebrating Aj Poop B’atz’ annually in the ways described here has advanced the community’s understanding of the life of this heroic figure and has helped many to reconnect with lost parts of their history, my colleagues and I have also sought to ensure that students have the opportunity to learn about their great leader, just as other Chamelqueños do. In 2012 Sebastian Si Pop and I began work on a bilingual book for children about the life and importance of Aj Poop B’atz’. To write the book, we used the information we had compiled throughout our years of research with the Grupo Aj Poop B’atz’. We tried not to impose our perception of who Aj Poop B’atz’ was or what his historical significance was but to use only the information that community members had shared with us to frame the text. In this way, we strove to present an image of Aj Poop B’atz’ grounded in indigenous knowledge and not national or Western hegemonies. At the end of the book, however, we did include a list of historical references and a bilingual transcription/translation of the Real Cédula of Chamelco, the document naming Aj Poop B’atz’ “Lifelong Governor of the Verapaces,”14 to assist children in continuing to research Chamelco’s history. We chose to do so, despite the fact that these sources present hegemonic views of Aj Poop B’atz’, because community members frequently expressed the need to access written sources about Chamelco’s history in school assignments. We chose photos from Chamelco that corresponded to the text rather than fantastic drawings to illustrate the book to help children situate the story within the context of the places and things they see daily. In June 2012, I took more than five hundred copies of the book to Chamelco. Upon my arrival, Sebastian and I donated the copies to regional cultural institutions, libraries, NGOs, universities, and public and private schools. We presented the book at a gala celebrating Chamelco’s annual fair and at the municipal celebration of Día del Maestro (Teachers’ Day) a week or so later. Our efforts were well received, as many Chamelqueños had asked us to share the story of Aj Poop B’atz’ in written form for years and were pleased with our efforts to make our research available and accessible to the community. In June 2014, I returned to Chamelco with two hundred additional copies of the book. Sebastian and I continued the work of distributing them

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and met with teachers, school officials, and town leaders to learn if the book had been used in the two years since we first presented it. We talked with teachers in Chamelco and in nearby towns about Aj Poop B’atz’ and the Aj Poop B’atz’ Project. We shared the book with those teachers who had not received it and discussed how they could integrate it into their classes. While the teachers were interested and receptive to this idea, they stated that they had found it difficult to use books with students, as the number of copies of the book we had provided was insufficient to allow students to work with them. Some said that the books had been “lost” in school administration office and were inaccessible to teachers or students. Others stated that the continued lack of room in the school curriculum for teaching and discussing Guatemalan history and culture gave them little opportunity to integrate the book into their teaching. While Aj Poop B’atz’ was on their minds, they could not bring him into their classrooms. Others, however, shared that by using the book in class, they had sparked students’ interest in learning more about their indigenous history. While we received mixed feedback—our book reached only a limited audience but had provided a historical reference for some—Sebastian was pleased. By sharing the knowledge collected through our collaborative research, he said, we helped to contribute to community-wide cultural revitalization efforts and had provided another means for community members who wanted to learn about the story of their great leader to do so. He stated that change—in culture, in historical understanding, in education, and in revitalization—was slow.

Conclusion In San Juan Chamelco, sixteenth-century Q’eqchi’ leader Aj Poop B’atz’ remains a symbol of the Q’eqchi’ past, present, and future. Chamelqueños active in Maya resurgence efforts, local Catholics, followers of Mayabased religious practice, among others, invoke his model of value through his presence in the town center, the stories they tell, and the colonial documents they preserve. He serves as an authentic symbol of Q’eqchi’ life because he mediated two conflicting worlds to preserve indigenous practice. By commemorating Aj Poop B’atz’, Chamelqueños construct him not simply as an ancestor but also as a force that defines contemporary Q’eqchi’ life. Our collaborative research on Aj Poop B’atz’ has helped my colleagues to contextualize their identities, and that of their community as a whole, in the legacy of their Maya past. Through our work together, they confront the absence of the Q’eqchi’ community in national historical dis-

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course by writing their history to highlight their community as one whose identity transcends time. The strength of Maya oral tradition and the written authority of the colonial document we analyzed allow them to validate Aj Poop B’atz’ as an authentic producer of Q’eqchi’ life and legitimize beliefs already prevalent in Chamelco. Educating their community about him, they generate a history, identity, and agency centered on indigenous knowledge and practice. By creating a space in which to celebrate Aj Poop B’atz’, they challenge authorities to define the Q’eqchi’ community’s place in Guatemala’s historical narrative. In doing so, they convert the story of Aj Poop B’atz’, which has long served as a hidden transcript of resistance, into a public transcript, whose meaning and autonomy they preserve by ensuring that the celebration of Aj Poop B’atz’ remains in the hands of Q’eqchi’ community members and that Q’eqchi’ leaders, rather than national hegemonic forces, shape the narrative that grounds Chamelqueños’ understanding of their great founder. Bringing this hidden transcript to the forefront of local consciousness as a public transcript, my collaborators, like Aj Poop B’atz’ before them, become authentic producers of Q’eqchi’ identity.

Notes 1. Q’eqchi’ is one of more than thirty languages that form the Mayan language family. In Guatemala many indigenous groups self-identify according to the language they speak. Thus, when I use the word “Q’eqchi” in this chapter, I refer both to speakers of this language and to those who identify as members of its corresponding cultural group. I use the word “Maya” in a similar fashion in this chapter to refer to speakers of languages in the Mayan language family and to the corresponding cultural groups. 2. I thank the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology and Wiley Periodicals, Inc., for permission to use the material in this volume. An earlier version of this chapter was published in 2010 in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 15, issue 2:411–33. I extend great thanks to the members of my collaborative research group—Otto Chaman, Cobi Tosh, the late Eusebio Tzub, and the late Oscar Fernandez— for their support and dedication to our research. I am especially appreciative for my years of collaboration with my colleague, Sebastian Si Pop. I am also indebted to my family in Chamelco for their hospitality, encouragement, and love. They are Onelia Paau, Alejandro Coc, Aura Caal, Selvin Cu, Nancy Yaeggy, Ofelia Ch’o, and last, but not least, Juana Can. I also thank my former students from Rollins College, Kayla Cortés and Rachael Kangas, who traveled to Chamelco with me in 2010 to organize the first celebration of Día de Aj Poop B’atz’.

Discovering Aj Poop B’atz’ / 79 My fieldwork on Aj Poop B’atz’ has been generously supported by two Critchfield Grants and a McKean Grant from Rollins College. I thank the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation and the Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation for their support of the McKean Grant program. 3. There is no exact translation for the word “cacique,” but it refers to an indigenous leader who possesses significant authority. 4. Original (Spanish): “Chamelco es muy especial. Es un pueblo muy tranquilo. ¿Verdad? Es de, y la cultura de la gente es muy original. ¿Verdad? Hay valores muy, morales muy, muy enraizados, . . . precisamente porque Chamelco tiene mucha originalidad. Porque no ha tenido invasión de gente de otros lados. . . . Si queremos sacarnos una muestra real, y pura de Alta Verapaz, es aquí.” 5. Saint’s day brotherhoods are dedicated to celebrating the town’s primary Catholic saints on their designated days. 6. Original (Spanish): “Se tuvo que llegar a consenso, y se ingeniaron criterios traducidos para elegir el nuevo cacique. Uno de los criterios que él tenía ser un hombre muy cauto. . . . También tenía que ver, uno de criterios también la edad, otro de los criterios el, haber participado en las guerras. Tenía que saber de guerra, lo otro es que también tenía que ser un hombre bastante estratégico, para poder dirigir el ejército, tenía en aquel entonces. Van algunos, creo que, pero más que todo, la providencia, la providencia que debía de tener el cacique para conducir los destinos. Entonces, bajo estas características, yo creo que hay otros, es de, se llevó a cabo la elección.” 7. While the bells hang in the church tower today, the smallest bell cracked in the mid-1900s. Some state that Aj Poop B’atz caused the bell to crack when a woman touched it, violating a custom that forbade women from touching sacred objects (Adams and Brady 2005). 8. Q’eqchi’s perform the wa’tesink petition ceremony to inaugurate new constructions and objects. They “feed” their spirits so they will not be restless or harm their owners. 9. Original (Spanish and Q’eqchi’): “Dice que es el único hombre que tiene xwan wankil.” 10. Original (Spanish): “Tuvo éxito, no fue vencido, entonces, todo el mundo vive honrado de esta actitud de él.” 11. Original (Spanish): “Fue uno de los grandes hombres en este sentido, como gobernante de Alta Verapaz. Que . . . supo defender . . . el pueblo, porque si no, de verdad, si no por él, nosotros tuviéramos apellidos diferentes. Fuéramos López. Fuéramos García.” 12. Original (Spanish): “Eso dejó . . . todo lo que se hace pues, todas las actividades que se hace, pues, son como una herencia maya. Podemos decir, que eso, siempre lo realiza la gente, digamos las actividades, todo eso, uno tiene que hacer porque así, por eso es, es recordar la vida de él.” 13. The document is signed with the names of several men, but it is unclear who actually wrote it, when, and for what purpose. The existence of similar

80 / S. Ashley Kistler documents held by two of Chamelco’s principal cofradías led us to believe that this document may have been a record of a story told during a public event, such as a cofradía celebration. Since the document states that it was signed in Chamelco’s Resurrección neighborhood, we believe this document may have originally belonged to the Resurrección cofradía, one of Chamelco’s five original cofradías established during colonial times. 14. I have only seen a photocopy of the Real Cédula of Chamelco, which was held in Chamelco’s Catholic church archives, in municipal records, and in the hands of some local investigators. The document, which appears to have been written and signed by the Spanish king in 1555, gave Aj Poop B’atz’ the title of “Lifelong Governor of the Verapaz” region, including the contemporary departments of Baja and Alta Verapaz. It appears to have been written as part of official Spanish colonial records to establish Aj Poop B’atz’s authority over the region. I do not know where the original document is today and cannot verify its authenticity.

4 The Man at the Crossroads Mapla’s Sojuel, Ancestral Guardian of Tz’utujil-Mayas Allen J. Christenson

Traditionalists in Santiago Atitlán, a Tz’utujil-Maya1 community in the Guatemalan highlands, claim that essential elements of their major ceremonies and prayers were first established by Mapla’s (Francisco) Sojuel,2 a legendary culture hero who likely lived in the latter half of the nineteenth century. E. Michael Mendelson, in the course of his work as an ethnographer in the early 1950s, was told that Sojuel had died forty-two years before, consistent with estimates that I have heard of when his death occurred, or in other words, in the early twentieth century. Mendelson writes that “very few names were mentioned as frequently during my stay in Atitlán as that of Francisco [Sojuel]. . . . Let it be said that scarcely a ritual could be watched, let alone discussed, without some mention of this prophet cropping up” (1957:488). Myths surrounding Francisco Sojuel are replete with stories of his miraculous power in thwarting the Tz’utujil people’s enemies, who tried to pressure them to abandon their ancestral traditions. Atitecos believe that the rituals founded by their ancestors, particularly those associated with Mapla’s Sojuel, are capable of restoring the life-generating powers of the world. Without these rituals, the world would age, deteriorate, and eventually die without the capacity to be reborn. Because of his perceived ability to help the world to regenerate itself, Sojuel is a liminal figure—partly a mortal person, who lived in Santiago Atitlán more than a hundred years ago, and partly an ageless being, who was one of the founding ancestors at the time of creation and who still lives today.

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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To appreciate Mapla’s Sojuel’s place in Santiago Atitlán society, it is important to understand the historical background of the Tz’utujil people. In the period immediately preceding the Spanish conquest in 1524, there were three principal Maya kingdoms that dominated the western highlands of Guatemala—K’iche’s, Kaqchikels, and Tz’utujils. The borders of these states came closest to one another in the area of Lake Atitlán, resulting in a struggle for lands and dominion in that region that fostered near constant warfare for almost a century before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. This perpetual conflict weakened each state and fostered deep animosities that to a certain extent continue today. It also left the highland Maya more vulnerable to Spanish dominion with armed conflicts sapping the resources of each kingdom and tempting Kaqchikels to form an ill-fated alliance with the Spaniards as a means of gaining an advantage over their rivals. This conflict ultimately proved disastrous for all three kingdoms (as outlined in Lovell and Lutz, chapter 2, this volume). The great heroes of the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel communities, like Tekun Umam, Cahi Ymox, and Belehé Qat (see Maxwell and Cuma Chavez, chapter 1; Lovell and Lutz, chapter 2, this volume), mostly lived in this conquest period, struggling mightily, but ultimately failing, to preserve indigenous autonomy and stem the tide of Spanish aggression. In contrast, the Tz’utujil kingdom never suffered the kind of devastation wrought on the other two kingdoms. Following a brief battle on the southern shores of Lake Atitlán in late spring 1524, Tz’utujil rulers submitted to Spanish dominion and agreed to pay tribute to the Spaniards.3 Despite their reputation as fierce warriors, Tz’utujils never openly rebelled against their Spanish overlords as Kaqchikels eventually did. As a result, Tz’utujil rulers were allowed to administer their lands with relatively little interference from Spanish authorities so long as they made their regular tribute payments. Their remoteness from Spanish centers of power farther to the east also contributed to the preservation of significant elements of traditional Tz’utujil religious and cultural institutions that had been quickly crushed in other highland Guatemalan communities.4 The introduction of Roman Catholicism to the area was also less aggressive than in other regions where the Spanish presence was more pronounced. Although the Tz’utujil king was eventually baptized and given the new name of Don Pedro, Fray Francisco Ximénez doubted that this event took place when Alvarado invaded Tz’utujil territory in 1524. He suggested that the baptism was performed many years later, well after the first Christian missionaries arrived in Guatemala in 1534 (Ximénez 1929– 31; see also Orellana 1984:195). Within a few decades after the conquest, Chiya’ was abandoned, and its population was moved across the bay to

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the area of present-day Santiago Atitlán. The foundations of the present church at Santiago Atitlán were laid in 1570 and the building was completed in 1582. Within three years, there were five Franciscan missionary priests living in an adjacent monastery complex under the leadership of Fray Pedro de Arboleda. The Franciscan convent was mostly abandoned, however, early in the seventeenth century, and the area never received resident secular priests during the colonial period. The lack of a strong clerical presence in Santiago Atitlán allowed many indigenous religious beliefs and practices to continue relatively unabated, whereas others became mixed with the Tz’utujil interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrine. Following the independence of Guatemala from Spain in 1821, anticlerical legislation resulted in the abrupt end to the Franciscan presence in Santiago Atitlán, and the community had no resident clergy thereafter until 1964, depending instead on periodic visits by priests from across the lake. The relative isolation of Santiago Atitlán from Spanish centers of power during the colonial period allowed core elements of Tz’utujil ceremonialism and traditions to survive. By the nineteenth century, however, the newly independent Guatemalan government initiated policies meant to pressure traditional communities such as Santiago Atitlán to assimilate with Ladino language, customs, and beliefs. It is in the context of these new pressures to abandon their cultural heritage that Mapla’s Sojuel appears as a powerful defender of indigenous rights and religious practices in the face of intense persecution by Spanish-speaking authorities. Unlike other highland Maya figures, whose names are recorded in contemporary written documents, the activities of Mapla’s Sojuel are preserved almost exclusively through oral tradition. Nevertheless, Tz’utujils do not consider him to be a shadowy figure from the distant past. I first visited Santiago Atitlán as a linguist and anthropologist in the late 1970s and have continued to work in the area since then. In my experience, nearly everyone in the community claims Mapla’s Sojuel either as an ancestor by blood known to elderly relatives in their youth or asserts that someone in their family knew him well. Stories about him bear the tone of personal knowledge passed on by eyewitnesses known to the teller. Traditionalists, or adherents to Maya religious practices as distinct from Orthodox Roman Catholicism or the numerous Protestant sects in the community, emphasize these links as powerful influences in their personal lives. In Santiago Atitlán, powerful ancestors like Sojuel are referred to as nawals (sometimes spelled nuwals, spirit animals), a term that Mendelson understood from his informants as someone “old, ancient, historical, and implies power accrued from age” (Mendelson 1957:42, 419n1). (See Maxwell and Cuma Chávez, chapter 1, this volume, for an additional discus-

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sion of nawals.) Living persons, no matter how well respected, are never called nawals. In fact, the term is often paired with the borrowed Spanish term “antigual” (ancient), denoting something specifically from the past. “Nawal” is the Tz’utujil language version of “nahualli,” a central Mexican Nahuatl word that often refers to a powerful individual who can transform into an animal or some natural phenomenon (Sahagún 1979:42). The highland Maya at times also used this connotation of nawal. In the Popol Vuh, composed in the mid-sixteenth century by anonymous members of the surviving nobility of the K’iche’-Maya court, the pre-Columbian king Gucumatz (Quetzal Serpent) is described as being a “naual ahau” (nawal lord) and was able to convert himself into various things at will, such as a serpent, an eagle, a jaguar, or a pool of blood (Christenson 2007:275). The original Nahuatl meaning of the word could also refer to one who has the ability to predict the future or work beneficent miracles. Sahagún describes a naoalli as a “knower of the land of the dead, a knower of the heavens,” who can foretell the coming of rains, plagues, and famine (Sahagún 1997:212). In the Popol Vuh, the first four progenitors of the K’iche’ people were described as “naual uinac” (nawal people) (Christenson 2007:170, 194, 210), who were created by the gods and had miraculous vision that allowed them to foresee the future and work miracles: “Instantly they were able to behold everything. They did not have to walk to see all that existed beneath the sky. They merely saw it from wherever they were. Thus, their knowledge became full. Their vision passed beyond the trees and the rocks, beyond the lakes and the seas, beyond the mountains and the valleys” (Ximénez 1701–4:folio 33 verso, lines 10–18).5 For Tz’utujils of Santiago Atitlán, Mapla’s Sojuel is described in the same terms, as a nawal acha (nawal man) who was able to prophesy the future and perform miracles, particularly with regard to rain. Patricia McAnany writes that Yucatec-Mayas, both ancient and modern, venerate ancestors as a means of drawing power from the past to legitimize the political and religious activities of the present. However, in her findings, the Maya do not engage in a generalized cult of the dead, whereby ancestral spirits are perceived to be a depersonalized collective presence within the community; rather, they tend to single out specific deceased individuals as beings who never really died and who continue to assist their descendants by means of “mystical intervention in human affairs” (McAnany 1995:1). Because they are not truly dead, McAnany prefers to characterize the relationship as “living with the ancestors” rather than a “cult of the dead.” This concept is also prevalent in many communities in highland Guatemala that have a significant population of traditionalist Maya and it is particularly true in Santiago Atitlán. Although Mapla’s Sojuel is perhaps

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the most famous ancestral figure, there are a myriad of named ancestors that are widely known as setting the precedent for ceremonies and institutions that are still in use today. These individuals not only established ritual practices in the long-ago past but are believed to continue to watch over their descendants. These sacred beings reside in the nearby mountains and occasionally intervene at times of significant crisis. In preparation for a book that I was writing on the altarpiece in Santiago Atitlán’s sixteenth-century church (Christenson 2001), I spent several months in 1997 making preliminary drawings of the monument. One afternoon an aged ajkun (one of several types of traditional Maya religious practitioners) sat down next to me and watched for a time as I drew. We struck up a conversation on the altarpiece’s origin. He pointed out a number of sculpted objects in the church, including the altarpiece panel that I was drawing in my sketchbook, as works of Mapla’s Sojuel. Although those panels were actually carved in the 1970s by a family of Tz’utujil sculptors who still live in the community, the ajkun insisted that they were created much earlier by Sojuel and that they miraculously come to life at night because they are living entities with a sacred k’ux (soul). He added that when Mapla’s Sojuel worked, he did not need to eat maize tortillas or tamales to live. Instead he fasted for long periods, working up in the mountains carving the gods’ and saints’ images and weaving the sacred bundles that are used in indigenous ceremonies. When I asked when Mapla’s Sojuel had died, he replied that it happened in 1907. Were the altarpiece and the other images that he had mentioned carved about that time? “Just so, in 1907, two thousand years ago when the Spaniards first came to Santiago Atitlán.” This confusion over fixed dates reflects the Tz’utujil view that important events recur periodically (Mendelson 1957, 1965; Farriss 1984). Victoria Bricker writes that often Maya myths “ignore the temporal provenience of human events in favor of a paradigmatic interpretation of them” (Bricker 1981:3). For the elderly ajkun, “two thousand years” was simply a way of saying that the altarpiece is so ancient that it predates the founding of Santiago Atitlán. It belongs to mythic, rather than historic, time and was created in an age when semideified ancestors like Mapla’s Sojuel set the pattern for important aspects of Atiteco worship.

Cofradía Worship and Mapla’s Sojuel Mapla’s Sojuel is not known to have held any positions of political power recognized by the Spanish-speaking authorities in the Lake Atitlán region. Despite his ability to prophesy the future and work miracles, most

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accounts describe Sojuel as leading a humble life, tending his maize fields while also working tirelessly to preserve traditional Tz’utujil faith, a syncretic blend of ancient Maya beliefs and Roman Catholic doctrine. Most Tz’utujil traditionalists claim that the cofradía (saint’s day brotherhood) system in Santiago Atitlán was founded by Sojuel.6 Although ostensibly Roman Catholic institutions, cofradías in Santiago Atitlán are completely independent of Roman Catholic authority and have become a means of preserving significant elements of ancient Maya rituals and practices (Carlsen 1997; Christenson 2001; Early 2006, 2012; O’Brien 2015). Sojuel could not have been the founder of the first cofradías in Santiago Atitlán, as there are references to them in colonial Spanish documents composed centuries before his time (Orellana 1984:211) and the Cofradía of San Juan possesses records of their activities dating back well into the eighteenth century. It is possible, however, that Mapla’s Sojuel modified the system and set the pattern for important elements of cofradía worship as they are practiced today. The following is one variant of the tradition as told by Nicolás Chávez Sojuel, a traditionalist Tz’utujil sculptor. The account was given after a long description of the persecution that followers of the old Maya traditions suffered at the hands of Roman Catholic priests who wanted the people in Santiago Atitlán to abandon their ancestral beliefs:7 Before the days of Mapla’s Sojuel, people didn’t think of having cofradía houses. When there was a problem, people just came together in the house of Mapla’s Sojuel, who was then the nab’eysil [a Maya ritual specialist attached to the Cofradía of San Juan dedicated to the veneration of a sacred bundle, called Martín, that contains sacred objects linked to creation], to discuss how best to provide for the people and protect them.8 But when Mapla’s Sojuel became old, he decided that he couldn’t leave the people without protection. If he were to die and go away, how would the town be protected? What would happen to their customs and ceremonies? So he and Marco Rohuch formed ten or twelve cofradías, each dedicated to one of the saints. But each of the cofradías needed an image or a bundle to give it power to help the people and these were all in Paq’alib’al [Place of appearance or manifestation—a sacred cave located high in the mountains southwest of town]. Not everyone could go to Paq’alib’al because this is where the ancient kings and nawals live. Mapla’s Sojuel could go there because he was a powerful nawal himself. They went inside Paq’alib’al where they met with the ancient kings of Tz’utujils, who live there and watch over the sacred bundles and

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images. Each of the cofradías was given its image by the kings at Paq’alib’al. The bundle of Martín was given to the Cofradía of San Juan, but Mapla’s Sojuel didn’t give them the bundle himself. The deer and jaguars came down to the town carrying the Martín bundle on one of the deer’s back. When they arrived at the home of Juan Pakay, who was to be the new nab’eysil for the Cofradía of San Juan, the deer and jaguars circled three times around the house, and then went in. Other animals came as well from the mountains to accompany the bundle of Martín. Now, when hunters go up into the mountains and kill an animal, they bring the skins to the Cofradía of San Juan and hang them from the rafters in honor of the deer and jaguars. San Juan is the lord of animals. Sometimes, when times are hard, you can hear these animals crying out at night inside the cofradía house. Or sometimes, they’ll come down from the rafters and have discussions on how to solve the problems in town while the jaguars stand guard outside. On those nights, no one can enter, but once the meetings are over you can enter again. In this account, the images and sacred bundles of the gods were said to have been brought by Mapla’s Sojuel from Paq’alib’al. This belief is consistent with accounts given by the authors of the Popol Vuh as well as Spanish friars, in which the images of highland Maya deities were traditionally kept in caves and mountain shrines rather than within the town to keep them safe from iconoclastic purges by the Roman Catholic authorities (Las Casas 1958:clxxviii, 150; Gage 1958:280–89). The cofradías of Santiago Atitlán represent a continuation of Tz’utujil worship independent of Roman Catholic control. Indeed, many of the ceremonies conducted in the cofradía houses retain significant elements of ancient Maya tradition that run counter to European notions of Christian orthodoxy. Roman Catholic and Protestant authorities alike frequently counsel their congregations to stay away from them because of their continued adherence to “pagan” Maya gods and traditions (O’Brien-Rothe 2015:9). In 1997, I was told by the parish priest of Santiago Atitlán, an American from Missouri named Father Miguel, that he had wanted to establish better relations with the cofradías. He asked a number of his parishioners if they would accompany him on an impromptu visit to the Cofradía Santiago. They were horrified by the idea and told him that he should never set foot in any of them as they were pagan Maya houses where “witchcraft” was practiced. If he were seen going there, many would believe that he had turned to devil worship and refuse to take communion from him. In any case, they said, the cofradía officials would not welcome him in their

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houses and would resent his invasion of their domain. He finally abandoned the idea but often regretted the lack of trust between traditionalists and orthodox Catholics in the community.

Mapla’s Sojuel as Defender of Tz’utujils Although royal Spanish authority in Guatemala ended with the country’s independence in 1821, Spanish-speaking Ladinos continued to hold economic and secular power in Santiago Atitlán. One name that crops up frequently in stories from this period is the Villagrán family, who ran the principal shops in the community and were notorious for their ill treatment of Tz’utujils. Sojuel often appears as the principal defender of indigenous rights in these stories, confounding the Villagráns and forcing them to treat the people fairly. The following is one of several stories concerning Sojuel’s experiences with the Villagráns and government officials who sought to curtail his influence in Santiago Atitlán. The source of this account was an elderly ajkun conducting a ceremony in the Cofradía of Santa Cruz in 2001: Mapla’s Sojuel was a powerful nawal who knew how to bring rain and make it stop. When there was a drought, he used the leather strap from a saddle that secures it beneath a horse’s belly. He would stand on this strap and pull himself up into the clouds where he would cause it to rain. In his day, there was a family of Ladinos in town called the Villagráns. They hated the Tz’utujil people because they were poor and uneducated. They especially hated Mapla’s Sojuel because he had power and guarded the traditions of the people. So the Villagráns had soldiers come from Antigua who arrested Mapla’s Sojuel and took him to a jail there. In jail, they interrogated him to see if he could cause miracles. There was a terrible drought in those days, and they asked him if he could bring rain. He said, “If you like I will give you rain.” Soon the rains began, but they fell so hard and so long that they killed many people from the floods. The rain fell so hard that it washed away the palace and lightning killed many more. But there was no rain over the jail where Sojuel was held and it remained dry and unharmed. So the authorities came back and asked him to stop the rain and he did. They promised to let him go but changed their minds so he just escaped and returned home. Nowadays, no one knows how to bring rain. But if there is a drought, sometimes Mapla’s Sojuel will appear in dreams and let people know what ceremonies to do to bring the rain.

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Mapla’s Sojuel helped us in our struggles with the Ladinos who hated us because we were poor. But the Ladinos didn’t understand how powerful he was. Power doesn’t depend on money like it does today. The ancient nawals like Mapla’s Sojuel had power because they had good hearts and knew how to help the people. Today, people only care about big houses and televisions. They have forgotten who they are. Because of his perceived powers, Atitecos believe that Mapla’s Sojuel often came into conflict with non-Maya authorities, who envied his abilities and feared that he could raise a rebellion against them. In most cases, these authorities are described as residing in Antigua, the site of the old capital of Guatemala, which was founded in 1543 soon after the Spanish conquest. A series of devastating earthquakes virtually destroyed Antigua in the eighteenth century, forcing the establishment of a new capital at its present location in Guatemala City in 1775. In the time of the historical Mapla’s Sojuel, Antigua would have long since ceased to be a center of political power in Guatemala. These stories suggest that in the minds of Atitecos, Sojuel is a ubiquitous presence throughout their history as a champion of indigenous tradition. As Bricker writes, “in the timelessness of oral tradition and ritual there is no place for individuality. The hero of one cycle or century or millennium is the hero of all time. He may be referred to by the names of all heroes or any one of them” (Bricker 1981:8). The following passage is part of one of many such stories. This version was told to me by a member of the Cofradía of San Juan:9 When the president of Guatemala lived in Antigua, he had an enormous black man who served as his bodyguard. The president ate human flesh, so he would have his bodyguard change into a dog at night to go out and seize people to bring back to the president to eat. Because he was black, people could not see him at night. The only way he could be seen was when he smoked cigars, which he loved to do in the darkness. One evening, the president ordered his bodyguard to go out and capture Mapla’s Sojuel because he had heard that he had power and was dangerous. But Mapla’s Sojuel was a prophet and knew beforehand what the president had planned. So he called on K’walkoj, a great eagle with two heads, to help him. K’walkoj immediately came flying down from the mountains with a great cry that sounded like war. His cry sounded like horses and the clash of armor and swords. K’walkoj swept down and seized the bodyguard by the arm and

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dropped him from a great height to kill him. But the bodyguard survived because he had strong armor. Then Mapla’s Sojuel turned himself into a great stone. K’walkoj then grasped the bodyguard again with its talons and flew high up into the air before dropping him again on the stone that Sojuel had transformed himself into. As a result, the bodyguard was smashed into thousands of pieces and died. The president of Guatemala immediately knew he was dead because he kept a candle on his desk and when the bodyguard died the candle went out. Similar accounts of K’walkoj and the president’s bodyguard were recorded by both Mendelson (1957:484–88, 1958:123) and Orellana (1975: 861), indicating that the story goes back quite a way in time.10 In Tz’utujil cosmology, gods and certain individuals are said to have animal companions or counterparts. Both benevolent and malevolent entities have these counterparts. In the story cited above, Sojuel has the powers of a nawal to transform himself into a stone, which contributed to the death of the bodyguard. K’walkoj means “child of puma,” which Nicolás Chávez told me is an indication of his great power over life and death. He carved an image of the double-headed K’walkoj into his entryway as a protective talisman. The K’walkoj is still a common motif in embroidered patterns on Atiteco clothing for both men and women and serves to ward off malevolent powers when worn. Of course, there is no historical foundation for the assertion that there was a cannibalistic president of Guatemala in the nineteenth century with a bodyguard who could transform himself into a dog to gather victims for his employer’s dinner table. Mythic stories are not history in the usual sense but a restructuring of historical events and personalities in such a way that they fit the recurring pattern of conflict that is foundational to highland Maya thought. It is the cyclic nature of this never-ending struggle that is important. Bricker writes that myths such as this “ignore the temporal provenience of human events in favor of a paradigmatic interpretation of them” (Bricker 1981:3). The story places Mapla’s Sojuel as a heroic defender of life itself in the face of other worldly forces arrayed against him that seek to bring death into the world.

The Disappearance of Mapla’s Sojuel Many Tz’utujils tell stories describing the ways that Mapla’s Sojuel’s enemies tried to kill him because of his power. All insist that, in one way or another, Sojuel was able to come out of these trials safely or trick those who opposed him. The following story was recorded by Mendelson:

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In the days of Mapla’s Soxuel,11 the . . . holy men were persecuted as brujos [witches]. . . . One day Soxuel was put in prison on some excuse by the Governor of Solola, who in those days was called Jefe. Before he went Soxuel asked the people of Cofradía San Juan to lend him one of the San Martín shirts from the bundle and, in prison, he put this on underneath his clothes. The Jefe said that this brujo had to be executed and one morning sent a group of soldiers to do away with him. But when they were about to shoot him there came big clouds and a strong rain and blobs of water formed on the end of the rifles and the shots failed to come out. Then the Jefe gave orders that a huge fire should be built. So one morning the soldiers came and threw Soxuel with all his clothes into the fire; they even poured oil all over him, but the fact is that he did not burn. Without the soldiers knowing it he came out of the fire leaving his representative behind and escaped to Atitlán. (Mendelson 1957:488) A similar story was told to me in 1997 by an ajkun who had just finished a ceremony within the Cofradía of Santa Cruz in which he had called on a litany of ancestral figures by name, including Mapla’s Sojuel: “Long ago, the king of Antigua had Mapla’s Sojuel arrested. The soldiers tried to kill him by taking him to the peak of a great canyon and throwing him off. But he simply floated gently to the ground and lived. They then cut him apart into little pieces and put salt on the pieces, but the next day he came back together whole and was seen walking happily through town.” In another version, recited by the Rukab’ (literally, second)12 of Cofradía San Juan, Sojuel’s body was actually buried, but the body vanished from the grave: Once Mapla’s Sojuel was arrested and taken to Sololá where the governor asked him if he had power to make it rain. He replied, “If you would like rain, I will give you rain.” The next day great black clouds formed with heavy rain, wind, lightning, and hail. Houses fell from the flood, and people pleaded with the governor to save them. The governor demanded that Sojuel stop the rain. “Why are you amazed by this sign since you yourself asked for it?” So the governor had Mapla’s Sojuel cut up into small pieces and put salt and lemon on each piece so that he could not come back to life. The Atitecos gathered up the pieces and buried them in the cemetery. But when his enemies went to the cemetery and opened the coffin to make sure he was dead, they found it empty other than a new za-

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pote tree that was growing from it. Some say that he survived and continued to live in town. Others say that he just disappeared and went to live in the mountains where he still exists. The story of Mapla’s Sojuel parallels the account in the Popol Vuh of the first ancestors of the K’iche’an people who did not really die but went to live among their ancestors in the mountains: “‘We go to our people. . . . For our work is accomplished, and our day is now finished. Remember us. Do not forget us. Do not sweep us away. . . . .’ They were not buried by their wives, nor their children. Neither was their disappearance clear when they vanished. But their counsel was clear” (Ximénez 1701–4:folio 47 verso, line 27, folio 48 recto, line 3).13 In a similar way, many stories about Mapla’s Sojuel insist that he did not really die but rather went to live with the other nawal ancestors in the mountains. The following passage presents an account of this story told by a man named Baltazar as recorded by Mendelson: Even recently there had been a god here, who was pure nuwal, he had the pure spirit of God and could foretell rain and thunder and make the earth quake and he knew about the creation of the world and how to call and speak to angels, etc. His name was Mapla’s Soxuel and he was much persecuted. One day a man named Nicolás Tzina had been to the coast to get some cattle and had stopped on the way back in one of his fields. Soxuel came up to him and they discussed agriculture. Early the next day Tzina arrived back in Atitlán and saw a great crowd crying out to God and weeping violently. He was told that Soxuel had just been buried. Then everyone realized that Soxuel had talked to Tzina in the field after his death. But the Ladinos had not believed in the man’s power. So on the next day they had been to the grave and found the body absent. Then even they believed he was nuwal and dios (god). (Mendelson 1957:489) Although there are many access points to the place where Tz’utujils believe semideified ancestors like Mapla’s Sojuel reside, traditionalist Atitecos say that the principal portal is the cave of Paq’alib’al. Stories about this cave are widely known in the community although few go there, partly because of its remote location and partly because it is considered to be a sacred place that should not be approached without very good reasons. The following account is from a young ajkun named Juan: When the great nawals like Mapla’s Sojuel die, they aren’t buried. They don’t really die. They go to Paq’alib’al where they live with

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other nawals. There they have meetings together to decide how to help the people of Santiago Atitlán. If someone tries to go to Paq’alib’al when a meeting is going on, they will never find the opening. It can only be found when it wants to be found. This is why ajkuns and others always do a ceremony to ask permission to go to Paq’alib’al beforehand. The opening of the cave is small, less than a meter tall. But if one has a good heart and he has the permission of the nawals, the opening becomes larger so that he doesn’t have to bend over to get inside. At first it’s dark inside just like any other cave, but after about fifty meters it opens up into a great space with light and a great lake that looks like Lake Atitlán. On the shores of the lake is a town, except it is smaller than Santiago Atitlán and all the houses are like those from a hundred years ago—stone walls topped with sticks or bamboo, thatched roofs, and an inverted clay pot at the top of the roof just like they used to always do. The nawals live in these houses, dressed in red pullover shirts like our grandfathers once wore but that are very rare today. The mayor and officials are Mapla’s Sojuel, Marco Rojuch, and other nawals.

The Once and Future Hero The devastating civil war in Guatemala, particularly the period in the 1980s, known simply as la violencia (the violence), had a devastating effect on the social fabric of Santiago Atitlán. Atitecos suffered disproportionately among neighboring highland Maya communities during these years. The Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) estimates that as many as 1,700 Atitecos were killed between 1980 and 1990 out of a population of approximately 20,000 (Carlsen 1997). Those perceived as promulgating traditional Maya culture and religion were targeted specifically as dangerous threats to social stability by some factions of the military. The violence in this region culminated in an incident on December 2, 1990. The day before, the garrison commander and a group of his soldiers had terrorized the community, raping the daughter of a local store owner and committing numerous thefts and acts of vandalism. When several thousand unarmed Tz’utujil men and women, some with their children, gathered the next day to complain about recent abuses, soldiers from the garrison opened fire. Thirteen died instantly and many more lay wounded. The incident drew immediate international condemnation, forcing the Guatemalan government to take the unprecedented step of withdrawing its military presence from the community. Many traditionalists believed that at the height of the violence, Mapla’s Sojuel and other ances-

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tors helped them by mysteriously infesting the soldiers’ food with worms or provoking terrible thunderstorms that would frighten the soldiers into staying in their compound rather than coming out to fight or causing their weapons to jam and become useless. When the soldiers finally left, some say that it was Sojuel himself who frightened them in their dreams and drove them mad. Many people in town tell stories about Sojuel’s continued presence in the community as a living person. They either claim to have seen him personally or relate with absolute conviction stories of family members or friends who have met him. He appears in many guises, often to test the integrity or faithfulness of his descendants. A common place for these encounters is at one of the major crossroads, either near the center of town or along one of the roads leading out of the city (Mendelson 1957:493– 94). The following account of such an encounter was told to me by Diego Chávez Petzey: My grandmother was gravely ill and asked for a friend to come and visit her. At midnight, the friend passed by a crossroads and saw an old man with very white, curly hair dressed in the kind of clothes that people wore many years ago. The old man asked her where she was going, and she replied that she was on her way to visit a friend who was ill. He said that he had some medicine and that she should give it to her friend. He gave her the medicine and sent her on her way without asking for any payment. She thanked him and asked who he was. He said that he was Mapla’s Sojuel and that he liked to help people when they are sick. When he said this, she became frightened, but he was so kind that the fear soon left her. As she walked down the street toward my grandmother’s house, she looked back to see if he was still there, but he had disappeared. Those who claim to have seen him describe Mapla’s Sojuel as a short, elderly man with long, white, curly hair. Though generally kind to those in need, he is also thought to be serious and stern with those who violate traditional standards of morality. He is said to have large, dark, intense eyes that can be very intimidating and even frightening. Sojuel is also recognizable by his unique clothing. He wears a hat made of petate (plaited reeds) that are water resistant. He wears the typical short pants embroidered with birds that are still worn by Atitecos today, although the pattern is simpler and less colorful because when he lived people did not have the synthetic dyes that are used now. His shirt is red, but instead of buttons it is a pullover type that was worn long ago, fastened at the neck

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with little cords. He also appears wearing the unique tzut (ceremonial head scarf) and kapixay (black wool overgarment) worn by cofradía officials. Nicolás Chávez’s father asserted that when Mapla’s Sojuel appears to people in town, he is often reluctant to reveal his identity. If people ask for his name, he will sometimes reply that he does not remember, unless it is someone who believes in him or knows him already. Because there are now so many Catechists and Protestants in the community, people say that Mapla’s Sojuel does not reveal himself as often as he once did. Alfred P. Maudslay, an English photographer and explorer, passed through Santiago Atitlán in the early 1880s and photographed a group of men arranged in front of the municipal office. My colleague Andrew Weeks and I recently gave a copy of the photograph to the son of the alcalde (head) of the Cofradía of San Francisco/Ánimas. He immediately identified the man standing in the doorway as Mapla’s Sojuel and named a number of the other individuals as powerful nawals from Sojuel’s circle. When I asked how he knew them, considering that they had died long before he was born, he replied: “We all know them. They still visit us in dreams and in person. We know their faces. They are still very powerful— the very soul of the town. Their minds and their souls are white, light, pure, clear, clean [saq]. This is our heritage. These people are still alive because I live. I carry their blood. I remember. They are not forgotten. As long as I live, they live in me and will never die.” Atitecos, like the alcalde’s son, believe that some essential part of the ancestors continues to live within the blood of their descendants. As David Stuart notes, the Maya believe that ancestral gods reside within the blood and define political and social power (Stuart 1988). The Maya are, in a sense, embodiments of their ancestors who retain the ability to manifest themselves in the present through blood memory. As O’Brien writes, “the actions of the Nawals are repeated when the people follow the Old Ways so that the spiritual essences of the Nawals are re-embodied and manifested in the living” (O’Brien 2015:33). Powerful ancestors like Mapla’s Sojuel are a living part of the community, partly because they continue to reside in Paq’alib’al and partly because their descendants bear their blood, which is where Tz’utujils say that memory resides.

Conclusion Mendelson notes that men of power such as Mapla’s Sojuel were “always spoken of in the past tense, always lead their lives and adventures in the old days,” when their ancestors could “execute seemingly impossible tasks with ease” (Mendelson 1957:485, 495–96). He reports that many of his

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consultants lamented that in their day no one had such power. This belief is still current in Santiago Atitlán, where it is perceived that the customs and traditions of the ancestral Tz’utujils are fast disappearing. It is not uncommon for societies to believe in a Golden Age in which their ancestors of a bygone era lived in heroic times of abundance and great deeds. What is unusual about Tz’utujils of Santiago Atitlán is that the era was so close to their own, within the memory of their old people. They live in a time that only just missed the age of great men and women who performed wondrous miracles. In my work in Santiago Atitlán in the late 1990s, many spoke about a man named Diego Kiju with a wistful nostalgia, claiming that he was the last nawal who could perform miracles like Mapla’s Sojuel. This account is one of many stories about him:14 When I was young I knew Diego Kiju. Sometimes I would go with him up into the mountains to gather firewood. Although he was a tiny man, stooped over with age when I knew him, he was a powerful nawal who could ask for rain and do other miracles. He always carried a little gourd of water with him. He would drink from it frequently and invite others to drink from it when they were thirsty but no matter how much he drank it never ran dry. He lived to be 125 and had known Mapla’s Sojuel and other great nawals. Once we headed up the mountain with clear skies. He told me to bring something to protect myself from the rain because there would be a great downpour. That year had been very dry, and he told me that he had done a ceremony the evening before to bring rain. I didn’t believe him because there were no signs of rain. When we started back down the mountain, he pointed to a tiny white cloud in the distance and told me that the rain was coming. The cloud grew quickly and became black with rain within just a few minutes. Soon it was raining so hard that it became difficult to see, and I became soaked. But when we arrived at Kiju’s house, I noticed that he was completely dry, even though he had no protection other than a straw hat like people used to wear in the old days. On another occasion, people asked him if he could really do miracles. That day he made it rain but only on one side of his house. The next day he made it rain only on the other side. Diego Kiju had power. No one can do such things today. Diego Kiju didn’t really die. One day he called his family together and told them that he was tired and wanted to go and live with Mapla’s Sojuel and the other nawal ancestors in Paq’alib’al. He said that he would die at 6:00 p.m. the following Wednesday, which he

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did. But he wasn’t sick; he just decided to leave. When he was buried in the cemetery, a great wind and earthquake passed by. But he wasn’t really dead because he visited many of his relatives and friends after that. Once he visited his sister in a dream and told her not to worry about him. He was very happy in Paq’alib’al and would always watch out for her. This story is just one of many about Diego Kiju that people tell; it suggests that he was a powerful man throughout his life and was well-known for performing miracles. Yet, Mendelson never mentions him in his writings from the 1950s, when he was alive. Indeed, he recorded accounts from several consultants that insisted that no one in their day could perform miracles such as were common in the days of Mapla’s Sojuel. For living Atitecos, the heroic nawals belong only to the past, albeit the relatively recent past. Although they are well-known by name and can be placed as real individuals that are still remembered as flesh and blood by the oldest generation, they are liminal figures who belong to the world of sacred caves, crossroads, and dreams. Mapla’s Sojuel is not dead because he is believed to have the capacity to interact with the living when he is needed, but living Atitecos lament that their world is no longer a place where such powerful men and women can live openly in their midst.

Notes 1. Tz’utujil is one of the thirty-two recognized linguistic groups within the Mayan language family. “Maya” refers to both the people and their culture, and “Mayan” to the languages spoken. 2. The prefix //m-// or //ma-// is an honorific attached to the names of esteemed men, both living and dead (//ya-// is used for women). Apla’s is the Tz’utujil version of the Spanish name “Francisco.” 3. Soon after the fall of the K’iche’ capital of Q’umarkaj and the execution of its rulers, Pedro de Alvarado invaded the Tz’utujil region in force with 60 cavalries, 150 Spanish infantry, and a large contingent of Kaqchikel allies. Tz’utujils formed a defensive line against the attack northeast of present-day Santiago Atitlán. Spanish crossbowers quickly broke up the Tz’utujils’ line. Some of the Tz’utujil defenders escaped by jumping into Lake Atitlán and swimming to a nearby island; others were slaughtered by the late arrival of three hundred Kaqchikel war canoes (Alvarado 1924). That evening, Alvarado and his troops spent the night in a maize field and prepared for a siege of the capital city, Chiya’, the following morning. Within three days the Tz’utujil ruler of Chiya’, Joo No’j K’iq’ab’, declared fealty to the Spanish king, commending Alvarado for his skill in war and noting that, until that day, “their

98 / Allen J. Christenson land had never been broken into nor entered by force of arms” (Alvarado 1924:72). 4. There does not seem to have been a regular Spanish presence in Chiya’ of any kind for years following the Spanish conquest. Pedro de Alvarado assigned half of Tz’utujils’ tribute payments to himself and the other half to one of his soldiers, Sancho de Barahona el Viejo. Following Alvarado’s death in 1541, the king of Spain seized his half of the Tz’utujil payments, while the Barahona family continued to receive tribute into the seventeenth century. But Sancho de Barahona and his descendants never resided in Tz’utujil lands, and their rulers were relatively free to administer their former kingdom as they saw fit, so long as the tribute payments were delivered without incident. Although these financial pressures were often exorbitant, Robert Carlsen suggests that Tz’utujils may have considered them a tolerable payoff to deter Spanish meddling in their affairs while the land and means of production remained in their hands (Carlsen 1997:147). 5. Original (K’iche’): “Mahucatahil na chiquilixtah ronohel maquebin tanaon nabe cate ta chiquil ri vxecah xavi chire e qovi ta quemucunic tzatz quetamabal xuxic xicou qui vachibal pache, pa abah pa cho, pa palo, pa huyub, pa tacah.” 6. The cofradía system in Santiago Atitlán is a network of ten ritual houses, each dedicated to the veneration of a Christian saint’s sculpted image with its associated ritual paraphernalia. 7. This story was told to me in 1997, partly in Tz’utujil and partly in Spanish. 8. I do not present an original language version of this quotation or several others in this chapter as these stories were documented during and immediately after the civil war, when recording devices of any kind were deeply feared as potential means of identifying individuals, who could subsequently disappear or be killed outright, particularly in a war-torn area like Santiago Atitlán. Also, many of these accounts were elicited during private ceremonies, where such devices are inappropriate. I therefore relied on notes to reconstruct these quotations. 9. The account was given in Spanish, although many of the passages of dialogue were in Tz’utujil. 10. The double-headed eagle likely originated with the bicephalic Habsburg eagle, the imperial crest of the Holy Roman Empire. In the sixteenth century, when the Maya of the Guatemalan highlands were conquered, it was the principal emblem of Emperor Carlos V, who also ruled Spain. His successors on the Spanish throne continued to use the motif as their royal crest. The double-headed eagle figured prominently in early colonial churches in the New World as an indication of the political autonomy of the church, which was not accountable to local authority, only to the crown (Peterson 1993:150– 51). In Santiago Atitlán, the motif appears on the central altarpiece of the town’s colonial-era church, which was supported directly by the Spanish king

Ancestral Guardian of Tz’utujil-Mayas / 99 in the sixteenth century, and it is therefore a well-known motif in the community (Anonymous 1952 [1571]:437–38). In Santiago Atitlán, all traces of the K’walkoj’s Spanish royal associations have been lost. A prominent ajkun told me that the K’walkoj watches over the community. Because he has two heads he can “see in all directions as well as the past and future in order to determine if there are any threats to the Atiteco people.” 11. Mendelson consistently uses an /x/ for the modern orthographic /j/ when transcribing Sojuel’s name. 12. This position is an important official, second only to the head of a cofradía. 13. Original (K’iche’): “Cohbe chi camac . . . mi xbanatahic capatan mi xtzacat caquih cohina cut mohi zacho mohi mezcutah puch . . . mana xemuctah rumal quixoquil calcual maui calah qui zachic ta xe zachic xere calah ri qui pixabic.” 14. Recited by Diego Chávez Petzey in 1997.

5 Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross Caste War Heroes in the Yucatán Peninsula Stephanie J. Litka

Maya power and resistance are evident through the public memory of two heroic figures, Jacinto Pat and the supernatural Talking Cross (Cruz Parlante).1 Pat and the Talking Cross played pivotal roles in the Yucatecan Caste War of southern Mexico in the nineteenth century, and their legacies remain strong among contemporary Mayan-speaking communities.2 The Caste War spanned more than fifty years, from 1847 to 1901, and was one of the largest indigenous uprisings in Latin American history.3 During the war, the Maya almost succeeded in overthrowing their creole rulers. Skirmishes continued beyond the official conclusion of the war at the turn of the century, lasting well into the 1930s. Jacinto Pat was a hacienda (plantation) owner of indigenous descent and one of the founding leaders in the fight for peasant rights and ethnic equality during the early part of the war.4 A few years later, the anthropomorphized Talking Cross served as a guide in their continued struggle for autonomy against the Yucatecan elite.5 Although several crosses were present in the region, the first and most significant one was discovered in the present-day city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, about an hour from Pat’s hometown of Tihosuco. Together, Pat and the Talking Cross contributed greatly to the peasant quest for freedom during this era and persist as visible symbols of resistance in public memory today. In addition to helping create a sense of power, pride, and identification with their forefathers, both subjects (one in human and the other in nonhuman form) represent a selective incorporation of postcolonial influences into their worldview as a means for

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indigenous Yucatecans to seek control over their destinies. Rather than view these heroes in complete opposition to external cultural influences, I argue that Yucatecans blend these elements into an existing logic that allowed them to assume a sense of agency in the face of political, economic, and social inequalities. This symbolic resistance survives among their descendants in the southern part of the peninsula within the modern contexts of globalization and tourism. The data here come from firsthand research conducted in the Mexican towns of Tihosuco, Pino Suárez, Cobá, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. I begin with a historical summary of the region since colonial rule and Mexican independence, including the origins of the Caste War and its ramifications in the present day. I follow with a brief theoretical and ethnographic overview of power, resistance, and adaptation among Yukatek-Mayanspeaking groups as a framework for understanding the role of these heroes during the war. Later, I delve into the individual histories of these figures and their significance among modern indigenous populations. I then explore the importance of Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross within the context of globalization, specifically the tourism industry, by showing how local participants seek historical and cultural recognition through their involvement in the modern world system.

The Caste War in Historical Perspective The Yucatán Peninsula is home to nearly one million Yukatek-Mayan speakers in the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo (Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas [INALI] 2012). Their distant ancestors built notable Classic and Post-Classic-era city-states, including Chichén Itzá, Tulum, Cobá, and Uxmal. Today, these archaeological sites remain a testament to the glories of an ancient (often generically referred to as Maya) civilization. These cities were in decline by the time Spanish explorers arrived in the peninsula in 1517 (Coe 1993; Sharer and Traxler 2006), even though colonialization of the region would take over two decades due to local political fragmentation, harsh environmental conditions, and frequent local resistance to foreign rule. After three attempts to conquer the area by Francisco de Montejo, his son, and nephew, they finally established a permanent Spanish presence in the region with the founding of the city of Mérida in 1542 (Clendinnen 1987). Restall (1997) and Loewe (2010) clarify, however, that Mayan-speaking communities still managed their own affairs to a large extent, maintaining local leadership positions, language, and regional alliances that had existed before colonization.

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Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821; yet, many indigenous citizens remained subjected to white Yucatecan control throughout the peninsula during the postcolonial period. The requirement of their labor in the encroaching sugarcane industry, privatization of lands, increased tax demands among the peasants, inconsistences in local creole governorship, and continued racial discrimination set the stage for war (Reed 2001; Rugeley 2001, 1996). Moreover, the relative ideological and geographic isolation of the Yucatán Peninsula from mainland Mexico, along with political fragmentation within the peninsula, created an opportunity for social discontent to boil over in the years following independence. Although indigenous-led rebellions occurred in the past, conflicting goals between Mexican centralists and Yucatecan federalists after independence and during the Mexican-American War allowed for widespread revolt to happen during this time. Inhabitants of Mayan-speaking communities received military training and arms after they were recruited to fight for Mexican and Yucatecan causes, leading to the official start of the Caste War on July 30, 1847, among the largely indigenous and poor rebels in remote villages (Rugeley 1996; Reed 2001). The war was not as ethnically or socially binary as it seemed, however. Although often reported as a battle between Maya and white Yucatecans, the former had allies among Mexicans and Belizeans of European descent, making agreements with them to further their cause when needed. Reed (2001) and Gabbert (2004a, 2004b) explain that some white peasants joined the rebels. Ethnically neutral terms referred to these participants of varied backgrounds: enemigo’ob (enemies), óostilo’ob (poor), and Cruzo’ob (people of the Cross).6

Continuity and Change in Theoretical Perspective Anthropological perspectives on continuity and change serve as a framework for understanding constructions of power and identity among indigenous Yucatecans. Scholars have widely critiqued the idea of authenticity as an essentialist, ahistorical construct (Handler 1986; Lindholm 2008; Theodossopoulos 2013; see Kistler, introduction, this volume for more on this issue). Although commonly used in popular discourse, academic perspectives of this term focus on the meanings that are continuously negotiated, rather than on a singular concept. The tendency to characterize non-Western populations as pristine relics ignores the historical nuances that have shaped local meanings and behavior throughout space and time. Similarly, cultural change and syncretism through contact (such

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as the colonial period) manifests itself in a myriad of ways among seemingly disparate groups today. The process of adapting to new social circumstances involves various degrees of power, resistance, and control among individuals and groups. Foucault (1984) argues that power relations are present in all social relationships, existing in a multifaceted manner rather than stemming from a single source. He further emphasizes the interconnectedness of power and knowledge; accordingly, the latter always exists within the context of control that characterizes all forms of human interaction. Although rural Mayan speakers experienced tremendous discrimination during the colonial period (continuing into the present day to varying degrees), scholars note how certain beliefs and practices have remained strong over the centuries. These continuities stem from several factors, including a prestigious association with the precolonial past, the relative isolation of Yucatán from the rest of Mexico and historical spirit of autonomy, their widespread demographic presence in villages and cities throughout the peninsula, a high prevalence of Yukatek-Mayan spoken among indigenous and nonindigenous inhabitants of the region, and the Caste War legacy (Burns 1983; Farriss 1984; Lope Blanch 1987; Gabbert 2004a, 2004b). As Bohn Gmelch (2010:19) states, “traditions and cultures are constantly reworked and reinterpreted to fit the needs and reality of each generation.” While she makes reference to how Mayan speakers from local communities seek control over the tourism industry in particular, this quotation helps explain other contexts of external domination among this group. Adaptations and assertions of power are inextricably linked with identity in a variety of ways. Scholars debate a singular definition of the term “identity,” but they do emphasize the roles of agency and contestation that continuously influence one’s sense of identity (Cohen 2000; Eriksen 2002). Hermans and Kempen’s (1993) idea of “the dialogical self” provides a framework for understanding how individuals construct multiple, and often competing, self-understandings and identities. In the Yucatán Peninsula, Jacinto Pat’s elite status and relatively moderate stance in communicating with elite (largely white) Yuctatecans reflected a dynamic sense of identity assertion rather than a simplistic opposition to nonindigenous influences. Fragmentations did exist along racial, social, and ideological lines during the war, even though the overall goal of all rebels was to fight for equal rights and a sense of autonomy from external oppression. This cultural resistance holds true today, as vast inequalities remain throughout the region. Increased globalization and circulations of people throughout the peninsula continue to produce overlapping flows of politi-

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cal, economic, and social hierarchies from various parties (Friedman and Friedman 2013). The current age of international tourism forms part of a broader history of both cultural transformations and power struggles in the region, as seen in the following section.

Change, Power, and Identity in the Yucatán Peninsula A number of scholars note that indigenous Yucatecans have adapted to change throughout the history of the peninsula. Moreover, they have critiqued the homogenous and static label “Maya,” both historically and in the present (Hervik 1999; Castañeda 2004; Gabbert 2004a and 2004b; Restall 2004; Breglia 2005; Armstrong-Fumero 2011). They recognize that citizens who may self-identify as Maya, based on a combination of genetics, cultural upbringing, regional affiliation, and language, are the product of continuous flexibility that continues today. This term itself is an externally placed label critiqued by academics (Restall 1997, 2004; Fischer 1999; Hervik 1999; Castañeda 2004; Gabbert 2004a, 2004b; Breglia 2005; Hervik and Kahn 2006), who highlight its ambiguous meaning.7 They demonstrate that throughout the peninsula local affiliations dating back to the pre-Columbian era were historically much more regionalized based on village association (known as cah) and extended patronym kin groups (chi’ibal). Mayan-speaking communities later experienced different degrees of external political and cultural influence during the colonial and postcolonial periods. These ranged from the Yucatecan-controlled northern areas to the more rural and fragmented regions of present-day Quintana Roo. This influence determined the degree to which they interacted with their counterparts, developed a sense of regional loyalty, and integrated new beliefs and practices into their established ways of life (Gabbert 2004a; Restall 2004; Loewe 2010). The ability to accept European influence on local cultural practices has further allowed many Mayan speakers to assert a sense of power over foreign control. Clendinnen (1987), Farriss (1984), Hanks (2010), and Patch (1993) explain that a significant factor in indigenous cultural survival during the colonial era was their adaptation of religious, social, and linguistic syncretism. The willingness to absorb Christian elements into a preexisting cosmology and the importance placed on political territoriality with differing degrees of Spanish influence enabled many citizens to modify their daily lives without completely losing their culture to Yucatecan rule.8 In addition to incorporating several lexical and grammatical elements from Spanish, another form of syncretism that exists today is a cyclical understanding of time and history. With respect to globalization and tourism,

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Sullivan (1983) explains that rural citizens use the term “wutz” to signify an inversion or turning of a new era. According to this prophesy, the near future will bring about several socioeconomic changes, one of which includes being surrounded by people who speak several different languages. While these workers often face new challenges as a result of the growing tourism industry, Sullivan argues that they ultimately believe in benefiting from better jobs, increased wages, and direct involvement in commercial exchanges with outsiders. This belief seems to have greater potential in communities that have not been overcommoditized and where indigenous cultural elements are still visible through language, dress, agricultural forms of subsistence, and land maintenance. Public memory of Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross further demonstrates a symbolic resistance to rapid development by asserting the importance of a locally regionalized history beyond that of a distant precolonial past. This pattern of adaptation, syncretism, and ideological agency relates to dynamic constructions of identity among contemporary Yukatek-Mayan speakers. Castañeda’s (2004) critique of a simplistic “indigenous” label points to a complex array of terms used as self-identification throughout the region, contrasting with the polarizing tendencies of outsiders to assume an automatic association with (or binary distinction from) other cultural groups. Bevington (1995) and Litka (2012) note that Mayan speakers acknowledge how their language and culture has been significantly modified from that of their ancient ancestors and think that the term “maya mezclado” (mixed Maya) most accurately describes them today. The majority do not communicate in jach maya (true Mayan), but rather rely on a significant amount of Spanish vocabulary in their daily interactions, even among nominally monolingual speakers. It is this sense of blending and fluidity that allowed Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross to become local heroes during the Caste War. I discuss the history of each figure and their roles during this pivotal historical event in the next section, demonstrating how their achievements remain strong in public memory today.

Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross as Caste War Heroes Jacinto Pat was born in 1797 near the town of Tihosuco, where he later became a b’atab’ (officeholder and landowner dating back to precolonial forms of political organization) (Rugeley 1996). His title, usually inherited, required a knowledge of and involvement in both indigenous and creole worlds. B’atab’s often accrued significant financial wealth through their positions, and likewise, Pat owned a hacienda and ranch with servants. Due to his unique role as an indigenous elite leader, and the fact

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that he came from a well-established family, Reed (2001) suggests that his goals were likely similar to those of white Yucatecans who wanted independence from Mexico, yet with the added demands of less taxes and greater land protection for (largely Mayan-speaking) peasants. Pat was initially hesitant to engage in an armed conflict. However, the death of one of his comrades, Manuel Antonio Ay, led Pat, along with Cecilio Chi, to lead a rebel retaliation. These early fighters followed in the footsteps of Jacinto Can Ek, who achieved heroic status as a leader of a famous revolt during the previous century of colonial rule. In February 1848, Jacinto Pat wrote a letter to two contacts in Belize explaining that while the fighters wanted peace and liberty to live in an independent southeastern state, it was the white Yucatecans who had initiated the war (Rugeley 2001:51). In a separate letter to a Guatemalan official in July of that same year, Pat clarified that he was not in conflict with all white Yucatecans and acknowledged that the rebels could coexist with citizens of European descent who treated them fairly (Rugeley 2001:55– 56). By mid-1848, rebel forces drove their enemies to Mérida and were prepared to declare victory over the peninsula. Some accounts argue that their arrival coincided with the agricultural planting season and the peasants had to retreat, while others state that a lack of resources and internal divisions hindered their progress (Reed 2001; Leventhal, Chan Espinosa, and Coc 2012; personal communication with local scholars 2015). Either way, their counterparts managed to regain control over the region and defeat the rebels during this pivotal shift in power. The fighters subsequently turned on themselves. After Cecilio Chi was killed in a separate dispute, a rivalry occurred between Pat and Chi’s successors (Reed 2001). One member of this group, Venancio Pec, accused Pat of treason for taking advantage of his own people when he signed the Treaty of Tzucacab with the Yucatec governor Miguel Barbachano to end the war. Chi had opposed Pat’s signing the treaty, and after his death, Pec took vengeance by killing Pat in September 1849. As the last of the three original Caste War leaders was now gone, a new heroic and unifying figure would emerge the following year, taking the form of an anthropomorphized Talking Cross. Cross symbolism has played an important role among indigenous groups since the pre-Columbian period. Their ancestors conceptualized the cross as an axis mundi/world tree, connecting the underworld with Earth and the heavens (Schele and Freidel 1990; Taube 1992). They considered the ceiba to be a central tree of the world that connected the Earth to subterranean gods, especially when the trees grew next to caves. Cenotes (natural wells) were the primary sources of water, serving as locations to make sacrificial offerings and home of the rain gods. The introduction of Catholi-

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cism, therefore, allowed these groups to incorporate this symbol syncretically into an established belief system that linked various levels of their ancient cosmology. Moreover, the Spanish introduction of Virgin apparitions coincided with “speaking idols” that inhabitants used to communicate with the supernatural realm long before European arrival (Landa 1941). Maya groups believed that their most important god, Itzamná, among others, spoke to them through crosses (Dumond 1985). Aguilera’s (2002) ethnographic survey analysis of talking crosses throughout the Yucatán Peninsula further reveals that their widespread presence often merged with pre-Columbian areas of religious worship. As such, they have historically symbolized the earthly manifestation of deities who spoke to the people and guided their daily lives, both before and after the introduction of Catholicism. José María Barrera, a mestizo (mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage), was one of Jacinto Pat’s lieutenants during the Caste War. After Pat was murdered, Barrera encountered a small cross carved into a tree growing in a cenote located in the southern portion of present-day Quintana Roo. Accordingly, the Cross conveyed messages sent from God that were interpreted by religious men (Dumond 1985; Reed 2001). One message stated that it originated in Xocen,9 near Valladolid, and magically traveled to that cave to aid the fighters in battle (Mújica 1997). A ventriloquist, Manuel Nahuat, projected the Cross’s words in Yukatek for everyone to hear, and a cult following soon developed.10 Members, known as the Cruzob (the Crosses),11 formed an independent state in that area named Chan Santa Cruz (the town presently known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto).12 The Cross served as a political and spiritual leader for rebel forces during the war (Dumond 1985; Reed 2001). A high priest, known as a tatich or nohoch tata, assumed responsibility for guarding the Cross and interpreting its words to the inhabitants of Chan Santa Cruz. A church shrine exists today, which houses one of the crosses (though not the original one) dating back to the war and two other symbolic crosses.13 They are located adjacent to the same cavern where José María Barrera discovered the original in 1850. It is a pilgrimage center and a notable tourist destination for visitors traveling to Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Jones (1974) adds that while the first Cross was likely destroyed by Yucatecan troops when they overtook the city in 1901, new ones arose to guide the fighters in subsequent locations. There was always a central Talking Cross, while others were used in homes and as small shrines in a hierarchical manner. Independent rival centers centering on cross worship arose during later parts of the war and were guarded by local priests and priestesses. Dumond (1985) explains that fragmentations occurred throughout the pen-

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insula and continued through the 1900s. They coincided with military and political segmentations of rebel forces throughout the region, even though Chan Santa Cruz remained the most significant center until the turn of the century. Many citizens abandoned this former rebel capital after 1901, later resettled there, and continued to honor the heroic cross figure in their quest for independence over foreign domination. Mexican anthropologist Alfonso Villa Rojas (1945) collected primary data from cross worshipers and provided ethnographic insight into the complex role this supernatural construct played, even after the Caste War had officially ended. Descendants of the rebels continue to guard the crosses at various centers, including the most famous one that is just outside the main square of the former capital city, known today as Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The next section connects this historical literature with my research findings on Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross.

Heroes and Public Memory: Ethnographic Findings During the summer of 2015, I traveled to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Tihosuco, Pino Suárez, and Cobá to collect data on Pat and the Talking Cross. Before visiting these locations, all located in the state of Quintana Roo, I toured museums in the Yucatecan cities of Valladolid and Mérida to explore historical representations of the Caste War in larger urban areas and examine the portrayals of both subjects in public centers. Valladolid is known as la ciudad heroica (the heroic city), as it was the site of four uprisings throughout Mexican history, including during the Caste War. A large mural in the municipal building commemorates the conflict, and a small section of the nearby cultural museum explains the events surrounding it. Similarly, the governor’s palace in Mérida features several murals marking various events in Yucatecan history. The newly constructed Gran Museo del Mundo Maya on the other side of the city contains a section of photos, videos, reconstructed images of figures, and documents from the war, though this exhibit offers little mention of Jacinto Pat specifically, devoting its attention instead to the role of the Talking Cross and other members of the conflict. Despite the historically white presence in these cities and lack of detailed information specifically devoted to the Caste War, this conflict remains a well-known historical achievement among its citizens and many have heard of its aspirational leaders. I also traveled to the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto to talk with local inhabitants about Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross. On arrival, I met a graduate student who put me in contact with her father, the director of the Museo Maya in town. He stated that while most people in the city know

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about Jacinto Pat and other Caste War heroes, they tend to have a more superficial understanding of them from what they learn in school or see on public monuments. For example, one of the exhibition halls in the museum was named after Pat (other halls were named after his comrades), and the city was preparing to celebrate the annual anniversary of the start of the war by sponsoring events promoting elements of indigenous Yucatecan history and culture. These events included scholarly accounts of the battle, Mayan poetry readings, exhibitions of local artists, radio program features, and other activities.14 Despite these commemorations, the director suggested that I travel to Pat’s hometown of Tihosuco, about an hour away, to hear more in-depth and personal narratives about his life. My graduate student companion and I left for Tihosuco early the next day to collect such stories. I noticed that many of the buildings, schools, and stores were named after Pat or the war. A statue of Pat stands in the main square near a church that was partly destroyed during the war. We visited the Caste War Museum, which included a community center used to promote Mayan language and cultural learning among young children. One of their activities was to draw in a coloring book about Pat and hang their pictures on a wall. A local musical group played at the center using traditional instruments and interacted with Belgian tourists who were visiting during the morning. I met with a woman named Antonia who worked there and she explained the history of the museum, center, and Pat himself. She explained in both Spanish and Yukatek-Mayan that the museum was inaugurated in 1993 by the governor of Quintana Roo as a way for local people to learn about their history. The museum is divided into four large rooms focusing on peasant resistance, causes of the war, rebel leaders, and original weapons used in battle. It is open to the public and visitors are encouraged to tour the building. She added that the University of Pennsylvania, an active supporter of the museum and center, sponsors workshops and participates in community-engagement activities throughout the year, such as demonstrating how representatives of the town can welcome outsiders to learn about local history, knowledge, and interests. While broader inequalities remain a concern for rural citizens in the region, the museum and community center hope to promote a greater cultural awareness beyond the more commoditized tourist attractions. Antonia and I then sat down to discuss Jacinto Pat. She recounted much of his life history from the time he was born until his premature death and described him as a valiant person who fought for the land in the face of broader inequalities in the region. In her words, Pat “lived in dangerous times. Not all of the white Yucatecans were bad, but a change was nec-

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essary. We continue to promote his history and that of the community to this day.”15 She shared that she admired his struggle for independence and spoke positively about his reflective nature (as opposed to the more impulsive personality of his comrade Cecilio Chi) and ability to make friends with Yucatecans of various ethnic and social backgrounds. Such was the case when he later supported unification of the peninsula with the rest of Mexico, hoping it would lead to better rights for those treated unjustly. Antonia said that his legacy still lives on, as locals remember his struggle for the rebels to live in peace. I continued my study of Jacinto Pat by visiting the nearby village of Pino Suárez, where his grandson, Leonardo, resides. At ninety-three years old, he had recounted the region’s history many times to family and scholars alike. We sat in a room with a drawing of his grandfather hanging on the wall above us. His Spanish skills were limited, so he discussed the story of the war in Yukatek. He began by stating that his father, Cecilio (not to be confused with Cecilio Chi), was Pat’s son. Unfortunately, Pat lost several family members during the battle. Many people, including innocent children, died on both sides. Cecilio had recounted the life of his famous father to Leonardo when he was growing up, even though Leonardo never met Pat. According to Leonardo, “I know the most about Pat because I am his grandson. Even though the fighting ended a long time ago, I talk with my own children and grandchildren so they will know their history.”16 While Pat was of high status, Leonardo added, he led the fight to take the land back from rich Yucatecans. In doing so, he interacted with people of all social classes. He was a peaceful person, and it was not until army officials killed Manuel Antonio Ay and a local girl became pregnant by a Spanish priest that Pat retaliated in violence. Leonardo continued by saying that “many teachers come here to know more about Jacinto. They need to know the effort of my grandfather. There was a book that speaks about him. I just gave away so many [copies] to the teachers, that there is none left for us,” he added, chuckling.17 He continued, saying that he does not consider Quintana Roo to be a part of Mexico. Rather, for Leonardo, the region has greater historical and symbolic ties with Belize, as that country helped supply arms to the rebels during the war.18 Even now, he tells local teachers that they are in Belizean territory and not in Mexico. Surprisingly, however, he does not believe in the Talking Cross and thinks that it was an invented concept during the war. Accordingly, “only God made the cross of the heavens and earth, as He is the only one who saves us.”19 This belief may be attributed to the fact that Leonardo and his family are evangelical Christians, a fact that

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further demonstrates the fragmented nature and legacy of the heroic figures of the Caste War among Mayan-speaking descendants today. As a final note, Leonardo stated that he thinks that what happened in the past will occur again. “The government will eliminate campesinos (farm workers). It is already happening now, only a few of us remain.”20 When our conversation ended, it was clear that Leonardo viewed historical memory and knowledge as a means through which rural communities try to assert cultural autonomy and power, rather than using physical violence or an outward rejection of increased globalization. The story of Jacinto Pat, for elders like Leonardo, becomes a syncretic symbol of cultural resistance. After my meeting with Leonardo, I traveled to the town of Cobá, Quintana Roo, which is situated next to the archaeological site of the same name and remains a popular tourist destination for visitors in the region. One of the restaurants by the ruins in Cobá hosts a semidaily show recreating the famous pre-Columbian ballgame. Eight actors from Tihosuco play the game, use ancient-style instruments, and sing in Mayan for around forty minutes as part of a dinner show for tourists. I met with the group before a performance to discuss their perceptions of Pat. One of the main actors was a thirty-five-year-old man named Alberto who spoke with me in Spanish about his hometown hero. Alberto stated that Pat was a very intelligent leader. Because of Pat’s mixed racial background, he was afforded certain privileges, Alberto said, such as owning a ranch fifteen kilometers from Tihosuco. Pat saw how Yucatecans treated the peasants and became very tired of it. Pat formed an alliance with other leaders, and they bought weapons from Belize. The British had an interest in the Yucatán Peninsula and supported the struggle for independence after years of persecution. Alberto added that the dense jungle provided protection where the fighters felt free. Overall, Pat left a legacy of autonomy for the rebel descendants by paving the way for other heroic leaders to carry out the same vision, Alberto said. He stated that indigenous citizens are no longer angry about the oppression they faced because the war happened many years ago. “We have a famous history in Quintana Roo and even though we may still live in the jungle, we are not ignorant. People come to see us [local people] in Tihosuco, not at the beach, because we are cultural value.”21 He concluded by referring to an old prophesy about the occurrence of another war in the future, especially as Tihosuco and other villages are growing fast. This time, the war will be based on ideology, and rural inhabitants will be free again to live as they please. Alberto’s arguments were similar to those that

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Leonardo shared: local resistance exists through public discourse of heroic figures in the struggle for cultural autonomy and recognition. Rather than emphasize an armed conflict between races or social classes, historical memory of Jacinto Pat remains a symbol through which the battle for freedom continues to thrive today. I later returned to Felipe Carrillo Puerto and spoke with a local scholar and cultural promoter about Pat. He added that although Pat’s ideals were admirable, Mayan speakers of indigenous descent still face numerous challenges that have not been resolved since the war began. Only when the demands for respect and equality are met with actions, and not just empty promises, can they truly fulfill the legacy of this hero.22 Concluding my interviews on Jacinto Pat, I turned the focus of investigation to the significance of the symbolic Talking Cross. I met with three community members in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto to discuss its history and meaning. My first contact was the director of the Maya museum, with whom I spoke earlier about Jacinto Pat. He stated that guardians of the Cruz Parlante conduct ceremonies at this site and in other centers with lesser-known crosses throughout the region. The farthest center in Tulum has historically been the most accessible to white Yucatecans. In contrast, Felipe Carrillo Puerto was more isolated than other areas because of the war. As a result, the Cruzo’ob legacy has remained stronger there than in other large towns. There is also a greater sense of autonomy that continues to resonate at this center and in surrounding villages. Memory still lives on through music, dance, stories, dress, and language, despite the government’s attempts to ignore it. He recommended that I visit with the guardians of the Cross and hear their perspectives of this symbolic Caste War hero figure. In Felipe Carrillo Puerto, I first met with a guardian named Cornelio who traveled with fourteen family members from his village to stay with the Cross for one week.23 He eagerly welcomed me into the church, though he politely asked me to remove my shoes beforehand. We talked in Spanish about the crosses’ history and significance today. He explained that the crosses gave orders to the rebels and alerted them when Yucatecan officials approached the area during the Caste War. They were a gift from God. Cornelio added that there are five ceremonial centers still in use today: Chan Santa Cruz, Chancah Veracruz, Tulum, Tixcacal Guardia,24 and Chunpom, all located in Quintana Roo. Cornelio’s great-grandparents experienced the war firsthand and hid in the jungle from government officials. As a child, he even saw one of the canons that the masewales (self-identifying term used among rural, often indigenous, Yucatecans to distinguish themselves from the upper class) uti-

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lized as defense. Accordingly, “there is still contact among the ceremonial centers, and representatives continue to exchange small crosses [replicas] between them. In fact, there is a celebration now in a nearby village to honor the three crosses. A new museum will open very soon in front of the church here in Felipe Carrillo Puerto.”25 He stated that it is still a custom to have a milpa (agricultural field) and not depend on the government in this area of Mexico. At the same time, he also boasted that foreign anthropologists had visited the church. “They are very friendly and share everything with the masewales. One anthropologist spent many years here and lived as a Maya woman. She learned our language, dress, and music.”26 Cornelio would like tourists to learn more about rural music and culture and for there to be peace in this world. He returned to his village with his family early the next morning, and someone else assumed the duty of guarding the Cross for a week. I returned the following evening to meet the new guardian at this same location. She was a middle-aged woman named Irma from the village of Umay, who had guarded the Cross for more than twenty-five years, beginning when she would accompany her grandmother to the shrine as a small child. Now, Irma’s grandchildren and other family members stay with her at the shrine during her week-long shift as guardian. As we sat outside the church to begin our conversation, she explained in YukatekMayan that there is a Mass at the shrine every day. Older people pray at daybreak and in the afternoon. She and her family organize a large celebration on Thursdays to thank the Cross for good health. They give food to worshippers, and everyone is welcome to pray. Irma then recounted the history of the Talking Cross in the early decades of the twentieth century. She mentioned a few crosses (one of the originals that aided the rebels of Chan Santa Cruz during their battles and a larger replacement after Yucatecan troops invaded this center at the turn of the century), highlighting their role in saving the local fighters from death. The war had formally ended, yet tensions remained between the fighters and Yucatecan officials: Here in the past, there were many cenotes where the Cross used to be. It was very nice, only water. Older people, including my fatherin-law, prayed to the holy Talking Cross here. They created a group to take care of it near the old cenote. Don Manuel, because he was closer to the almighty God, asked Him to save His people. The Cross only spoke to him, it advised its people because they [the Mexican government] was going to kill us. There were no nails, just four small sides of wood. They cut the wood from the ground and took it with them because it saved the people. They placed it in a small box and

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prayed to it every night. The next day, it got out of the small box and left. Wherever it stopped was where the people went. It was very small, but it saved people here. A priest took care of the larger Cross for twenty years [beginning in 1981], until he donated it to us, where it remains [here] in the church today.27 She added that her father-in-law is the grandson of Gen. Francisco May,28 who led 1,200 soldiers in battle near the present-day cultural center in Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Reflecting on the region’s history, Irma predicts that another uprising will occur in the near future. Rather than using weapons and machetes, however, it will involve pencils and paper: “There are people who come now. There are foreigners who learn about our history. I like that. That’s how they study. A lot of people come and ask questions about December 21st, 2012, which already happened. The world was not going to end, nothing happened, but the almighty God will send a signal. I don’t know what day, but the roads will be destroyed. The almighty God will speak through the Cross, as the children are studying this in the church, they hear about their history.”29 Her predictions were similar to those of the people with whom I had already spoke and I interpreted them to be syncretic understandings of Christian and pre-Colombian religious beliefs. Before this world cycle ends, everyone will live together in peace and harmony, free from divisions and conflict. In the meantime, increased globalization has formed a context for indigenous Mayan speakers to seek symbolic control over the modern era by sharing their cultural history with the outside world. Memory and knowledge, therefore, are contemporary instruments of asserting agency over their own destiny.

Conclusion: Linking the Past with the Future Many Mayan-speaking individuals, particularly those who live in the region where the Caste War originated, continue to recognize Jacinto Pat and the Talking Cross as heroic figures who helped shape this pivotal event. These figures remain strong in public memory today, as locals maintain a stronger connection with them than their pre-Columbian ancestors (Leventhal, Espinosa, and Coc 2012). An independent sentiment continues to exist in parts of the peninsula as the war was one of the greatest indigenous uprisings in Latin American history. Quintana Roo was declared a federal territory in 1902 by Porfirio Díaz yet did not become an official Mexican state until 1974 (Konrad 1991). Ironically, this young state with a proud rebel heritage is also the same region where mass tourism and development are spreading quickly. I argue, however, that these changes are not as novel or incompatible as they appear to indigenous Yucatecans.

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A closer examination into the lives of both heroes reveal how a strategic adaptation to external cultural influences has allowed them to assume a certain degree of control throughout history. Locals remember Jacinto Pat for his willingness to cross ethnic boundaries in the quest for better treatment of those who were economically and socially repressed. Moreover, the wooden Talking Cross blended preColumbian and Catholic traditions, which enabled the rebels to assume ideological power in their quest for equality and freedom. Informants who recalled the importance of each figure participate in the global market economy by encouraging others to learn about their cultural legacy that defines them today. Historical memory is most apparent in locations where a sense of Maya culture is still visible through community participation in museums, performances, and events that promote its presence in the region. Tourism, in particular, forms the newest context for local populations to participate and try to assert a sense of agency over increased commercial development in the region. Nevertheless, the nature of this industry often emphasizes essentialist and superficial images of the Maya, both historically and today. Idealized portrayals of indigenous life that cater to tourists’ interests and expectations largely focus on monetary profit rather than nuanced cultural understandings of indigenous Yucatecans. Several studies have examined how tourism has brought about new inequalities affecting rural, Mayanspeaking populations through out-migration, menial labor opportunities, linguistic assimilation pressures, and representations of a history largely aimed at their distant archaeological past (Re Cruz 2003; Hale 2006; Magnoni, Ardren, and Hutson 2007; Castañeda 2009; Castellanos 2010). Many employees and scholars alike recognize that more initiatives need to account for the complex living legacy of Mayan-speakers in the region. Multiparty efforts to promote equality through education, language use, health, land reform, fair wages, and respect for cultural values are vital for tourism to be a truly sustainable means of exchange and historical remembrance. Locals still view millennial prophesies in their quest for recognition and equality, as their interactions with true freedom and independence will only come when these needs are met, however, allowing the legacies of both heroes to coincide with an increasingly interdependent global world.

Notes 1. Special thanks to Ismael May May, Marcelo Jimenez Santos, Deira Jimenez Balam, Gregorio Vásquez Canché, Luís May Ku, and the participants who helped with this project. Their scholarly and personal experiences greatly

116 / Stephanie J. Litka aided my research, and I am grateful to each individual. Jach yuumsil bo’otik (Thank you very much)! 2. Due to the widely contested meaning of the term “Maya” as a unifying marker of ethnic and social identification (both historically and in the present day), I refer to these heroes and the modern descendants who remember them in more nuanced terms. The only time I use this name is in reference to language, such as “Yukatek-Mayan/Mayan speakers.” Any association with Maya ancestry is qualified by being speakers of this language. 3. A generic Mayan translation for the war is úuchben ba’atabil (old battle), as Yucatecan intellectual Justo Sierra O’Reilly, who was known for his racist attitudes toward Indians, coined the term “caste” to describe the conflict in 1848. This title reflects the binary tendencies to understand the roots of the battle (Kazanjian 2016). In actuality, social, ethnic, and ideological stratification existed among Yucatecan white and indigenous citizens alike. “Caste” therefore, is a misnomer that overlooks the complex categorization of participants who fought in the war. 4. Other early leaders include Manuel Antonio Ay and Cecilio Chi. I mention them later in this chapter, although I focus on Pat as a specific case study of these three original figures. His pragmatic nature, willingness to accept external influences among the fighters, continued legacy in Tihosuco where the Caste War Museum is located, as well as the availability of his grandson to meet with me made Pat an ideal focus of this chapter. Pat also briefly outlived the other two men: Ay was killed at the very start of the war, as Pat and Chi battled with their aggressors on his death. Rural communities in the southern portion of the peninsula admire Pat and Chi for their heroic struggles (personal communication with local scholars), and Chi’s frustration with unfulfilled promises and unjust treatment from white Yucatecans made him much more radicalized than Pat during the war. He wanted nothing to do with them and thought that diplomacy was impossible. Pat took a more moderate stance during the battle. Rather than expelling all white Yucatecans from the peninsula, his primary objective was for the rebels to live in peace and break free from external dominance. My ethnographic data collected in various towns reveal that this same sentiment exists today: locals engage in the global market economy yet continue to strive for agency, recognition, and autonomy in the modern era. 5. I refer to the Talking Cross as a singular concept, even though several crosses existed during the war. I capitalize this term when referring to specific ones that guided the rebels historically and/or maintain a historical connection to this event today. I use lowercase spelling to indicate a mass noun or generic ones that do not directly connect with the Caste War. Viveiros de Castro’s (1998, 2004) theory of Amerindian Perspectivism argues that virtually all indigenous populations in the New World view a continuity and interdependency among human and nonhuman beings/things. While the West makes a more clear-cut distinction between them, Amerindians commonly

Caste War Heroes in the Yucatán Peninsula / 117 view certain animals and objects as having human qualities that possess social agency. This cosmology emphasizes a spiritual unity, yet corporal diversity, among the natural and cultural world (Viveiros de Castro 2004). Similarly, the Talking Cross embodies many human attributes whose characteristics allowed the rebels to engage in battle. Several rural communities continue to dress local crosses in indigenous clothes, pray to them, provide offerings, and care for these objects as if they were living beings. 6. The Mayan plural suffix //-o’ob// is commonly added to Spanish root words in daily speech, representing another example of syncretism through language use. 7. Restall (2004: 77–82) suggests three reasons why “Maya” emerged as a popular term of ethnic classification (both externally and to a certain extent, as a form of self-identification among indigenous Yucatecans today) throughout the peninsula. Derived from “Mayapan,” the last precolonial city that fell in the 1440s, its former inhabitants used this term as a form of community and linguistic affiliation. Once they settled in other locations, “Maya” was used as a linguistic reference rather than an ethnic identity. However, Spanish colonialism assumed a racial and cultural homogeny of regional groups in the New World; being generically “Indian” became more specifically “YucatecIndian,” which eventually shifted to “Yukatek-Maya.” Moreover, the Caste War itself became a catalyst for politicians and scholars to assume that race was at the heart of the battle. Finally, subsequent government efforts aimed at protecting and promoting a Maya heritage inadvertently reconstructed a monolithic history based on assumed commonalities in ethnic identification. 8. This blending does not automatically assume an essentialist distinction between a purely Maya v. Spanish culture. Cook and Offit’s (2008) study in highland Guatemala reveals how indigenous citizens who attempt to reject any form of syncretism with Christian religious elements inadvertently create new ones to suit different purposes. During the colonial period, syncretism served as a way for indigenous Yucatecans to maintain a sense of historical continuity and agency rather than recognizing sharp ethnic differences in their origins. 9. Xocen is a small village located about twelve kilometers from Valladolid. Citizens take pride in its connection with the Caste War and continue to guard their famous Cross as a symbol of their history. They believe that this ceremonial location is the center of the world and is distinguished from other sites as it houses the only stone Talking Cross in the peninsula. Accordingly, God’s messages originated from this Cross and resonated through the new one found in Chan Santa Cruz. 10. Juan de la Cruz Puc was another prominent individual associated with the early discovery of the Cross; yet, the true identity of this figure remains dubious. He was trained to interpret its message in the absence of priests. Regardless of whether he was a real person or whether this name was a pseudonym for someone else, the fact that he came from Xocen further emphasizes

118 / Stephanie J. Litka the importance of this town as a source for subsequent cross worship during the war (Villa Rojas 1945; Bricker 1981; Reed 2001). 11. This is an abbreviation of Cruzo’ob (Crosses), as speakers often leave out the rearticulated vowels in colloquial speech. 12. The name of this place translates literally as “Little Holy Cross.” “Chan” is from Yukatek and “Santa Cruz” is from Spanish. 13. This sanctuary is distinct from the main cathedral located in the central square of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Originally named Balam Naj (Jaguar House), the latter was partially built by captive white and indigenous slave labor to honor the original Cross. It was later converted into a Catholic church, as the rebels believed that it had been desecrated once Yucatecans overtook the city. Francisco May established a small church adjacent to the building as a new location for worshipping the Cross. The current location of the sanctuary was established a few blocks away in 1988, located in the same place where the first one originally appeared (Reed 2001). Although only one cross was originally discovered carved in the ceiba tree, two others supposedly appeared growing in the ground next to it soon afterward. They were considered to be daughters of the engraved Cross and traveled with rebels while guiding them during battle (Reed 2001:154). The number three not only corresponds to the Catholic trinity but also symbolizes pre-Columbian conceptions of the underworld, Earth, and heavens. 14. Annual festivities last throughout the month of July, as Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Tihosuco are the largest regional cities where the events are centered. 15. Original (Spanish): “Vivía en tiempos peligrosos. No todos los yucatecos blancos eran malos, pero un cambio fue necesario. Continuamos promoviendo su historia y la de la comunidad hoy en día.” 16. Original (Yukatek): “Maas in wojel yóok’ol Pat tumen tene’ u yáabil. Kex ts’ook u máanak le ba’ate’elo’obo’, kin tsikbal yéetel in paalo’ob yéetel in wáabilo’ob utia’al u yojlo’ob u historia.” 17. Original (Yukatek): “Ya’ab maestros ku taalo’ob waye’ utia’al maas u yojlo’ob yóok’ol Jacinto. Jach k’a’abéet u yojlo’ob u esfuerzo in abuelo. Tu jo’oksaj libro ku t’aan yóok’ol leti’. Ts’ook in síiktik ya’ab te’ maestroso’ob, mixba’aj ku p’áat ti to’on.” 18. The director of the Museo Maya in Felipe Carrillo Puerto added that another reason why the indigenous rebels felt a stronger connection with Belize is that they were used to having kings and queens as a form of precolonial governance. British influence in the region, therefore, reflected a type of political organization that was more familiar than that of Spanish dominance. 19. Original (Yukatek): “Chen Dyos tu meentaj le cruza’ te’ ka’an yéetel le lu’umo’, chen leti’ ku salvaro’on.” 20. Original (Yukatek): “Le gobierno yaan u ts’o’oksik te’ campesino’obo’. Ku yúuchul beyoora’, chen jun p’íito’on p’áato’on.” 21. Original (Spanish): “Tenemos una historia famosa en Quintana Roo

Caste War Heroes in the Yucatán Peninsula / 119 y aunque todavía vivimos en la selva, no somos ignorantes. La gente viene a conocernos en Tihosuco, no la playa, porque somos nosotros el valor de la cultura.” 22. These contemporary accounts of Jacinto Pat stem from positioned representatives of culture (museum employees, tourist workers, scholars) and a personal relationship to this figure, such as his grandson. As such, they do not necessarily reflect the lived realities of all inhabitants in the peninsula. Regional and class divisions throughout the area have led to varying perceptions of Pat that are much more nuanced than viewing him as an unquestioned hero for all who remember the war. Nevertheless, his ideals continue to resonate with many rural indigenous Yucatecans who seek economic and social recognition today. 23. Based on Jones’s (1974) description and my conversations with guardians, citizens from nearby villages take pride in caring for the crosses in rotating cycles. It is an unpaid position passed down between generations and entails cleaning the church that houses the crosses, overseeing religious ceremonies, taking donations, dressing the crosses in indigenous clothes, replenishing ceremonial candles, making sure the shrine remains in good condition, and enforcing appropriate protocol among visitors who enter the area. 24. X-Cacal is a variant spelling of Tixcacal. 25. Original (Spanish): “Todavía hay contacto entre los centros ceremonales, y los representantes continuan hacer intercambios de cruces pequeñas entre ellos. De hecho, hay una fiesta ahora en un pueblo cercano para honrar las tres cruces. Un museo nuevo se abre muy pronto en frente de la iglesia aquí en Felipe Carrillo Puerto.” 26. Original (Spanish): “Son muy amables y comparten todo con los masewales. Una antropóloga pasó muchos años aquí y vivía como mayera. Aprendió nuestra lengua, vestimento, y música.” 27. Irma often spoke in the Yukatek present tense to recount historical events. For the sake of clarity, I translated the English version using the past tense. Original (Yukatek): “Way ka’ache’, ya’ab ts’ono’ot tu’ux yaan le Cruzo’ úuchi. Jach jats uts, yaan puro ja’. Nojoch máak, yéetel in suegro, ku rezaro’ob ti’ santa Cruz Parlante waye’. Tu meentajo’ob ka’achi’ jun p’éel grupo ku kanantik naats’ ti’ úuchben ts’ono’ot. Don Manuel, tumen maas naats’ ti’ ki’ichkelem Yuume’, tu k’áatik ku salvar u gente. Le Cruze’, chen ku t’aan yéetel leti’, ku avisar u gente tumen yaan u kíinsiko’on. Mina’an u clave, chen cuatro mejen ook ti’ che’. Tu xooto’ob te’ lu’umo’ u che’ beyo’ ka tu bisajo’ob tumen ku salvar le genteo’. Tu ts’aik ich chan caja ka tu rezar tuláakal áak’ab. U día siguiente, jóok’ ti’ chan caja ka tu bin. Tu’ux ku p’áatal, ku bin le genteo’. Jach chicham, pero ku salvar máak waye’. Veinte años ku kanantik le nojoch Cruzo’ le Padreo’ hasta que ku donar ti’ to’on, tu’ux ku p’áat te’ iglesia bejlae’.” 28. Francisco May was the last Caste War Maya leader of Chan Santa Cruz who eventually made peace with the Mexican government in 1929. His

120 / Stephanie J. Litka recognition as a hero remains dubious, as some admire his efforts to put an end to the war while others view him as exploiting his own people for personal wealth (Reed 2001). More radical peasant leaders disagreed with the formal peace agreement and continued to worship the holy Talking Cross in other ceremonial centers as a means of asserting independence. 29. Original (Yukatek): “Yaan máak ku taal beyoora’. Yaan ts’uul ku kaanko’ob yóok’ol u historia ti’ to’on. Uts’ tin t’aan. Bey u xooko’ob. Ya’ab máak ku taal, tu meentik preguntas yóok’ol u 21 ti’ diciembre ti’ 2012, sáan úuchuk. Ma’ yaan u xu’ulul le yóok’ol kaabe’, mixba’aj tu yúuchul, pero u ki’ichkelem Señor yaan u túuxtik señal. Mix tun in wojel ba’ax k’iin, pero, yaan u kíinsa’aj le bej’a’. Yaan u t’aan le ki’ichkelem Yuum te’ Cruza’, bey u xook le paalo’obo’ te’ iglesia, ku yu’ubiko’ob le historia’.”

6 The Hero Cult of Carrillo Puerto Versus the Maya Heroes Who Were Not Heroes Historical Memory, Local Leadership, and the Pathology of Politics in Yucatán Fernando Armstrong-Fumero

When Mayan speakers in the Mexican state of Yucatán talk about citizenship, justice, and local identity, they often invoke a series of narratives and assumptions about politics that were shaped in the decades that followed the Mexican Revolution of 1910. In the early 1920s, a political party known as the Socialist Party of Yucatán (PSY) rose to power in the peninsula. Identifying itself with agrarian reform and local autonomy, the party developed a large constituency in the countryside. Felipe Carrillo Puerto became prominent as a PSY activist in the late 1910s, when his populist performances played a central role in cultivating this rural following. He served as governor between 1922 and 1924, when he was assassinated during a local coup that formed part of the larger De la Huerta Rebellion. Soon after his death, Carrillo Puerto was canonized as a “martyr” for the revolutionary cause, and his legacy of activism on behalf of Yucatán’s Maya peasantry would form the basis of extensive commemoration both in the state and in Mexico at large. The idea of a popular leader who sacrificed himself out of his “love” of indigenous peasants provided the postrevolutionary Mexican state with a useful and ideologically coherent gloss for a far more complicated period of political conflict and state formation in the Yucatán Peninsula. Among the complexities that are edited out of the hero cult of Carrillo Puerto is the role of many of the municipal and community-level leaders who facilitated the rise of the PSY. Most of these individuals left a thin footprint in both official historiography and the state’s archives. They still

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figure in the oral history of many communities, as does Carrillo Puerto himself. In this chapter, I place particular emphasis on Santiago Beana and Lorenzo Barrera, two individuals who served as political leaders in the towns of Tinúm and Pisté, respectively, from the late 1910s and into the 1920s. I also focus on the writing of Eustaquio Cimé of Chan Kom, a community leader made famous as the chief informant of the anthropologist Robert Redfield, and who rose to power as part of the same local cohort of leaders as Beana and Barrera. As I show, these are individuals who played an integral role in the consolidation of the postrevolutionary state in Yucatán but who are associated with fairly negative moral qualities by their descendants and those of their neighbors. For these reasons, they do not achieve the same hero status as Felipe Carrillo Puerto in national historical memory. This simultaneous veneration of Carrillo Puerto and denigration of the local leaders who helped put him in power provide important insights into vernacular assumptions about leadership, politics, and cultural identity in rural Yucatán. People such as Santiago Beana, Lorenzo Barrera, and Eustaquio Cimé embody a certain kind of grassroots leadership that few of my Mayan-speaking friends and informants view as an empowering basis for identity and collective action. Ironically, positive values associated with Maya culture are more frequently invoked in memories of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, a nonlocal leader with a far more tenuous ethnic connection to rural communities. This apparent paradox has important implications for understanding the somewhat ambivalent relationship that many rural Yucatecans1 have with the contemporary politics of Maya identity, which they often associate more with the “official” promotion of heritage by the Mexican state than with the kinds of grassroots mobilization that can be orchestrated by local leaders. This ambivalence is in many ways consistent with the relatively limited development of organized, cross-community grassroots activism in Yucatán, when compared to the celebrated effervescence of indigenous civil society in quincentennial Guatemala and Chiapas (see Armstrong-Fumero 2013:9–14). It also speaks to tensions between local conceptions of the political and multiculturalisms articulated “from above,” tensions that have figured in more recent analyses of these quincentennial movements (see Bastos 2012).

Remembering Felipe Carrillo Puerto Felipe Carrillo Puerto is an unavoidable figure for anyone conducting research on modern Yucatán. He looms large in both published histories of the twentieth century and in state-sanctioned commemorations that are

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woven into the texture of regional space (see Joseph 1987). In this sense, my first encounters with oral narratives about the “martyred” governor seemed like a reaffirmation of the profound social impact of historical events with which I was fairly familiar. Pisté resident Don Carlín Tec, who was just shy of a century old when I first interviewed him in 2000, shared a vivid recollection from his early teens. “Don Felipe Carrillo was the governor from Mérida. He has come to visit here. So then [when] Don Felipe Carrillo comes visiting, he gives guns to each town, he gives out guns like that. He leaves the guns so they can defend themselves, because there are those who go about killing people. I think it’s what they call the politics. [They kill people] frequently, frequently. It’s true what he [Carrillo] said. Carrillo Puerto is [like a] poor man. He goes about on a horse. When it gets tired, he comes down to walk, he goes walking. But he has no boots, he just has rope sandals on his feet!”2 The incident to which Don Carlín refers was tacitly denied by the Socialist Party in Mérida: the arming of the community-level associations known as Ligas de Resistencia. In hindsight, there is some support to the governor’s claim that these groups were not a paramilitary force. When Carrillo Puerto was driven from power and ultimately executed in 1924, the Ligas never fielded organized armed resistance. Still, I have heard several different accounts, besides Don Carlín’s, in which Carrillo Puerto or his representatives distributed weapons to peasant communities. The particular way in which Don Carlín frames Carrillo Puerto’s handing out of weapons in this story is telling of a series of erasures that mark contemporary attitudes about the “martyr’s” role in the events of the early 1920s. Whether or not the governor distributed weapons to communities, it is undeniable that the consolidation of his power base was part of a series of processes that unleashed a wave of rural violence in this part of Yucatán in the 1920s. This violence remains a stain on the memory of local leaders who perpetrated it. But in narratives such as this one, the governor himself is largely beyond reproach. In fact, Don Carlín frames Carrillo Puerto’s gift of weapons as a means of helping people defend themselves from “what they call politics.” This comment implies that the threat of “politics” preceded the governor’s intervention and that it originated somewhere outside of the communities that the Socialists hoped to protect. Such stories tend to place less emphasis on the specific strategic outcome that the governor sought from a given visit and more on the way in which the he presented himself and interacted with locals. Carrillo Puerto’s use of the Mayan language is well-documented in the journalistic record and historiographical literature. Don Carlín’s description of the governor riding around in peasant garb reflects the impact that such performances

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of native culture had on rural people. In a similar vein, the son of an eyewitness to one of Carrillo Puerto’s visits to Pisté recalled: When they made the plaza in Pisté, it was made by Felipe Carrillo Puerto. . . . Where that big tree that they call the “dormilona” [sleepyhead] is, that’s where they got together with Don Felipe, who was a person that, . . . he was very handsome. He was the governor. That’s how they got together. That man had green eyes, he was light skinned, and he said to them, “Let’s drink posole” [a traditional Mexican soup]. Because even he drinks posole, with chile, salt, everything. He really gets into the posole! I think it was in 1923. It was when they inaugurated the highway that Don Felipe Carrillo Puerto built. And in 1924 they killed him. January the 3rd, 1924, several of them. All of his relatives. This was told to me by my grandfather and my uncle. They met him. Estanislao Pech.3 This quotation emphasizes Carrillo Puerto’s distinctive appearance. With his light skin and green eyes, the governor hardly looked indigenous. In a society marked by class and ethnic hierarchies, his willingness to make stirring speeches in Mayan, dress in peasant clothing, and share a humble meal of posole read like a transgressive act of solidarity. In some cases, these performances blurred the boundaries between solidarity and identification. Carrillo Puerto, who at different points in his career claimed to be a descendant of the sixteenth-century Maya rebel Nachi Cocom (see Joseph 1987; Urías Horcazitas 2008), played an integral role in the development of the pathbreaking archaeological project at Chichén Itzá (see Castañeda 1996), which figured prominently in his performance of Maya identity. Given that the boundaries between indigenous and nonindigenous are somewhat more ambiguous in Yucatán than in the Maya highlands (see Gabbert 2004b; Armstrong-Fumero 2009), this claim might have seemed credible to Yucatecans. Regardless of whether or not his rural followers took this assertion as a factual statement about the green-eyed governor’s ancestry, it is clear that he established himself as a leader whose persona was closely tied to indigenous heritage and customs. These connections still resonate today. The snack of posole in downtown Pisté has a direct connection to the archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, a tourist destination that has become a sort of metonym for things Maya (see Castañeda 1996; Armstrong-Fumero 2011). The plaza that was under construction was built as part of a larger series of state-sponsored projects that improved infrastructure to allow a larger flow of visitors. For people in Pisté and neighboring communities, who have prospered

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through participation in the tourist economy, this investment in Chichén was a simultaneous contribution to the recognition of Maya culture and to what would eventually become a source of material progress for rural communities. The characterization of Carrillo Puerto as a champion of Maya culture is consistent with the national hero myth, but oral narratives also bring the legend closer to home by situating him under the shade of still-living trees or walking in rope sandals down familiar paths and roads. He appears not just as someone who made speeches valorizing indigenous peasants but as an intimate coparticipant in highly recognizable components of indigenous life and in the physical transformation of sites that embody the heritage of Maya culture. But what about the guns that Don Carlín says were handed out to local communities? The martyr’s rise to power took place during a particularly violent time in the history of this part of Yucatán, much of which was perpetrated by local leaders associated with the Socialist Party. Rarely mentioned, even by local people today, these local leaders have accrued little of the aura of sanctity that hovers over Carrillo Puerto. But, perhaps ironically, they had a far more organic connection to their communities and a direct genealogical connection to people navigating the often-complex terrain of Maya identity politics today. I argue that this glorification of a nonlocal leader at the expense of actual ancestors is consistent with a broader ambivalence about the nature of politics that often complicates the legitimation of grassroots mobilizations around ethnicity or identity (see Maxwell and Cuma Chávez, chapter 1, and Little, chapter 10, this volume, for a discussion of a similar phenomenon in Guatemala).

The Socialist Antiheroes of Oriente I first encountered the stories of Santiago Beana and Lorenzo Barrera, two dominant Socialist politicians from Pisté and its municipal seat of Tinúm, during my doctoral research in Yucatán in the early 2000s. Along with a larger cohort of local leaders, they are listed in the autobiography of Eustaquio Cimé that is appended to Redfield and Villa Rojas’s classic ethnographic work, Chan Kom. Cimé, one of the ethnographers’ most valued informants, is referenced through much of the oeuvre as an example of the kind of exceptional, forward-thinking individual who promotes the intellectual and institutional evolution of societies from within (Redfield 1962). Subsequent historical and ethnographic studies have painted a more nuanced portrait of Cimé (Goldkind 1965; Castañeda 1996; Fallaw 2004), which is more consistent with the ambivalent place that he has in the memory of his contemporaries’ grandchildren (Armstrong-Fumero

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2013:35–45). Much of this ambivalence stems from his association with the kind of politics that is intimately tied to the legacy of characters such as Barrera and Beana. The hero cult of Carrillo Puerto tends to sideline certain realities of early Yucatecan Socialism that are at the heart of the narrative presented by Cimé. Whether or not the paramilitary function of Ligas de Resistencia was sanctioned by the leadership of the PSY, violence played a role in how Cimé consolidated his power base and how he later legitimated his “revolutionary” role. In Cimé’s autobiography, he identifies himself as the second in command of a raid that some of my most elderly informants refer to as the Burning of Yaxcabá. For several years, Yaxcabá had been dominated by members of the Yucatecan Liberal Party (PLY), an organization founded by opponents of the Socialists. The PLY leadership of Yaxcabá had formed an alliance with members of a local garrison of federal police, who had apparently aided local men in robberies, murders, and destruction of property in Socialist-dominated communities to the north. These communities rallied in late June 1921, joining forces to muster a band of more than three hundred armed men who descended on Yaxcabá in the wee hours of the morning (Domínguez 1979; Armstrong-Fumero 2013:58–61). In Cimé’s narrative, this battle is a moment of heroic solidarity in which hardworking Socialist peasants defeated Liberal “oppressors.” For many of the people who lived through the Burning of Yaxcabá and subsequent events, the memory of these peasant warriors is far more ambivalent. In recounting the origins of the raid, Cimé recalls that plans were hashed out in a meeting with Jose María Iturralde Traconis, a close associate of Carrillo Puerto. Among other participants, he lists Santiago Beana of Tinúm, Lorenzo Barrera of Pisté, Filomento Pat of Tekom, Primitivo Escamilla of Cuncunul, and a number of Socialists from Yaxcabá who were exiled in the village of Tacchibichen (Cimé 1933:220–25). Intrigued by this list of community-level leaders, I spent many hours poring through the correspondence of Yucatán’s executive branch to reconstruct details of the Burning of Yaxcabá. Beana and Barrera both served as municipal president or comisar of their respective communities and appear in official correspondence. But archived letters written by or naming these individuals are few and far between in the heaps of paper that make up the governor’s correspondence. Years later, the ongoing work of indexing by archivists at Mérida’s Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (AGEY) made it possible to locate the records of several trials involving murders in which Barrera and Beana were implicated. But even so, I never found more than a dozen or so documents in which these men are even mentioned.

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Leafing my way through the archives, I continued with ethnographic research in Pisté and other communities in Oriente, where I fished for oral histories of the Burning of Yaxcabá. The event really seemed to have all but faded from living memory, even though I spoke to a number of children of people who had participated. Still, certain broad contours of the raid emerged. A number of elderly people, including Don Carlín Tec, confirmed elements of Cimé’s account and the archival sources by stating that the raid had been orchestrated as retaliation against the leadership of Yaxcabá and a garrison of federal police, who had coordinated murders and highway robberies. But where Cimé presented the raid as a moment of unity among downtrodden workers and peasants, the elderly folk I interviewed painted a far darker portrait of Socialist leaders like Lorenzo Barrera and Santiago Beana, who they always refer to with the Mayanized nicknames of “Lol” and “San.” In the stories that I heard, the name of Lol Barrera is almost always associated with murders that happened in Pisté itself, not in the distant and historically hostile town of Yaxcabá. One story that several elderly men and women told me involved two young men who had been abducted from a family prayer service, murdered, and thrown in the cenote at the center of the town. Judicial documents that I found in 2014 show that Lol and several alleged accomplices stood trial for these and other killings in 1922 (AGEY 1922). Despite the fact that his contemporaries’ grandchildren take Lol’s guilt for granted, he was spared any significant criminal sentence and returned home to rule Pisté with an iron fist. No local dared to oppose him in elections, until he was finally driven out of town at some point in the 1930s (Armstrong-Fumero 2013:61–63). Lol was not native to Oriente, being born in the port of Progresso, and seems to have left no progeny. “San” Beana of Tinúm had deeper local roots. He is also remembered as someone whose like for the “taste of politics” (In Maya, uts tu t’aan) led him to participate in several murders. Although his reputation in the oral narratives is not quite as bloodthirsty as Barrera’s, he was named as Lol’s codefendant in a murder trial that took place in February 1919 (AGEY 1919). It appears that the two Socialists had illegally arrested a political opponent, whom they murdered while escorting to jail. San was accused of shooting the prisoner in the head with a Winchester rifle, but the weapon was never found, and he was ultimately acquitted. Beana lived to a ripe old age, although he tired of old grudges at home and spent his final years in the city of Mérida. Today, several local families with the surname of Beana or Viana are related in some form to San. Local memories also supply names that were not listed in Eustaquio

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Cimé’s narrative, but whom people in the community regard as associates of Lol Barrera and San Beana. One of these, who appears as a codefendant in the 1922 murder investigation and trial, is an individual to whom I will refer as Barnabas “Bar” Mex.4 Bar Mex lived out most of his life in Pisté, where my older informants remember that he owned a ferocious pack of dogs. I was told that whenever one of his neighbors had hunted a deer, Bar would ask for a bucket of the animal’s blood or entrails, so that he could stimulate his dogs’ taste for warm prey. The pack presented a formidable barrier to any of the number of neighbors who would have wanted payback for harms committed in the twenties and thirties. These grudges died hard, and Ruben Dzul recalled that Bar Mex was eventually shot dead—“like a deer”—in the bush near Chichén Itzá. Today, people who share Bar’s surname represent one of the largest extended kin networks in Pisté, consisting of dozens of more-or-less related families with common ancestors in the late nineteenth century. Several of these families are descendants of Don Bar. Compared with the hero cult of Carrillo Puerto, or with the narrative that Eustaquio Cimé provided for Redfield and Villa Rojas, these portraits of local Socialist militants present a striking contrast. Individuals such as Lol Barrera, San Beana, and Bar Mex were collaborators in the same process of political consolidation that brought Carrillo Puerto to power and consolidated the social gains that rural Yucatecans associate with the Mexican Revolution. However, the very intimacy of people’s contact with San, Lol, and Bar made it impossible to gloss over their contribution to local experiences of death and mayhem. The negative appraisal that oral history makes of the Socialist militants of the 1920s is consistent with the ambivalent attitude that many rural Mayan speakers seem to hold toward traditional attitudes and lifestyles in their communities. Most people whom I know in these communities love and admire their hardworking elders. Yet, many also recall grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were gruff and quick to anger, held long grudges, and had few qualms about settling scores with guns and machetes. They attribute the relative tranquility of their own character to the positive effects of education in the years since the 1930s, a process to which many people still attribute the coming of “culture” and “civilization” to their communities (see Armstrong-Fumero 2013). As noted, this positively viewed process of “civilization” and attaining “culture” is closely associated with the figure of Carrillo Puerto. The martyr was not simply a defender of the rights of Mayan-speaking peasants but a leader who promoted public schools, research and restoration of archaeological sites, and other projects that are seen as having “brought”

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culture and civilization to communities that lacked it. In contrast, individuals such as Barrera, Beana, and Mex tend to be characterized as “lacking” culture (in Spanish, sin cultura; in Mayan, mina’an kúultura). Where Carrillo Puerto bridged the gaps between local customs and the urban world, his local collaborators are seen to embody all of the worst instincts of a time before the arrival of culture in local communities. This contrast between the hero and antiheroes of Yucatecan Socialism is consistent with how rural people in the Oriente speak about the nature of politics and the benefits derived from the Mexican state. A utopian vision of good government embodied by the hero cult of Carrillo Puerto is often evoked as a general reference to how modernization and cultural promotion should work. Many also seem to see the negative instincts associated with Lol Barrera, San Beana, and Bar Mex in the behaviors that mark the uglier realities of local politics, particularly during election cycles. This particular conception of politics and the complicated relationship that it posits between local customs and culture (Maya or otherwise) is the focus of the next section.

The Pathology of Politics In the stories that I heard, Lol Barrera and San Beana are most often referred to as “politicians” (in Spanish, políticos; in Mayan, políiticoso’ob). A good example is Don Carlín Tec’s somewhat ironic response to my question about the struggle between Liberals and Socialists: “The Liberals and the Socialists? Two parties. Their leader [the Socialists’] was in Tinúm. San Beana. San Beana was an important man. A politician. But he really threw himself into the politics! It tasted good to him . . . politics tasted good to him. [And so] they’d go around killing people.”5 This attribution of thoughtless ambition and violence to professional politicians is consistent with a more general critique that many Yucatecans express about their own political proclivities. It underscores the suspicion that many people have regarding the kinds of grassroots agitators whom many scholars and activists associate with indigenous leadership today. Much of this ambivalence seems to stem from the structure of twentiethcentury electoral politics. Much of the violence that initiated local communities into the revolutionary politics of the 1920s, like the cycle of intimidation and revenge that culminated in the Burning of Yaxcabá, seems to have been tied to attempts at influencing electoral outcomes (ArmstrongFumero 2013:59). Thus, in the vernacular speech of communities like Pisté, “politics” refers less to a generalized terrain of human activity and more explicitly to the extraordinary time leading up to a major vote. This

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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period is marked by speeches and rallies and by party representatives visiting individual families with gifts ranging from bundles of food to sewing machines and bicycles. As election days near, party activists go so far as to offer individuals cash rewards in exchange for votes. Hard-core activists, referred to as “raccoons” (in Spanish, mapaches), skulk around town, looking for opportunities to intimidate opponents or steal and stuff ballot boxes. Brawls at polling places are common and murders occur. Today, competition between various parties includes increasingly elaborate forms of electioneering, polling, and campaigning. Yet even before the advent of real multiparty competition in the 1990s, similar dramas played out as different local factions rallied their respective bases of support as they jockeyed for the favor of regional powers within the dominant Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI). In my experience, it is hard to find a person in rural Yucatán who has many positive things to say about these politics or the individuals who orchestrate them. The following was a friend’s pithy reply to my inquiry about the months leading up to Mexico’s historic 2000 election: “People always go out when they are going to change the government. They shout obscenities, there are fist fights, and then they change it [the government]. It has always been like this.”6 Fortunately, this is a passing stage, and there is a general consensus that behaviors that are prevalent during la política (the politics) are censured during ordinary times. Over the years, I have often been amazed by the ability of people in rural Yucatán to return to normal forms of neighborliness after the toxic environment of election seasons. People seem to take this return to normalcy for granted, with many arguing that elections play a positive role by providing a release valve for pent-up resentments. Local perceptions of election cycles seem to mirror Victor Turner’s theory of liminal dramas (1975) or René Girard’s sacrificial crises (1979), in which temporary subversions of rules or specific acts of violence are crucial to reproducing the social order. In many respects, behaviors that mark these electoral dramas represent the “other” for attitudes and habits that people associate with the good life and that are often glossed as “tranquility.” Whether one speaks Spanish or Mayan, the idea of being “tranquil” (Spanish: tranquilo; Maya: tráankilo) is a common way of referring to both personal contentedness and civic virtue (see Sosa 1985; Kray 1997). In the Mayan language, this sense of tranquility is often referred to as a positive condition of the animating principle called ool, as in the common phrases ki’imak in wool (my ool is happy) or tooj in wool (my ool is straight). In fact, I have often heard the word tráankilo used as a response to friendly inquiries about the state of someone’s ool.

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Although this idea of “tranquility” is deeply rooted in the Mayan-language discourse of Oriente, it is important not to essentialize it as a timeless ethos or cultural pattern. In fact, few rural Yucatecans with whom I have spoken seem to consider these values timeless or essential to their society. It is possible that Maya communities have valued peaceful conditions of the ool for many generations, but most of my friends and informants suggest that the heritage of the Caste War of the 1840s and the violence of the 1920s provide ample evidence to the contrary. As I have been told many times by elderly people and their children, the current “tranquility” that reigns in communities like Pisté is the result of a slow process through which education and the imposition of “order” by the centralized state brought about new lifestyles and attitudes. Here, we return to the paradox of many rural Mayan speakers’ attitudes toward the relationship between politics and culture. When compared with their parents and grandparents, rural Yucatecans in their twenties and thirties are far more likely to associate culture with Maya identity than with the acquisition of Western habits. This tendency reflects both the centrality of cultural tourism to contemporary livelihood and decades of multicultural critiques in Mexican public discourse. However, there is a great deal of ambivalence as to whether Maya culture springs organically from the often-unruly habits of local communities or if it is itself something promoted by official institutions for education and the stewardship of heritage (see Armstrong-Fumero 2013). Whether Westernizing or Mayanizing, official cultural institutions are something quite distinct from the practices explicitly referred to as “politics” or “political.” People readily acknowledge that political affiliation might give some families privileged access to these goods—say, by having their street paved or electrified before their neighbors or in the receipt of government education subsidies. However, the goods themselves, and the improvements that they have wrought on the collective character of the community, exist outside of what is strictly labeled as “political.” If anything, politics interferes with the fair distribution of these benefits within society. This phenomenon presents a serious challenge to the legitimacy of local leaders and promoters of culture or material progress, which different individuals have addressed with varying degrees of success.

Eustaquio Cimé’s Search for Legitimacy The writings of Eustaquio Cimé provide evidence of one particularly striking attempt at reconciling rural Yucatecans’ suspicion of local politics with the notions of culture and modernization associated with nonlocal institutions. As noted, Cimé figured in Redfield and Villa Rojas’ ethnography

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as an innovator who, although grounded in traditional forms of leadership, possessed personal qualities that transformed him into an agent of modernization and progress. A number of authors who returned to Chan Kom focused on some of the more ambivalent dimensions of Cimé’s role as a cacique (indigenous leader) politician, such as his manipulation of the agrarian bureaucracy to enlarge his personal landholdings and the often violent intimidation of his political opponents (see Goldkind 1965; Armstrong-Fumero 2013). Still, as historian Ben Fallaw (2004) points out, Cimé’s collaboration with federal education authorities in the creation of a local school placed him at the head of a project that created consensus among a large proportion of Chan Kom’s population and that was seen as a positive “cultural” institution within the community. In this sense, Cimé’s legacy seems to straddle the boundary between forms of cultural promotion that rural Yucatecans today value highly and the violence and corruption that they ascribe to politics. Cimé’s complicated legacy challenges the image that many authors have about grassroots leadership and cultural promotion in Yucatán. This contrast applies not only to Redfield’s representation of Cimé as a selfless modernizer but to common stereotypes of “traditional” leadership. Carlos Loret de Mola, who served as governor of Yucatán from 1970 to 1976, painted just such a portrait of an elderly Don Eustaquio in his role as the cacique of Chan Kom: “The cacique of the Maya village never abuses his power. The people would not permit the least transgression against their own immutable laws. . . . He is asked to represent the village before Don Gobierno del Estado and his subordinates, to get along well with them; to keep order in his village, to put the little drunkards in the cell when the time comes, and over all, to go to the municipal palace in the mornings and ‘make justice’”7 (Loret de Mola 1979:93). In this description, Cimé is less of a politician than a patriarch. He exercises a range of informal powers that are not constitutionally mandated (or, strictly speaking, democratic) but that are legitimated by the “immutable laws” of local custom. Clearly such immutable laws and unquestioned authority were quite different from the reality of Don Eustaquio’s experience as a leader. Among Robert Redfield’s archived papers, there are a number of transcriptions of handwritten texts that had been produced by Cimé during the ethnographer’s stay in Yucatán. One of these, a speech that Cimé wrote but never delivered, presents a sort of manifesto for his interpretation of the proper place of politics, progress, and authority (University of Chicago Library Archives). The speech opens with an ironic critique of the extensive use of the term

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“compañero” (companion) by his fellow villagers. This term gained currency during the early Socialist era—so much so that Don Carlín Tec sometimes referred to the earliest Socialists ironically as compaso’ob. Cimé notes that the term should be used as an expression of solidarity in the maintenance of tranquility and progress but was being appropriated by some in hatching factional plots that undermined the unity of the village. Cimé notes that the only “true” compañero was hard work, and that many of the individuals who exploited the language of compañerismo for political scheming undermined this cardinal virtue. Such “bad” compañeros “cause troubles, and those who believe in their compañeros and stop working, are later on ruined and haven’t anything to eat.” Citing examples from the Bible and local common sense, Cimé outlines a vision of labor and social harmony that seems quite consistent with the notions of “tranquility” that define the good life for many rural Yucatecans today. However, he also notes that “only those who make a friend of good ideas, or think of the idea of work, will be happy. Fortunate, and contented, [they] will not mind obeying their superiors. . . . So also we in this village, gentlemen, [should] recognize the governor in his office the way that each son recognizes his [own] father in his house” (University of Chicago Library Archives). Don Eustaquio’s vision of tranquility and economic progress has a distinctly authoritarian flavor, asserting the need for obedience to the state’s governor and his representatives within the community. In essence, he posits his own authority as transcending the machinations of factional politics, claiming the kind of legitimacy that contemporary oral narratives only grant to nonlocal figures such as Carrillo Puerto. Cimé’s statement also hints at the tenuous nature of the solidarity and harmony that Redfield saw as a hallmark of communities like Chan Kom. It shows Don Eustaquio constituting a vision of authority and social solidarity that hinged on the hegemony of the national state and a suppression of the more anarchic politics that characterized everyday life in rural communities. Almost a century later, there seems to be a general social consensus in rural Yucatán about the positive value of cultural and economic institutions that represent the national state. However, the legacy of obedience to local representatives such as Cimé is far more ambivalent.

Conclusion Today, amid the flourishing of Maya identity politics and new kinds of ethnic leadership (see Montejo 2005; Kistler, introduction, this volume), the denigration of homegrown politicians in rural Yucatecan communities seems ironic. It presents a stark contrast to many of the other examples

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in this volume, where the heroic figures inspire different forms of cultural resistance and are marked by deep organic roots to local communities. In the political culture of Oriente, these intimate local connections are more of a liability. Sanitized through his physical distance from local happenings, the ethnically ambiguous Felipe Carrillo Puerto has accrued an aura of sanctity that would be unattainable for figures such as Eustaquio Cime, Lol Barrera, San Beana, and Bar Mex. Although these Socialist antiheroes are tied to local people by a shared class, language, and familial bonds, their memory is indelibly marked by the often-ugly realpolitik that consolidated the Mexican Revolution in the countryside. In this regard, Don Eustaquio’s plea for obedience to authority and an end of political contestation seems darkly prophetic. As staunch supporters of the PRI, twentieth-century Mexico’s “institutional” party, members of the Cimé family maintained control of the municipality of Chan Kom long after the old cacique’s passing. They still control the municipality, decades after the rise of competitive party politics at the municipal level in the 1990s. As late as 2009 and 2015, armed harassment and the extrajudicial detention of political opponents during election seasons occurred in Chan Kom and its various dependencies. Still, Cimé’s various writings, like his role in founding schools in Chan Kom, show the local leader attempting to bridge the gap between statist utopia and the messier realities of local politics. Just as he sought to draw on the aura of Carrillo Puerto in his account of the Burning of Yaxcabá, Cimé legitimated his local authority as a proxy for the state’s governor, whose word should trump the work of any counterproductive factionalism. This argument seems to have convinced Redfield and may have convinced many people in Chan Kom in the 1920s and 1930s. However, conversations that I have had over the years suggest that Don Eustaquio’s political descendants face a municipality that is less and less likely to eschew politics for quiet obedience to authority. Still, the gradual rise of political dissent in municipalities like Chan Kom does little to alter the conceptual boundaries that rural Yucatecans place around the political. Even in municipalities such as Tinúm, where opposition parties alternate with the PRI and electoral outcomes are no longer foregone conclusions, people tend to refer to la política more as a liminal state than as a permanent struggle or state of activism. Things return to tranquil normalcy after the election cycle is over, and people once again return to forms of comportment and tolerance that they associate with the coming of culture to their communities. Combined with the emphasis on cultural promotion as originating in nonlocal governmental institutions, this suspicion of local leadership and

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grassroots political mobilization has important implications for contemporary manifestations of Maya identity politics in Yucatán. Something that has become a recurring theme in recent literature on Yucatán is the apparent mismatch between the high proportion of rural society who can self-identify as Maya and the relatively sporadic and disconnected nature of grassroots mobilization based on ethnic identity. Though groups such as handicrafts vendors at Chichén Itzá invoke Maya ethnicity in staking claims to work and profit from cultural tourism (see Little, chapter 10, this volume, for a discussion of this phenomenon in Guatemala), the most visible celebrations of indigenous identity in the peninsula are still those promoted by different state-level institutions (see Castillo Cocom 2005; Mattiace 2009; Armstrong-Fumero 2013). Although the differential development of grassroots ethnic politics in Yucatán and the Maya highlands cannot be explained with a single root cause, the conception of modernity, tranquility, and the political embodied in the tension between Carrillo Puerto and the Socialist antiheroes offer one cultural explanation for this phenomenon. Oriente’s particular experience of revolutionary modernity has led generations of rural people to associate the political economy of development and Maya cultural promotion with state-sponsored infrastructure and the sanitized hero-cult of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. In contrast, mobilizations “from below” are always considered somewhat suspect. Local leaders today have inherited many of the same challenges of legitimacy faced by Eustaquio Cimé generations earlier, as they articulate their political authority by referring to a statist political utopia while managing the ambivalence inherent in their status as politicians.

Notes 1. Throughout this chapter, I use the spellings “Yucatecan” and “Yucatán” rather than “Yukatekan” and “Yukatan.” “Yucatán” is the standard spelling for a formal political entity within the Mexican nation-state. My use of “Yucatecan” is a fairly literal translation of the Spanish yucateco, which denotes an ethnically diverse community united by a regional identity. This community overlaps but is not fully contiguous with that of people who selfidentify as “Yukatek-Maya” or “Mayas Yukatekos.” I do use the term “Yukatek” in some specific reference to the language. However, my experiences on the ground, in which many Mayan speakers are ambivalent or even critical of the indiscriminate substitution of “k” and “k’” for “c” and “k” in common place names and demonyms, have influenced my spelling choices here. 2. Original (Yukatek): “Don Felipe Carrillo, gobernador Jo, Ts’o’ok u máan u xiimbatee waya’, Ku máan u xiimbate Don Felipe Carrillo tune’, ku

136 / Fernando Armstrong-Fumero ts’aik ts’oon ti kada kaaj beya’, ts’aik ts’oon beya’. P’atik ts’oono’ob [tial] u deefendertikuba máak, tumen yaan u máan kinso’ob máak. Min ku ya’ak le poolitikao’, seeguidokij, seeguidokij. Jaaj u t’aan . . . Carrillo Puerto, otsile’, yo’ tsiimin ku bin, ku ka’anal beyo’ ku yeemel xíimbal, xíimbalil u bin. Pero mina’an u bootas ti, chen taabi xanab yan to yook beya’.” 3. Original (Spanish): “Cuando se hizo la plaza en Piste, lo hizo Felipe Carillo Puerto. . . . Donde está la mata esa grande que dicen ‘dormilona,’ allí se juntaban cuando llegaba Don Felipe, que era una persona así, como, una persona bien presentada. Es el gobernador. Que así se juntaban, y ese señor tiene los ojos bien verdes, es un güero, dice a ellos, ‘Vamos a tomar posole.’ Porque hasta él toma posole, con su chile, sal y todo. Le mete al posole! Creo que fue el 1923. Si. Es cuando se inauguró esa carretera que puso Don Felipe Carillo Puerto. Y el 1924 es cuando lo mataron. 3 de enero de 1924 que lo mataron entre varios. Todos sus parientes. Nos contaba mi abuelo, mi tío, ellos lo conocieron. Don Estanislao Pech.” 4. I use a pseudonym for this individual. Although I have conducted a number of interviews regarding “Bar Mex,” I am not entirely certain how many local people are genealogically connected to him. I have generally found people in Pisté to be candid about the bad behavior of their ancestors, but I have decided to err on the side of granting this character a degree of anonymity. 5. Original (Yukatek): “Le líiberales yeetel le soosialistaso’, ka’a p’e páartidos. Tinumó, yan u nojocho’ob. San[tiago] Beana. San Beana jun p’el [sic] nojoch máak. Politiko. Pero ku yee u méetertikuba te poolitika. Uts tu t’aan, uts tu t’aan le poolitikao. Ku máan u kinso’ob máak.” 6. Original (Spanish): “Siempre salen cuando van a cambiar el gobierno. Gritan groserías, hay golpes, y después se cambia. Siempre ha sido así.” 7. Original (Spanish): “El cacique Maya jamás abusa de su poder. Esta [la gente] no permitiría la menor transgresión a sus propias, inmutables leyes. . . . Se le pide que represente al pueblo ante Don Gobierno del Estado y sus segundos, y que se lleve bien con ellos; que mantenga el orden en la aldea, encalabozando a los borrachitos si llega la hora de hacerlo; y, por encima de todo, que vaya al palacio municipal un rato en las mañanas para ‘hacer justicia.’”

7 Heroines of Health Care Germana Catu and Maya Midwives David Carey Jr.

By the turn of the twentieth century liberal Ladino leaders in Guatemala wanted to establish biomedicine as the norm, a formidable task as the majority of the population were Mayas who maintained their traditional health care systems.1 As a result, midwifery became a highly contested area of health care. Studying this process reveals how negotiations over public health and medical practice both influenced and were influenced by ethnic relations. As early as the 1930s, health officials sought to infuse midwifery with Western medicine. The primary goal was to improve and mandate public health, but this outreach was also one facet of the state’s attempt to form a more homogenous, united national society by inculcating Ladino norms and worldviews among Maya. As such, Maya midwives were destined to confront the state. At stake were their vocations and their people’s culture, traditions, epistemology, and authority. The relationship between different medical systems in general and between cosmopolitan and indigenous obstetrics specifically reflected the asymmetrical distributions of power across ethnic and social divisions in Guatemala. Economic, political, and social structures privileged Ladinos and disadvantaged Mayas, so the imposition of a biomedical system was connected to the racist tenets under which Guatemala operated (Foucault 1982, 1994; Jordan 1989; Pedersen and Baruffati 1989). At the center of the struggle between indigenous approaches to health care and the state’s biomedical agenda, the Maya midwife Germana Catu (1879 [1889]?–1966) maintained her traditional practices in the face of

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authorities’ pressure to adhere to their regulations. Her efforts were emblematic of a larger struggle that indigenous midwives faced against authorities who, beginning most ardently in the 1930s, were intent on discounting traditional midwives’ knowledge and experience. By defending their livelihoods and authority against state officials who intended to curtail midwives’ power and indigenous autonomy more broadly, Catu and her counterparts circumscribed the state’s top-down project of imposing biomedicine and Ladino norms. Yet, like her counterparts, Catu also enjoyed the respect of some doctors. Bucking the state’s vision and contradicting many of their colleagues, some health care professionals recognized that they could learn from illiterate indigenous women. Those collaborative spaces evoked the potential of national unity and hybrid health care. Similar to the ways Armstrong-Fumero (chapter 6, this volume) points to the ambiguity of ethnic heroes by exploring how a mestizo outsider became a hero to indigenous Yucatecans, the apotheosis of a local indigenous woman by powerful Ladinos too encourages rethinking the fluidity of ethnicity and heroism. Catu’s example and the approach of other indigenous midwives suggests that Mayas do not solely laud heroes and heroines because of their ability to resist but also because of their capacity to adapt, accommodate, and collaborate.2 As S. Ashley Kistler astutely points out in the introduction to this volume, indigenous heroes shape Maya communities’ understanding of their histories. The lessons gleaned from those histories are as informed by accommodation as resistance. Persecuted by authorities, many Maya midwives resisted or eluded the state; others welcomed health care professionals’ overtures and in the process convinced doctors and nurses of the legitimacy and viability of indigenous health care. Set against a long history of subjugation and violence, Mayas’ responses to oppression range from resistance to collaboration and capitulation. Recognizing that heroes and heroines experienced the full spectrum of responses and outcomes resonates with Maya depictions of gods as both divine and human. While interactions between medical and cultural systems reveal much about the process of hegemony—the give and take between dominant and subordinate social actors—particularly as it relates to ethnic relations, studying midwifery also provides a window into the role of gender in indigenous communities. That Maya male raconteurs never mention Catu or the relationship between indigenous midwifery and biomedicine in their narratives about health, illness, and state intervention can be explained partly by indigenous men’s ignorance of reproductive health. It also can be attributed to their inability to fit such stories into their broader his-

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torical narratives. Catu’s experience did not jibe well with conventional cultural forms or gendered discourse in indigenous communities or Guatemala. Although Maya women were relatively autonomous within their communities, where they could move about freely, inherit land, and secure their own sources of income, men positioned themselves as the community brokers who dealt with outsiders and the state (Smith 1995); yet, they had to concede this role to women when the state intervened in the predominantly female world of reproductive health. When Maya women confronted government officials attempting to control, co-opt, and infiltrate their communities, they were not merely resisting the state; they also were altering gender relations in their communities. In the process of guarding and upholding Maya medicine, whether through resistance or collaboration, midwives challenged the paradigms of Ladino, state, and Maya male domination. Maya women’s accounts of Catu offer an example of how women break from narrative disenfranchisement to craft oral histories that capture their experiences with their own protagonists and resolutions. Those stories are a crucial component of their identities. As focal points of social relations in Maya communities, midwives held considerable sway. Their vocation demanded they have unrestrained mobility in public and private worlds. Although men generally assumed a greater external role than women, women’s lives were not devoid of public activity. As merchants, vendors, washerwomen, and moonshiners and in some of their daily chores, such as fetching water or firewood, women moved in public circles and expressed their opinions. In such public arenas as marketplaces and courtrooms, Maya women were outspoken and forceful (Perera 1994; Carey 2006, 2013). Because their work required that they be on call twenty-four hours a day, midwives had greater liberties than most women. It was not unusual for them to be on the streets late at night or early in the morning, when most others—men and women—were in their homes. Many midwives were widows, so they already enjoyed greater freedoms than younger single or married women, but the nature of their profession further liberated them from restrictions that customarily curtailed women’s—even widows’—options and activities. Because they operated outside male power structures and systems of knowledge, men often looked on midwives with suspicion, but their freedoms did not openly challenge Maya communities’ understandings of gender relations and roles. Within their communities, midwives were recognized as a necessary, if problematic, exception. Like all heroes and heroines, Catu’s past is complicated. Revered for her medical prowess, she also became a lay leader in the Catholic Action movement that came to shape local churches and national politics in Gua-

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temala. Unabashedly anticommunist and anti-indigenous, Catholic Action sought to purify Catholicism by extricating atavistic indigenous traditions, rituals, and influences from it. Animated by priests run out of Mao’s China in the 1950s, Catholic Action sought to undo hundreds of years of inculturation between Catholicism and indigenous spirituality. By attacking cofradías (saint’s day brotherhoods), Catholic Action inadvertently opened up spaces for women to assume lay leadership positions in the church. Despite the apparent contradictions, female storytellers portray her role as a midwife and Catholic Action advocate as mutually laudatory. Their ability to parse her tale becomes even more adept as they shift from her role in Catholic Action to its instigation of the 1967 melee in San Juan Comalapa (henceforth, Comalapa) that injured many and took the life of a bystander. Although such unrest associated with Catholic Action erupted elsewhere in the highlands, Comalapa was Catu’s hometown. Her death a few months prior to the Comalapa conflict aids raconteurs’ efforts to distance her activism from the strife, but a balanced rendering places her leadership at the center of that struggle. Interpreted through Maya women’s oral histories and archival sources, perhaps her two seemingly contradictory roles were compatible and reinforcing. Further complicating Catu’s story, Mayas and Ladinos alike claimed that an image of her painted posthumously had supernatural powers, a common characteristic found in the narratives of several other heroic figures in the region (see Kistler, chapter 3, and Christenson, chapter 4, this volume). After protecting residents from a devastating earthquake in 1976, the painting spared the Ladino family of a military colonel and their Maya servants from a brutal insurgent attack in their Guatemala City home. Even as accounts of the attack perversely ally the military and Mayas in a conflict punctuated by the military’s genocidal campaign against Mayas, such stories also resonate with broader narratives that frame Catu as a leader whose identity was grounded in her ability to both resist and accommodate power. Infused with gender, ethnicity, class, and state power, tales of Maya heroinism demonstrate how complicated and complex relations have been between Mayas, Ladinos, men, women, and the state.

Public Health, Ethnicity, and Gender Beginning in the seventeenth century, the professionalization of medicine in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America sought to transfer the authority to diagnose and cure illness to licensed male doctors by establishing biomedicine as the norm and male physicians, armed with reason and formal education, as the experts (Few 2007). As part of this process, in

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1750 the Real Tribunal del Protomedicato (Royal Court of Medicine) established guidelines (including literacy) and issued examinations to circumscribe the medical role of midwives. Even though the promotion of male obstetricians infringed on midwifery, traditional and modern approaches to health care often coexisted without much conflict (RiveraGarza 2001; Webre 2001). As the independent state increasingly assumed responsibility for public health, nonscientific and indigenous approaches to health care and their providers came under attack. As was true elsewhere in Latin America, medical professionals called on the aid of laws and police forces to assert the supremacy of biomedicine. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Latin American penal codes outlawed practicing medicine without a license (Borges 2001). Guatemalan authorities mandated midwives be licensed by the state. As early as 1879, the Guatemala Ministry of Public Education established an obstetrics class for midwives. Supervised by a male physician, Constanya Marino offered one such course at the San José Hospital in Guatemala City. According to the presidential decree that authorized the course, “experience has demonstrated the very grave problems caused by midwives who lack knowledge of the art”3 (Archivo General de Centro América n.d.4). By subverting traditional midwives’ knowledge and legitimacy, authorities and physicians paved the way for male doctors’ access to the female body, particularly as it related to the birthing process—a phenomenon about which they previously knew little. To ensure this access, physicians proclaimed the advances of obstetrics and gynecology as they discounted the experiential knowledge of traditional midwives (Rivera-Garza 2001). Conducted in 1930, a survey of Guatemalan doctors aimed at understanding the nation’s alarmingly high infant mortality rate offers one example of how biomedical practitioners discounted female and indigenous knowledge. With misogynistic undertones, the medical professionals attributed Guatemala’s high infant mortality rate to “our mothers [who] do not know [anything] and continue to be ignorant about the most fundamental elements of childcare”5 (AGCA, Jefatura Política de Sacatepéquez6 1930a). Betraying their preference for biomedicine, they also asserted “untrained midwives do not know absolutely anything about the physiology of birth and propagate absurd harm.”7 Among other solutions, they proposed compelling midwives to undergo formal training. The hospital director who conducted the survey did not disagree with his colleagues’ assertions, but he emphasized the racial aspect of health and health care. “The true determinant of INFANT MORTALITY in all its manifestations is: THE DEGENERATION OF THE RACE,” he insisted (AGCA, JP-S 1930a, emphasis in the original).8 To his mind, the solution was “to re-

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generate our impoverished race” (AGCA, JP-S 1930a).9 In that context, indigenous midwives faced formidable forces. Informed by that and other reports, the Guatemalan Ministry of Health initiated licensing requirements for midwives in 1935. Because the state lacked the manpower to enforce those regulations, few felt compelled to comply, despite the threat that any midwife who failed to attend a training course when requested to do so was prohibited from practicing her profession. One sixty-seven-year-old Catholic recalls,10 “A long time ago there were no studies. . . . They just taught themselves how to be midwives.”11 Catu’s daughter concurs: “She [my mother] did not take any classes. She just learned with her mind and hands.”12 The earliest training programs in the highlands did not commence until the late 1940s (Governmental Decree 1935; Méndez 1938; Greenberg 1982; Acevedo-Garcia and Hurtado 1997). Often, women delayed (or avoided) getting their licenses. Perhaps because authorities imprisoned or fined offenders who practiced without a license (Archivo Municipal de Patzicía13 paquete 107, 1942; Paul 1975; Cosminsky 1976, 1977), a few indigenous midwives applied for a license as Cayetana Ajú did on September 23, 1941 (AMP, paquete 126, 1941a). They were the exception, however. For midwives with little formal education and few economic resources, illiteracy and poverty infringed on their ability to obtain a license. Others considered the licensing procedure a superfluous nuisance. For example, many would have found a kindred spirit in Felicitas Provencio. Arrested in El Paso, Texas, in 1935 for practicing without a license, the one-hundred-year-old midwife insisted that “her track record and references” were better indicators of her prodigious talents than “a useless piece of paper” (McKiernanGonzález 2012:262–63). Having focused most of its enforcement energy on moonshiners and bootleggers in the early twentieth century, by the 1930s the state was becoming strong enough to contemplate enforcing health care licenses even if it was far from doing so with any success. Whether or not they intended to abjure Western medicine (and by association ideologies) by foregoing the licensing process, many midwives defied the state’s attempt to establish a modern, homogenous, Ladino nation and for this reason were deemed a threat to authorities’ perceptions of public order and national progress. In a distinction that suggests one of the ways biomedical preferences were imbued with racial and class overtones, many authorities recognized the expertise of comadronas tituladas (formally educated or trained midwives) but disparaged comadronas empíricas (midwives without formal training). In Guatemala, the latter were overwhelmingly indigenous whereas

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the former were Ladino and at times European. By definition, comadronas tituladas’ ability to pay for their education suggests the economic resources to which they had access. To be licensed by the state, comadronas empíricas had to complete obstetrics training, but that learning never elevated their status to that of comadronas tituladas. Under the veneer of formal education, comadronas tituladas’ expertise trumped that of indigenous midwives, whose knowledge was based on their own and their predecessors’ experience. As one example of the preference for educated elite women, in 1913, Pres. Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) earmarked 4,495 pesos to cover the costs of hiring two midwives from England to work at the maternity ward named after his mother: Asilo Joaquina Maternidad (AGCA, 1884–1924, leg. 23070, 1913). The installation of two European women educated in the science of obstetrics was but one manifestation of Guatemala’s attempt to position itself as a modern nation among its peers in the Atlantic world. At least until May 4, 1943, when Pres. Jorge Ubico (1931–44) appointed América Amaya to replace Lorena Valladares as the head comadrona titulada in the maternity ward, Guatemala City’s central hospital had a midwife who was formally educated in biomedical obstetrics (AGCA, 1884–1924, leg. 23234, 1943). Outside of Guatemala City, authorities’ preference for formally trained practitioners was difficult to institute. Of the thirty-eight midwives who registered in Antigua in 1931, only two enjoyed the title of comadrona titulada (AGCA, JP-S 1930b). The following year a survey of the department of Sacatepéquez turned up only two comadronas tituladas and eightyseven comadronas empíricas (AGCA, JP-S 1930c). The vast majority of midwives were listed as sin dirección (without an address), which hints at authorities’ inability to control them. Whereas the archival record documents midwives who only intermittently registered with the state, Kaqchikel women’s oral histories reveal that many midwives never did (Carey 2006). Evident in oral histories and inferred from documentary omissions, midwives’ ability to continue practicing without a license was facilitated by their capacity to elude rather than openly oppose regulators. When authorities discovered evaders, they punished them. After the sixty-four-year-old indigenous comadrona empírica Dionicia Chiquita assisted Dominga Racanac’s birth in May 1942, authorities arrested her for practicing without a license. Admitting that she had not renewed her license since 1939, she confessed to the crime. Perhaps recognizing her limited resources, Patzicía’s justice of the peace allowed her to commute her five-day sentence at ten cents a day. Her inability to do so underscored her poverty (AMP, paq. 107, 1941a, 1942). Because they were “so injuri-

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ous to public health and at times order,”14 the national police persecuted “midwives without licenses” (comadronas sin títulos) (no author 1935). To maintain the integrity of their calling, midwives policed each other. Catu’s daughter recalls, “One poor young woman from Tecpán had a bad midwife. My mother threatened to send her to jail because she did such a bad job. My mother took care of the young woman.”15 Midwives did not reject scrutiny per se but rather resisted vigilance with assimilationist undertones. Midwives who pursued their licenses were reminded of their marginalized positions. To get a license, midwives had to pass an exam administered by a health technician (AMP, paq. 126, 1941b). Based on those provisions, Francisca Tacen requested that her license be renewed for another year in 1943. As was true of most indigenous and Ladino midwives, Tacen was illiterate, so she could not read the paper that conferred her statesanctioned status. Before renewing her license, the official read the formulaic warning that reminded her of the “grave responsibilities inherent in her occupation . . . [and] the obligation to inform authorities in severe cases so the sick woman could be transported to a hospital or a physician’s care” (AGCA, JP-C 1944a). Even with a license, comadronas empíricas could only operate where there was no comadrona titulada within a fivemile radius (AGCA, JP-C 1944a). In addition to public health concerns, authorities’ regulation of obstetric care was motivated by a desire to propagate Ladino norms and to perpetuate male dominance. Mandatory license renewals and workshops run by Ladinos were a means of injecting Western perspectives into Maya health care, legitimizing and enforcing state (and patriarchal) control, and acculturating Maya. Nonetheless, officials knew midwives were essential to their highland communities; even if the state could phase them out, extant doctors, clinics, and hospitals failed to meet rural health care needs. Attempts to influence rural health care and midwives continued into the second half of the twentieth century. In 1953, the Ministry of Health required that all midwives attend an official training course offered by a nurse or a doctor; after 1955, any midwife who had not taken one was operating illegally in the eyes of the state. To prove they had passed the aptitude examination, the Ministry of Health awarded successful midwives a certificate and cédula (official identification card) to carry with them. In the mid to late 1960s, the number of training programs and participants was growing, albeit modestly. Training programs remained relatively limited in Guatemala until 1969 when the Division of Maternal and Child Health was established, so rural women could avoid these regula-

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tions without too much trouble (Governmental Decree 1955; Solien de González 1963; Solien de González and Béhar 1966; Woods and Graves 1973; Hinshaw 1975; Cosminsky 1978; Acevedo-Garcia and Hurtado 1997; Hinojosa 2004). As cultural brokers, midwives determined to what extent they wanted to be agents of change and/or control. In contrast to other traditional indigenous healers, such as oyonela’ (soul therapists) who operated far outside the realm of biomedicine and thus were never offered official authorization of their practices (Hinojosa 2015:60), midwives had the opportunity to be recognized by the state. At times, their decisions and actions thwarted the state’s goals. By largely avoiding annual licenses and training workshops from the 1930s to the 1960s, many Maya midwives maintained their independence from the biomedical system and held the state at bay. Despite threats to their practice and proficiency, midwives continued to assert their expertise in their communities and the legal system. If Kaqchikel women’s oral histories are any indication, throughout the twentieth century most indigenous midwives maintained impeccable reputations as highly skilled practitioners (Carey 2006). For that and other reasons, Maya mothers generally preferred to give birth at their homes with midwives instead of delivering at a hospital with obstetricians. The judicial record generally buttresses that view. Called to testify about the discovery of a discarded fetus in 1914, one fifty-year-old illiterate midwife assured the justice of the peace that all the babies and mothers whom she had assisted were in “perfect shape” (estado perfecto) (AGCA 1914, leg 15c, ex 45). Although such self-reporting may be prone to hyperbole, other litigants shed light on the high esteem in which many community members held midwives. Rosa Álvarez claimed that her son-in-law beat his wife a few days before she gave birth, causing her newborn grandson to be born with a bruised back and swollen leg. She credited the midwife Petronila de Leon’s medical expertise with saving the infant. Instead of associating the bruises with physical abuse, however, de Leon attributed them to the lunar eclipse that occurred during the birth (AGCA 1915, leg 16c, ex 39). This belief demonstrates biomedicine’s limited influence on health epistemologies in the highlands, where a midwife articulated an explanation of illness (one that starkly contrasted the scientific reasoning medical professionals and authorities were seeking to advance) even as she recognized the limitations of her knowledge (“it is difficult to diagnose infant illnesses”16). That she expressed that view in one of the very institutions bent on modernizing the nation suggests her confidence in her expertise and perhaps points to an attempt to advance a culturally cognizant hybrid

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approach to health care. Even if judicial officials did not embrace such hybrid health care, by calling on the expertise of midwives, they validated their professions, epistemologies, and knowledge.

Legitimizing Indigenous Knowledge and Practices One of the reasons Catu is such a central figure in Kaqchikel women’s oral histories is because her expertise prevented women from having to seek Western medical care. One sixty-seven-year-old mother of five explains, “Germana Catu was really good. If a baby came sideways, she would fix it slowly and move it around so it would come out right; no need for a cesarean. Now they send people to the hospital.”17 Even as she recognizes a contemporary trend that favors hospital care, her narrative also acknowledges that in mid-twentieth-century highland communities, the pressure to conform to Maya obstetrics was powerful; women who preferred doctors to midwives often were the object of ridicule and gossip (O. Lewis 1963). By demanding Maya health care, communities privileged their own knowledge and rejected state efforts to establish biomedicine as the norm. Indigenous midwives were as dependent on the maintenance of their community’s culture and ethnomedicine as Maya were on midwives in defending and upholding their distinct ways of life and knowing. The negotiations between health officials and midwives reveal both the state’s weakness in the periphery, where local Maya knowledge and practices often trumped national Ladino prerogatives, and the ways in which both hegemons and subalterns reevaluated and reconstituted their values and norms based on the pragmatic realities of everyday life. What happened in local communities was at times quite opposite from the state’s desires. In some cases, midwives inverted the dominant-subordinate paradigm of Ladino/Maya relations and Western-indigenous medical care; they simply negotiated between the two systems (Cosminsky 2001). According to oral accounts, long after she had been practicing midwifery, Catu participated in at least one training program and did exceptionally well. She also taught Ladinos about indigenous medicines and techniques. “One time many doctors came and held a meeting to show midwives the techniques of their work, but then they asked Germana what she would do in certain circumstances. For example, when the baby was not coming out right. She never lost a mother to a bad birth and the doctors admired her for that,” recalls a local artist.18 By teaching Ladinos about Maya health care, Catu inverted the model the state hoped to establish. Often, when doctors arrived in Comalapa, they would visit Catu and ask her to accompany them on their house calls.

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Her daughter recollects, “I had a bad cramp and my husband called Dr. Alfaro in Guatemala City. He came and talked with my mother. He asked her what to do for a cramp. He said, ‘You are more of a doctor than I am because you have never had to study, but I have.’”19 That a Kaqchikel man whose mother-in-law was a midwife would call on a Ladino doctor to examine his wife speaks to the complex and syncretic nature of health care. Anthropologist Libbet Crandon-Malamud (1993) argues that such medical decisions were also tied to aspirations of social class, religious affiliations, and other identities. Although Catu stands out in Kaqchikel women’s oral narratives partly because she earned the respect of Ladino doctors, her experience was not unique. In the 1960s, one of the most celebrated midwives in San Pedro received praise and gifts from Ladino doctors for her proficient diagnosis and delivery of a test maternity case (Paul 1975). When hegemonic agents were thrust into local subaltern contexts, at times they contributed to the insurrection of subjugated epistemologies and knowledges. Their admiration for and willingness to incorporate indigenous medical knowledge helped facilitate a fertile environment for health care hybridity. In another indication of the way that midwives commanded respect against the backdrop of biomedical privileges, some judicial officials, who depended on the testimony of health care experts, solicited the opinions of traditional providers. Before ruling on one homicide case, a Chimaltenango judge requested that both an unlicensed physician’s assistant (asistencia de empírico) and comadrona empírica examine the cadaver and offer their opinions (AGCA 1915, leg 16c, ex 39). A few judges accepted midwives’ testimonies without corroboration from doctors. Set against the broader criminal record in which judicial officials overwhelmingly consulted physicians (whether or not they were licensed), cases such as these are the exceptions that prove the rule: Latin American courts generally deferred to medical science and its male providers to inform judicial rulings regarding health, rape, sodomy, and sanity (Findlay 2005; Alegre 2017). For rape victims and other women subjected to the legal system’s mandatory gynecological examinations, midwives were less alienating than doctors, whose gender and, often, ethnicity differed from those of victims. Even though many Ladinos expressed fear and distrust of midwives, some traditional health care practitioners had such good reputations and prodigious talents that some Ladinos entrusted them with their health care (Solien de González 1963, Tax 1963). Catu’s prowess in the medical field appealed to Ladino patients. “She always said she would work with Ladinos. They came to her. . . . Many wanted her to be their midwife,”20 notes her daughter. As the following paean demonstrates, Ladino journal-

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ists in Guatemala City, too, developed a profound respect for Catu, who “possessed the characteristics to detect physical afflictions and cure them by contact and treatment with medicinal plants. She was admired and respected in her town and the surrounding areas”21 (Crónica 1999). This media avowal and other affirmations of such traditional treatments as physical contact and herbal remedies demonstrate that indigenous health care maintained its relevance despite detractors. Many Maya midwives eluded or overcame the state’s hurdles; some, like Catu, reversed the dominant paradigm through the insurrection of subjugated knowledge (Foucault 1980; Jordan 1997). By recognizing indigenous midwives’ knowledge as authoritative, a few doctors elevated the status of midwifery and by extension Maya women’s wisdom—a sharp contrast to the Sacatepéquez doctors who attributed infant mortality to mothers’ and midwives’ ignorance. Because midwifery, and more generally indigenous medicine, formed an integral part of Maya worldviews, one of midwives’ most important contributions was validating their communities’ health care practices and belief systems (Tenzel 1971:379; Guadarrama and Pedrasanta Herrera 1988:364).

Gender Benders In a manifestation that speaks to why women, but not men, held and preserved Catu in such high esteem, not only was the knowledge of midwifery confined to a few women who practiced the craft, but Maya midwives and their patients often used euphemisms to speak about the stages of women’s reproductive lives and the rituals surrounding the birth that carried symbolic messages (Cosminsky 1982; Acevedo-Garcia and Hurtado 1997). Consequently, not only was this knowledge female centered but the language was encoded—akin to what James Scott (1990) calls “hidden transcripts”—further excluding men and the state. Because midwifery operated outside of state and male control, it offered an alternative to Ladino, male, and biomedical dominance. Until the 1930s, midwifery was the natural order of obstetrical care; few other options existed in most highland communities. By trying to usurp this authoritative knowledge from midwives and subordinating their position to the officially sanctioned norm, government officials were attempting to shift health from a local, communal, and family concern to a national, state-mandated issue. As communities concurrently viewed midwives with respect and suspicion (and, in some cases, pity or fear), and pressure to conform to gender norms was significant, midwives were as likely to consider themselves alienated as emancipated (Wagley 1941; Solien de González and Béhar

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1966; Hinojosa 1994). In a study of the Tz’utujil-Maya town of San Pedro la Laguna (henceforth, San Pedro) from 1941 to 1974, Paul and Paul (1975) note that there is “a sharp disjunction between the standards governing the behavior of women in San Pedro and the behavior required of a midwife, and it is this disjunction that accounts for the resistance [of women and men]” (715). As Lois Paul (1975) attests, “the role of the midwife demands that a woman must be assertive and commanding in unfamiliar situations, that she trespass the boundaries of space and time that ordinary women respect, that she display unusual fortitude and resourcefulness” (452). Because they were not regarded as ordinary people, midwives were afforded significant flexibility in Maya society particularly in regard to gender constraints (Paul and Paul 1975; Colby and Colby 1981; B. Tedlock 1992; Hinojosa 1994; Cosminsky 2001; Stanzione 2003). As anthropologist Bill Douglas (1969:146) notes, most women in Santiago Atitlán were reluctant to become midwives because “it requires inappropriate behavior for the ‘proper’ female . . . and . . . they often feel, or are made to feel, that they are neglecting their own families.” In turn, their husbands were assumed to be deficient and weak. To avoid being stigmatized as inadequate providers, most men discouraged their wives from becoming midwives. Catu’s husband was incensed when he discovered that she had assisted a woman in childbirth. As a merchant who sold lima beans and other goods on the Pacific coast, he would be absent for weeks at a time. Even though Catu never traveled with him, he forbade her to become a midwife. Reticent husbands were formidable foes to women’s independent livelihoods and vocations; at times their objections turned violent (Paul and Paul 1975). In light of the censuring midwives faced, Catu is in some ways an unlikely heroine. Despite the dire need for their services, community members often ostracized them and highlighted assumed inadequacies in other aspects of their lives. For example, in the 1930s Francisca Dias was a young Mam midwife who had married several times. According to her community, she was aggressive and could not get along with her husbands (Wagley 1941). This depiction of Dias is but one example of the way popular discourses of both women and men censured midwives to mitigate their authority and autonomy. Patriarchal discourse and structures reinforced gender inequality by ostracizing women who attempted to expand their dominion and access to resources and also helped men to reinvent and maintain their positions of public importance. In some ceremonial rituals, midwives reified gender constructs. For example, burying female umbilical cords in domestic settings and male cords in agricultural settings reinforced a sexual division of labor (Paul and Paul

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1968, 1975; Cosminsky 1972, 1977; Hinojosa 2015). By emphasizing that a man’s domain is outside the home and a woman’s domain is within it, these symbolic rituals perpetuated the circumscription of women’s mobility, opportunities, and access to resources. Although Maya midwives, female vendors, cantina proprietors, and other women in public positions seldom overturned these conditions, at times they contested them. While an uneasy acceptance of midwives’ mobility and autonomy within their villages pervaded Maya communities, when they interacted directly with Ladino officials, midwives further attenuated gender distinctions. Anthropologist Carol Smith (1995:740) asserts, “Mayan women were expected to avoid contact with males outside the community, especially Ladinos, and were expected to conduct themselves modestly.” Midwives’ ability to tack between Maya and Ladino worlds defied these restrictions and increased their sway. Since Maya men had reserved interethnic negotiations for themselves, women who engaged in them challenged men’s hold on positions of public power and importance.

Class Acts Framed in the context of social justice, the indiscriminate service offered by Catu and her counterparts often buoyed their positions in the community. Accepting what people could afford to offer them condemned many midwives to a life of poverty (Paul 1975; Paul and Paul 1975; Zur 1998; Hurtado and Sáenz de Tejada 2001; Carey 2006). Although neither archival nor oral history sources shed light on the relationship between formal training and income, in a late nineteenth-century study of Cajamarca Peru, Tanja Christiansen (2004) found that while formally educated midwives earned enough to identify their profession as such, comadronas empíricas did not. “As a comadrona, she [Catu] never asked for money. It was just according to how much a person could give. Some gave fifty cents, twenty-five cents, one quetzal. That is how she sustained her family,” explains one woman.22 Because many indigenous midwives attributed their healing skills to divine intervention, they generally accepted what the patient could pay because (like other indigenous healers and spiritualists) they did not consider it ethical to charge for a gift from God. Such exchanges were grounded in the understanding that “spiritual work is, at once, economic, spiritual, and political” (Little 2009:79). Aware of their patients’ poverty and limited access to the cash economy, midwives accepted such payment in kind as food or drink. Such remuneration undoubtedly encouraged many Maya patients to seek out traditional healers instead of doctors or rural health clinics that charged fees. During the

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1930s in highland Guatemala, midwives earned between ten and twentyfive cents and meals for twenty days of confinement for the mother and infant after childbirth. During that time, the midwife offered therapeutic steam baths and abstained from sexual intercourse (Bossen 1984). In a label that alludes to Catu’s social and political role in the community, one woman referred to her as a “fighter of poverty.”23 Because gaining the trust and confidence of the community was an integral component of midwifery, such monikers bolstered Catu’s and other midwives’ positions. While a few midwives enjoyed financial success, none were paid more than male ritual specialists (Tax 1963; Fabrega and Silver 1973; Paul 1975). Despite being a midwife who had many clients, farmed her own land, and received financial assistance from her sons, Pascuala Dias remained indigent (Wagley 1941). Given the time, money, and other resources needed to get a license, some midwives had little choice but to avoid it. As the aforementioned Dionicia Chiquita’s case demonstrates, midwives’ privations were apparent to judicial officials. At the turn of the century, one Chimaltenango judge reduced another midwife’s sentence due to her “noteworthy poverty” (pobreza notable) (AGCA 1900). In the rural highlands, many midwives and their patients shared subjectivities of class, gender, and ethnicity. Set against a broader contemporary context in which many Maya women continue to confront poverty, patriarchies, and racism as they navigate the natal and other health care options available to them, Catu’s story remains relevant. Eschewing personal wealth for the benefit of the community, the finest midwives such as Catu and Pascuala Dias became revered members of their communities. That prestige and its implicit connection to spiritual sagacity bolstered their positions of authority (Wagley 1941; McClain 1975; Newman 1981; Guadarrama and Pedrasanta Herrera 1988). Some midwives attracted national attention. One journalist, writing more than thirty years after Catu’s death, opined, “Doña Germana was an exceptional woman, as she was dedicated to bringing human lives into the world. . . . [She] established her true living vocation and service to the community” (Crónica 1999).

A Heroine’s Afterlife With at least two miracles attributed to her posthumously, Catu may be moving from heroinism to sainthood. Her fame spread beyond the rural highlands when a military officer and a journalist insisted she had supernatural powers. In a rare development for modern Guatemala, some Ladinos revere this Maya woman and laud her long-lasting influence on them.

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After her death, Catu’s grandson painted a likeness of her from memory because he realized the family had no photographs of her. Kaqchikel raconteurs recount that a Ladino army colonel who resided in Guatemala City purchased the painting and proudly displayed it in his home. Later, he claimed that the painting of Catu had helped him and his family survive two life-threatening events. According to oral accounts, the first miracle occurred during the 1976 earthquake when his home collapsed, except for the wall on which her painting hung. A second event convinced him of the painting’s preternatural powers. During the civil war, insurgents threw bombs and shot bullets into his home and cut his telephone lines. When firemen arrived, they noticed an extremely powerful explosive at the foot of Germana’s portrait that did not detonate.24 Since then the colonel called Germana his abuela protectora (grandmother protector). For Kaqchikel women and some Ladinos, Germana’s posthumous powers demonstrate her role as a leader and defender of Mayas and Ladinos. Even as that interpretation sanctions those roles for other Maya women such as the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Rosalina Tuyuc, who helped to found a widow’s organization in 1988 and was elected to Guatemala’s National Congress (1996–2000), the story also perversely allies Mayas with officers in the very institution that launched a genocide campaign against them: the military. If Catu protected a military colonel, then there must be something redeeming about him and the military more broadly. In such politically charged histories and realities, heroines’ identities are complex. Even after a civil war that was largely engineered by Ladinos and overwhelming claimed Maya lives, Kaqchikel female elders sought reconciliation rather than revenge as evidenced in accounts that focus on Catu protecting Ladinos. Raconteurs could have argued that Catu’s intervention was intended to save the two Kaqchikel domestic servants from her hometown who worked in the colonel’s home and the Ladinos were merely fortunate bystanders; instead, Kaqchikel women highlight her commitment to aiding Ladinos. By shifting attention away from Kaqchikel beneficiaries, Kaqchikel women articulate a less ethnocentric historical interpretation— one influenced by Catu’s attempts to improve ethnic relations. Posthumously, Catu serves as a symbol that seeks to close the chasm between Ladinos and Maya. Kaqchikel women respect and laud Catu partly because of her ability to interact with, influence, and aid Ladinos. Kaqchikel and Ladino references to her as a grandmother—q’atit tuj and abuela protectora, respectively—symbolize the ways Germana’s efforts and oral histories about them strive to develop connections across ethnic divisions. Kaqchikel women keep these stories alive in their historical nar-

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ratives as reminders of the importance of building a peaceful nation inclusive of Maya and Ladinos, where both benefit from but are not dominated by each other’s presence, wisdom, and compassion.

Conclusion In response to the assault on their professions and communities, Maya midwives such as Catu upset biomedical and Ladino privileges. By convincing (middle- to upper-class) doctors of the value of Maya health care, treating (middle- to lower-class) Ladino patients, establishing reciprocal respect, and adhering to instead of conceding Maya culture, wisdom, and epistemologies, Maya midwives legitimized their practices and knowledge across socioeconomic and ethnic lines. When they dealt directly (and efficaciously) with Ladino authorities, midwives also altered gender codes in their communities by assuming positions normally reserved for men and expanding women’s power and responsibility. Against the backdrop of the harsh impoverished conditions under which most Maya women lived, Maya midwives demonstrated that ethnic, gender, and hegemonic relations all take place in shifting fields of power. Compelling a nuanced analysis of heroism, Catu and her counterparts deployed strategies that ranged from adaptation and accommodation to resistance. If most practicing midwives maintained their adherence to experiential as opposed to formal obstetric knowledge and women continued to seek out their medical services, then the state’s effort to privilege biomedical over traditional natal practices was hardly hegemonic. Even during the state’s campaign to displace indigenous knowledge and medical systems, some of its agents learned from and incorporated indigenous health care practices and knowledge. Not all authorities dismissed traditional approaches to health care. As late as 1928, one Guatemala City government official recognized the importance of “medicine and other branches of the art of curing” (AGCA, JP-S 1928).25 In the complex negotiations surrounding health care and public health, some authorities, judicial officials, doctors, and other biomedical professionals acknowledged the authority of indigenous midwives. Even when such recognition was negligent during the sustained longterm effort to displace Maya knowledge and practices (medical and otherwise), Maya midwives were crucial conduits between Mayas and authorities. Historical knowledge of Catu and her counterparts goes beyond fortifying indigenous identities to finding ways to connect across ethnic divides. At a time when, according to one mayor, indigenous people hate (odian) Ladinos, Maya midwives who treated Ladinas disrupted that para-

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digm (Loyola-Notre Dame Library, Special Collections, Guatemala Collection, box 20, 1948). That both Ladinos and Mayas credited Catu with saving a Ladino military officer in the midst of a genocidal civil war suggests that both sides could envision harmonious and perhaps even symbiotic ethnic relations. As a highland heroine, Catu is a cornerstone of Maya cultural and political resistance as well as a cultural broker who deployed Maya health care to bridge ethnic divides. Yet, her involvement with Catholic Action suggests maintaining Maya religious beliefs and practices was not akin to her struggle to preserve Maya midwifery. Given the spiritual dimensions of Maya midwifery, her role as a Catholic Action lay leader is more easily explained as an effort to assume a leadership position that was generally reserved for men. Although we know little about her involvement in Catholic Action, let alone her motivations for participating in it, she apparently prioritized upholding Maya health care and widening spaces for Maya women’s leadership over maintaining Maya religious practices and beliefs. In their lives and the telling of them that constitute their legacies, heroines and heroes advance multiple and at times competing narratives. Mirroring contemporary challenges, that complexity is what sustains heroines’ and heroes’ relevance.

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

Notes 1. Most people who did not identify as indigenous, Afro-Guatemalan (Garifuna), Xinka, or Creole (pure-blooded Spaniard) in twentieth-century Guatemala tended to identify themselves as Ladino. In turn, twentieth-century census, judicial, jefe político, and other records most commonly deploy the terms “indio” (Indian) or “indígena” (indigenous person) to refer to (and self-identify with) Guatemala’s indigenous population. In their oral histories, Kaqchikel-Mayas use “natural” or “indígena” in Spanish and “qawinaq” (our people) in Kaqchikel to refer to broader indigenous groups. As such, Maya does not conjure how Kaqchikel and other contemporary indigenous people of Guatemala were identified or self-identified. Rather, favored by the movimiento maya, which rose to prominence in the early 1990s, Maya denotes a collective Guatemalan indigenous population comprised of people from diverse linguistic and ethnic communities. 2. I hesitate to define Catu as a heroine because neither the oral histories nor documentary sources use that term. One woman called Catu “our star and a vision for us” (original [Kaqchikel]: “Qach’umila, nuestra estrella, una visión qichin roj”), which evokes notions of heroism. Framing Maya midwives as heroines comes from my reading of the sources rather than Kaqchikel-Maya women’s articulations.

Germana Catu and Maya Midwives / 155 3. Original (Spanish): “Por haber demostrado la experiencia ser de mucha gravedad los males que causan las que carcen de los conocimientos del arte.” 4. Henceforth, AGCA. 5. Original (Spanish): “Nuestras madres han desconocido y seguirán ignorando las reglas más elementales de puericultura.” 6. Henceforth, JP-S. 7. Original (Spanish): “Comadronas empíricas que desconocen por completo la fisiologia de ese acto y abundan prejucios absurdos.” 8. Original (Spanish): “La verdadera determinante de la MORTALIDAD INFANTIL en todos sus manifestaciones es: LA DEGENERACIÓN DE LA RAZA.” 9. Original (Spanish): “Regenerar nuestra empobrecida raza.” 10. Due to the continued political volatility of Guatemala and recurrent human rights abuses, I have preserved the anonymity of oral history interviewees for their safety. Like archival documents, oral histories are subjective sources with historical trajectories. Unlike archival sources, oral histories change over time depending on the past they are describing and the contemporary circumstances (particularly the audience and storytellers’ motives) in which they are recounted. In highland Guatemala, events such as the nation’s civil war (1960–96)—which morphed into genocide in the early 1980s—the 1976 earthquake, and the 1996 Peace Accords are ever present lenses through which elder Mayas recount the past. To cite but one example of their effect, looking back through genocide has prompted many Mayas to portray Jorge Ubico’s dictatorship (1931–44) as a halcyon past. Interpreting oral histories requires an understanding of their historical and contemporary context. See Carey 2017. 11. Original (Kaqchikel): “Ojer kan majun tijonïk x’kik’ül. . . . Rije’ xaxe xkutu chi kiwäch xok k’exelona’.” 12. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man xutijoj ta ri’, xaxe xretamaj rik’in runa’oj raq’a’.” 13. Henceforth, AMP. 14. Original (Spanish): “Tan lesivos a la salud del público y a veces al orden.” 15. Original (Kaqchikel): “Jo’q ruwäch jun ti ixöq aj Tecpán, ruma itzel rusamaj ruk’exelon. Nute’ xub’ij chi nuxïm ta pa che’ roma janila itzel rusamaj. Nute’ xuto’ ri ixöq.” 16. Original (Spanish): “Entre los chiquitos es difícil establecer el diagnóstico.” 17. The original language version of this quotation is unavailable. 18. Original (Kaqchikel): “Jun b’ey xkimöl ki’ k’ïy médicos wawe, richin ta yekitijoj ri k’exelona’ ri técnicas richin kisamaj. K’a ri’ rije’ xkik’utuj chre ri Germana achike nub’än töq k’o jun k’ayewal, töq man chöj ta petenäq ri ne’y. Manjun b’ey xkäm jun rute’ roma man ütz ta xaläx ri ti n’ey. Ri aq’omanela’ xkiya’ ri ruwa ruq’ij ri rusamaj.”

156 / David Carey Jr. 19. Original (Kaqchikel): “Rat at mas aqomanel roma manjun atijon awi’, rïn sí.” 20. Original (Kaqchikel): “Rija’ xub’ij chi jantape xsamäj kik’in moso’i. Rije’ xe’oqa rik’in rija’, k’ïy xkajo chi rija’ xok kik’exelon.” 21. Original (Spanish): “Poseía la característica de detectar dolencias físicas y curarlas por contacto y tratamientos con plantas medicinales. Era una ser admirado y respetado en su localidad y los alrededores.” 22. Original (Kaqchikel): “Achiel ri k’exelon manjun b’ey xuk’utuj rajïl, choj voluntario richin ri winäq. Junjun xkiya’ 50 centavos, 25 centavos, jun ketzal, ke ri’ xub’än sostener rach’alal.” 23. Original (Kaqchikel): “Kan samajel ixöq pa ruwi’ ri meb’a’il.” 24. While presenting some discrepancies, the Guatemalan newspaper Crónica: Centroamericana ran a story that largely corroborated the oral histories (Crónica 1999). 25. Original (Spanish): “La medicina y demás ramas del arte de curar.”

8 Rebellious Dignity Remembering Maya Women and Resistance in the Guatemalan Armed Conflict Betsy Konefal No es nostalgia. . . . Es la memoria de la posibilidad. It’s not nostalgia. . . . It’s the memory of possibility. —HIJOS-Guatemala, #LaRevoluciónFlorece

Maya women were the most visible faces of the horror and trauma of Guatemala’s thirty-six-year war.1 At the same time and in many ways, they have symbolized resistance to it: indigenous women condemned the army’s counterinsurgency onslaught as it devastated the highlands during the brutal “scorched earth” phase of the conflict in the 1980s; since that time, Maya women have been key players—as leaders of NGOs, witnesses in human rights trials, and more—in determined efforts to bring justice to a war-scarred society. The same can be stated of women in Mexico’s Zapatista movement. Mayas wearing long braids tied with ribbons and the symbolic ski mask of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional came to represent Zapatista claims to justice broadly defined, as well as rights specific to indigenous communities and to women. Maya women in these contexts would not likely embrace the terms “hero” or “heroine,” a phenomenon discussed in other chapters in this volume (see Little, chapter 10, this volume, for example.) But in human rights organizations and opposition movements, in refugee camps and on pageant stages, their actions have been important to histories of conflict and postconflict sociopolitical debate and to pushing the boundaries of possibility. Here, I discuss some of the most symbolic of these women, from Mamá Maquín to protesting pageant queens, all examples of Mayas confronting injustices “with rebellious dignity.”2

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Maya Women and Guatemala’s Armed Conflict As Elizabeth Jelin (2003:76) has noted, during and after periods of repression, “personalized symbols of pain and suffering tend to become embodied in women.” It is not merely women who represent suffering though; as Jelin argues, repression itself is gendered. State violence is carried out on and affects men and women differently. In turn, men and women respond to repression in ways shaped by gendered frameworks of relations (Jelin 2003:78). Women’s performative and symbolic presence has been especially pronounced in Latin America since the rise of the dictatorships and repression of the 1970s and 1980s, in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, as well as in Guatemala and Mexico and elsewhere. Especially in the roles of wives, mothers, and grandmothers, women during and after periods of state repression “irrupted in the public arena as the bearers of the social memory of human rights violations” and have in more recent years “acquired a central role in the public expression of memories” (Jelin 2003:88). What Jelin describes has been doubly the case for Maya women, who have suffered and responded to violence and violation in ways that are at once gendered and ethnic.3 These experiences have much to do with the type and scale of war waged in Guatemala and the racisms that underlie many of the social ills plaguing indigenous areas and fueling conflict. At the outset of the armed conflict in the 1960s and 1970s, the state tended to target opposition leaders specifically, and at that time most victims of repression were men, mostly Ladinos (nonindigenous) pressing for change— trade unionists, professionals, university students and teachers, revolutionaries. But the war took on a distinctly racialized character in its most desperate and brutal phase. Intensifying repression in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Guatemalan military explicitly targeted outspoken and organized Mayas—and soon their entire communities—as natural (and naturally dupable) “subversives” and enemies of the nation. In a final effort to defeat the revolutionary insurgency, the army razed entire areas of the highlands deemed to be actually or potentially supportive of the guerrillas, killing men, women, and children, destroying animals, crops, and sacred sites, essentially wiping more than six hundred Maya communities off the map. A painstaking study of army strategy by the United Nations– sponsored truth commission, Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) (1999a), found that in these scorched earth sweeps, the Guatemalan army committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayas. The devastation was unthinkable, the statistics mind-numbing: scorched earth brought the numbers of dead or disappeared in the conflict to some two

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hundred thousand and over a million people fled to refugee camps or internal displacement. Mayas far outnumbered non-Mayas among the dead. All told, the CEH estimated that 83 percent of the conflict’s victims were Maya and 17 percent were Ladino. When the press and opposition groups, especially those trying to reach an international audience, tried in the 1980s to convey the intensity and viciousness of Guatemalan state terror, they usually featured Mayas, and especially Maya women, as the representation of suffering. Yet, these photographs and scholarly works tended to downplay an important facet of oppositional history by depicting their subjects as depoliticized and victimized. It is important to note that state terror against Maya communities was not, in fact, indiscriminate, not directed against any and all Mayas. The CEH, in making its determination that acts of genocide occurred in areas of the highlands, connected specific places to ethnic identity and to histories of political mobilization and resistance in those locations. Geographers Elizabeth Oglesby and Amy Ross explain the chilling calculation: “The army was not simply killing Mayans; it was killing Mayans in particular places where social organizing was most intense” (Oglesby and Ross 2009:30). Thousands upon thousands of indigenous people were engulfed in a war “not of their own making,” as the conflict was portrayed by K’iche’Maya leader Otilia Lux de Cotí.4 Yet, that image obscures the much more complicated reality documented by the CEH. In the context of what seemed like a state attack on the pueblo maya (Maya people) as a whole, untold numbers of indigenous women became not just anonymous symbols of state violence but forces of resistance to it. In many different ways—as women and as Mayas—they condemned army killings as these spiraled to the level of genocide. Women had long acted as the social markers of indigeneity in Guatemala, by producing and reproducing place-specific dress, language, and artisan goods. In the charged context of the 1980s, Maya women—a few well-known, such as Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Rosalina Tuyuc, but most of them not—expanded that representative role by embodying public opposition to state violence against their pueblo; at the same time and behind the scenes, they helped shape ethnic and multiethnic resistance movements in ways large and small.

The Guatemalan State and the “Problem Maya” The approach of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Guatemalan governments to the nation’s Indian problem is a familiar one (see Adams, chapter 9, this volume, for more on this issue). Believing indios (Indians) to

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be a flaw in the national makeup and standing in the way of civilization and modernity, successive governments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries called for assimilation of indigenous people into a society envisioned as Ladino—non-Indian—especially in a cultural sense. At the same time and cognizant of tourist attraction to Maya culture and people, the state since the mid-twentieth century exalted a heroic Maya past and sponsored folklore and tourism to celebrate it. The government’s tourist bureau, Instituto Guatemalteco de Tourismo (INGUAT), heavily marketed Guatemala as an exotic, friendly, and safe place to see Indians. As Carol Hendrickson (1995:83) writes, “in the travel literature . . . attractive photographs of Indians introduce potential visitors to the warm and friendly people of Guatemala—‘pleasant people,’ ‘smiling people’ as the brochures point out—who welcome foreign tourists to their country and Guatemalan tourists to the exotic reaches of their own land. These Indians join with images of volcanoes, mountain lakes, ancient ruins, colonial architecture, and weavings; and all these symbols of national identity are shown as exhibiting a passive beauty that the beholder may contemplate much like an object of art.” The disjuncture between passive beauty and actual Mayas has always been vast, of course, and it became especially palpable as the state, which sponsored the folklore, set its counterinsurgency sights on a mobilized and confrontational pueblo maya. In essence, the state transitioned from trying to confront a Maya problem to assaulting the problem Maya.

Mamá Maquín and the Meaning of Panzós The horror that unfolded in the town square of Panzós, Alta Verapaz, on May 29, 1978, is one of the touchstones of the Guatemalan armed conflict. It was not the first episode of mass killings of civilians by the state in that thirty-six-year war; at least one major massacre came before, and many, many came later. But unlike most other cases of Guatemalan army brutality, these killings were widely publicized when they occurred, shocking the Guatemalan public and spurring mass protests. The Panzós massacre was also widely perceived in the weeks and years to follow to be an army attack specifically and purposely on indigenous people. As such, it came to represent a turning point in the state’s bloody counterinsurgency offensive and in Maya opposition to it. Details of the case have emerged from many sources: from firsthand reporting at the time, testimonies of witnesses and families of the dead, exhumation of victims’ remains, and inquiries by truth commissions and academics (see CEH 1999b; Sanford 2003; Grandin 2004; Konefal 2010).

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The confrontation emerged out of a long history of tension in the area over land. Panzós was a place where Q’eqchi’-Mayas gained important tracts of land with Guatemala’s 1952 agrarian reform and subsequently lost most of it to Ladino plantation owners when the coup of 1954 reversed the reforms of the October Revolution. The area remained a site of campesino (farm worker) organizing and was the site of some of Guatemala’s first guerrilla activity in the 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s area peasants petitioned the government’s agrarian office, the Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria (INTA), for land restitution and secure titles to their plots, which they failed to win. In response to ongoing campesino pressures, area planters and the mayor asked the state government to station soldiers in the area, to ensure “tranquility.” Officials of Alta Verapaz complied, sending thirty soldiers to the community four or five days before the massacre. To protest long-standing grievances and more recent acts of aggression by landowners, local authorities, and soldiers, area campesinos held a public protest on May 29. Hundreds of Q’eqchi’s, including entire families, assembled in Panzós town center, reportedly filling the plaza. They carried their work tools, including machetes, but were otherwise unarmed. While the mayor and municipal authorities met behind closed doors, armed soldiers stood at the entrance to the municipal offices, and several soldiers manned machine guns on the roofs of municipal buildings and the church. What initiated the massacre is unclear. Some witnesses testified to the CEH that around nine in the morning the campesinos asked to speak to the mayor about land problems, and he reportedly agreed to meet with four representatives. Before that could happen, however, violence broke out. Some say that a Maya woman active as a campesino organizer— Adelina Caal, more commonly known as Mamá Maquín—tried to get past a soldier, who then pushed her. Others say that several people tried to push their way inside, and the soldiers responded with gunfire. According to the CEH, “various witnesses claimed that a military officer said, ‘One, two, three, fire’” (CEH 1999b:17). Soldiers began to shoot into the crowd and fired for some five minutes. Campesinos injured several soldiers with machetes, although no soldiers suffered gunshot wounds or died. Mamá Maquín was fatally shot, one among the scores of dead men, women, and children in the plaza and surrounding areas. Witnesses told the CEH that Mamá Maquín was a leader who could “bring the people together” and who led struggles to regain land and reclaim dignity—material and cultural—for Q’eqchi’s (CEH 1999b:17). She and her husband joined the Guatemalan Workers Party, the Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT), in the 1960s and supported the guerrilla

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Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR). She and her son, writes Greg Grandin (2004:3), were the main organizers of area land struggles in the 1970s that culminated with the May 29 massacre. The intensity of political contestation and repression in the late 1970s brought activism by women such as Maquín out into the public. As Grandin (2004:137) puts it, “the extremity of daily life in Panzós—the inflammation of political passions, the militarization of local relations, the incompetence and corruption of government agents—worked to make the actions of women like Maquín more public and the women themselves militant and ultimately vulnerable.” When she confronted the Panzós soldiers and authorities, a militant Mamá Maquín was, in fact, gunned down just like the Maya men, women, and children around her. The army did not differentiate among them, and official spokespersons described the dead to the press in raceless and genderfree (and wholly derogatory) terms, not as Q’eqchi’s, but rather guileless campesinos incited by leftist insurgents. But in memories and symbolisms that live on, Maquín’s specific qualities as a politically engaged Maya woman reemerge. In 1990, she became the namesake of a women’s rights organization founded by refugees in Chiapas, Mexico, the Organización de Mujeres Guatemaltecas Refugiadas en México “Mamá Maquín.” The organization sought especially to make women’s voices heard, engaging in literacy training, advocacy for the right to return from exile, and rights to land and security. Active in the mass refugee returns in the 1990s, Mamá Maquín (the organization) is now a human rights group with branches throughout Guatemala, in El Quiché, Alta Verapaz (home of Panzós), the Petén, and Huehuetenango. More recently, Mamá Maquín’s image appears with other leaders martyred since the 1954 coup in a project by HIJOS-Guatemala, “La Revolución Florece” (the revolution flowers or flourishes). Hijos por la identidad y la justicia y contra el olvido y el silencio (sons/daughters for identity and justice and against forgetting and silence) is an organization of young people that draws on history to challenge public narratives about the past and to rethink their connection to the future. Their campaign #La Revolución Florece is a direct reference to the 1944–54 October Revolution abruptly cut short by the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz. In popular memory, “revolution” would also, of course, refer to the armed insurgency of the more recent past. It is a move that ties the goals and experiences of one generation of opposition leaders to a longer—and initially more successful—history envisioned by another. (Mamá Maquín, in fact, was a leader central to local activism in both periods.) In a brilliant response to a lack of integrity in Guatemala’s mainstream political candidates, HIJOS plastered city walls with more than 2,015 campaign

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posters featuring the martyred dead as candidates for the nation’s highest offices. Among them were “VOTE for . . . Mamá Maquín, Minister of Sovereignty, 2016–2020.” Their campaign, HIJOS argues, is not about nostalgia for a past that is dead but the memory of possibilities that must be given new life.

Maya Women on the Pageant Stage With the army unleashing what was perceived as racially motivated wrath against indigenous civilians, the Panzós massacre was a tragedy on a scale unimaginable to most Guatemalans in 1978. The shock and fury felt by Mayas across the highlands help explain an impassioned response from what would otherwise seem like unlikely sources: young Maya women participating in local and national pageants for the title of indigenous queen (reina indígena).5 Indigenous queen contests began in the largest indigenous communities, Quetzaltenango and Cobán, in the 1930s, and by the 1970s, they were widespread and popular events in indigenous communities of all sizes. In annual competitions, local pageant contestants vied for the title reina indígena (or in later years, a title deemed by Maya activists to be more appropriate to indigenous culture) and the opportunity to represent their community’s idea of authentic indigenous identity. (These pageants were usually held alongside a racially separate contest for a Ladina queen.) Local winners could then participate in a larger annual contest at the national level, a pageant in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, for the choosing of a Miss Maya called the “Rabín Ahau” (daughter of the king) in Q’eqchi’. This national competition was the crowning event of a yearly Folklore Festival sponsored by the Guatemalan state and the department of tourism. Public officials, even presidents, attended and took part in the pageant. They invited foreign officials and the press, and television cameras and large audiences witnessed and judged the dances, costumes, and speeches of the young Maya women competing to represent the raza maya (Maya race) for the nation. By the time of the Panzós massacre in 1978, the Folklore Festival pageant was something Maya activists had been protesting for several years, labeling the event a form of modern colonialism and charging that it used indigenous people for the state’s gain. The contest, they argued, froze authenticity—including bare feet and subsistence agriculture—in a past based on exploitation and then celebrated indigenous poverty as art (Ixim 1978; Konefal 2010). But in the immediate aftermath of Panzós and amid growing repression more generally, activists denounced the event as beyond hypocritical. They used the gendered and symbolic space of reina

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indígena pageants to redefine indigenous as separate from folklore and to condemn a genocidal state. On local pageant stages and in the national press, protesting Maya women chose to personify indigeneity under attack. On the front page of El Gráfico, a national newspaper with wide circulation, would-be Rabín Ahau contestants and their supporters called for a boycott of the national festival (fig. 8.1). In this and other venues, contestants used their own bodies and dress and the norms of the contests to indicate that they represented and spoke for the authentic indigenous Guatemalan, asserting the rights of all indigenous people—“genuine Guatemalan indios”—to live not just in folklore but in the present. Specifically reacting to the massacre, they condemned state repression against the pueblo maya at large and declared solidarity with the slain Q’eqchi’s of Panzós. One young indigenous queen in Quetzaltenango graphically declared that she had internalized the voices and the very being of the dead: “Brothers of Panzós,” she proclaimed in a theater crowded with spectators, “your blood is in our throats!”6 These young women, again, would not have used the word “heroic” to describe their responses to the Panzós massacre. All the protesting queens I spoke with during my fieldwork in Guatemala in 2002 shared a pride in their words and actions and, despite the fact that nearly a quarter-century had passed, recalled these pageants and speeches vividly. For most, condemning the army and Guatemalan state for the Panzós massacre was the most public act of their lives. But like women active in resisting state violence in other contexts, these women tended to tell of more modest roles and personal histories, describing themselves as part of larger efforts and processes to oppose violence and demand rights and dignity (Jelin 2003; Konefal 2010). Yet, they help reveal—and in gendered ways helped construct—many-layered opposition movements in the highlands that were made up of networks of young Mayas connected to each other, often through pan-community struggles for change. Some of the young women and men associated with the queens’ protests were students or teachers, others had histories as catechists and literacy workers and campesino organizers, some joined or supported the revolutionary insurgency. They all shared something in common: they were deeply offended and moved to action by the racialized tenor of the killings in Panzós. They began to label the massacre—and the state itself—as “ethnocidal.” By framing their condemnation of the massacre as a state attack on the indigenous community at large, their words and actions in fact helped to generate that community, to bring into being and consolidate pan-Maya identities that

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Figure 8.1. Indigenous queens condemn state violence in Panzós, 1978; courtesy of El Gráfico

linked indigenous people from different language groups and regions to each other and to more coordinated indigenous and multiethnic resistance to a repressive state. Queens’ pageant speeches provide clues to this process, something that was beginning even before the Panzós massacre but intensified and gained urgency after that event. The earliest references I have found to broad and politicized Maya identity in these discourses come from the 1973 Quetzaltenango queen, who delivered a moving farewell speech in 1974: I, a genuine representative of the Mayas, feel proud to be a descendant of the greatest civilization of the Americas, the race of great wisdom, the race that will never die, a race that in its silence clamors for justice, an oppressed and bitter race. . . . My race, become once again free and powerful! Brother of tradition and race, do not hide your Maya lineage with a mask in indifference and acculturation, do not be ashamed of your last name or despise or criticize your own race, because you are Maya no matter where you go. For you, sovereign sister of my pueblo . . . may . . . [our ancestors] illuminate your path and your

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understanding, for the well-being of our campesino brothers who are vilely exploited, not only by foreigners but also by our own race.7 (Archivo de la Parroquia de Momostenango 1974) In this speech, the Quetzaltenango queen called not only for pride in Maya identity but a renewal of indigenous initiative and collective strength and action. At the same time, she implored her audience to show solidarity with the exploited, even those oppressed by wealthy Mayas. It is a plea for both racial and class consciousness and solidarity and, in 1974, would have been understood by at least some in her audience as a call for Mayaspecific actions complimentary or sympathetic to the goals of an incipient and multiethnic revolutionary movement. Another young queen from Retalhuleu, who later took part in the national-level protest and boycott, told a reporter in 1977 that exploitation must be countered by Maya unity: “I think that if my pueblo is backward/ behind [atrasado] it is not so much our fault, but more [the fault of] the system that surrounds us. Our pueblo suffers so much exploitation, so much abandonment and so much violence brought on by unscrupulous persons whose only desire is to keep themselves always above the others. . . . . My pueblo will only move forward by unifying, because unity brings strength. . . . I exhort the pueblo indígena of Guatemala . . . to heed the counsel of our ancestors: ‘may not one, nor two be left behind, may all rise up together’” (Ixim 1977).8 The events that unfolded in Panzós would impel Mayas to speak and act publicly to an extent previously unseen. A local Q’eqchi’ reina indígena contestant in Carchá, Alta Verapaz, for example, refused to perform a dance component of her local contest as a sign of mourning and used her time on stage to bring attention to the killings. In a final act, she called for a moment of silence in honor of the dead. Her speech, preserved under glass and framed, hangs in her living room: Brothers, I am here with sadness. . . . I did not enter dancing because our pueblo is living a tragedy. Why am I sad? You know why, because of what our Christian brothers of Panzós just experienced; you know that they were killed, and we don’t know why. It could be because they too are indigenous, or it could be because they are poor; I know that we are the same race because the blood that runs in their veins is the same blood that runs in my veins. It gives me great sadness, and I could not dance happily knowing that my brothers and sisters are crying for their loved ones whose innocent blood has been spilled. . . . I sincerely feel what my Christian brothers and sis-

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ters have experienced. . . . They have not a piece of earth to live on and for this they are demanding their rights to what truly belongs to them, their lands, and for this they have been killed. You have heard the news on all the radios, read it in all the papers, we all know it. . . . Tomorrow it could be us, right?9 (Boletín 1978) The young woman was promptly disqualified by the pageant’s Ladino jury.10 The statement that accompanied the queens’ national-level boycott— along with their photo covering the front page of El Gráfico—was even more damning, condemning the Folklore Festival as a hypocriti cal act by a murderous state. It should be suspended, protesting queens insisted. Moreover, they declared: That the recent massacre of our Indian brothers of Panzós . . . [represents] the continuation of centuries of negation, exploitation and extermination initiated by the . . . Spanish invaders. That the Folklore Festival of Cobán is an example of [an] . . . oppressor indigenismo [a political ideology emphasizing the relation of indigenous communities to the state in Latin America] that . . . make[s] the reinas indígenas into simple objects for tourists to look at, without respect to our authentic human and historic values. That while the wound of Panzós still bleeds, the organizing committee of this “show” predictably did not suspend it, which demonstrates two things: the degree of disrespect [they have] for the lives of us, los indios, and the absence of moral and cultural quality[ies] on the part of the organizers.11 (El Gráfico 1978) They insisted that authentic Indians included themselves and Q’eqchi’s gunned down in Panzós. In effect, they were arguing that a Maya queen was no more or less genuine than Mamá Maquín and the Q’eqchi’ campesinos who had stood with her for decades and then were massacred alongside her in 1978 for demanding “a piece of earth to live on.”

Maya Women and Postwar Demands Maya women such as those discussed here rose to critical levels of engagement and demonstrated tremendous courage during Guatemala’s armed conflict, not only as community leaders and pageant queens but also as founders and members of national-level nongovernmental organizations such as the Comité Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala (CONAVIGUA,

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National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala). The CONAVIGUA was founded in 1988 by Rosalina Tuyuc, a Kaqchikel-Maya, with other women victimized by state terror. Tuyuc came of age as an organizer in the catechist movement, in a time of burgeoning oppositional activism and insurgency and increasing repression. In 1983, the army kidnapped her father, and she claims that at the time of his abduction, the military had actually been searching—unsuccessfully—for her. Her husband, too, was taken away three years later. When she founded CONAVIGUA in 1988, she united women in similar circumstances to press the government for information on the disappeared, resist forced recruitment, and advocate for the needs of families suffering repression, displacement, and illness. From CONAVIGUA’s founding statements, we see members’ concerns in the late 1980s as widows, women, and Mayas intertwined, as they simultaneously demanded an end to violence, disrespect, marginalization, and racism: “Over the course of several years, in which we have suffered cruel repression, there are thousands and thousands of us who have been made widows, because our spouses, and other family members, were kidnapped, disappeared, assassinated and massacred. . . . . We fight for justice, because we as women, and now as widows, have suffered much disrespect and marginalization by the authorities and persons with hateful and discriminatory thinking. We need to be in equality [in terms of] rights between men and women, between indígenas and Ladinos” (CONAVIGUA 2015).12 CONAVIGUA and Tuyuc became crucial to a reemerging civil society at that time and played important roles in the peace process of the 1990s. In 1995, Tuyuc won a seat in the national Congress, serving until 2000. I met her the summer before that election, and she spoke then of the role of Maya women in a nation struggling for an elusive peace: “It shouldn’t be the men who speak for our pain,” she said, “and certainly not the government who speaks for what we suffer: illiteracy, misery, poverty, illness, repression. It is we women who must tell the world about the reality we live in.” She has continued that work with CONAVIGUA and in other capacities. In 2012, she was awarded Japan’s Niwano Peace Prize for her long decades of human rights advocacy for Mayas, women, and Guatemalans as a whole. Other Maya women, including Otilia Lux de Cotí and Rigoberta Menchú Tum, similarly emerged as engaged, local K’iche’-Maya leaders in the late 1970s and early 1980s and went on to international prominence as indigenous rights advocates. In 1978, Lux was a teacher and adviser to a young indigenous queen from San Cristóbal Verapaz who lost her crown for protesting the Panzós massacre. Lux helped the young woman take the story to the national press. She went on to a wide range of roles representing Maya rights and advocacy nationally and internationally. She

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was one of three figures who oversaw the UN-sponsored truth commission in Guatemala, was appointed to the national government as Minister of Culture and Sports under Alfonso Portillo, and later won a congressional seat in 2007. At the international level, she served as vice president of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and Guatemala’s representative to UNESCO and currently directs the International Indigenous Women’s Forum. Rigoberta Menchú Tum took a different path, beginning work as a young activist in liberation theology–inspired Catholic organizing and in the nationwide and multiethnic campesino movement, the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC). In the early 1980s, virtually all public oppositional organizing was forced underground by the brutality of state violence. CUC became affiliated with the largest of the guerrilla insurgencies, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. Menchú went into exile in Mexico. It was from exile that she gained international fame at a very young age: in her early twenties, she traveled to Paris and agreed to interviews with anthropologist Elisabeth BurgosDebray, a series of meetings that resulted in the testimonial narrative that brought Guatemalan genocide to an international public: I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (Burgos-Debray 1984).13 In the years to follow, she became an important voice in international and UN circles and spoke in all sorts of venues calling attention to genocidal state practices and symbolizing an indigenous and leftist struggle for justice. Within Guatemala, her name was known in political circles, but less so in the general public. That changed when she and other exiles were invited by the Guatemalan government to return to the country in 1988, and Menchú and another returnee were promptly arrested as threats to “internal security” when they arrived. Guatemalans immediately protested, the press and television covered the story in detail, and within hours the detainees were released due to “lack of proof” (Arias 2001:12). Rigoberta Menchú Tum became a household name, and as Arturo Arias writes, “since that moment, Menchú remained constantly in the public eye inside Guatemala,” a symbol of broad resistance to a repressive state and society (Arias 2001:12–13). She became involved in preparations for protests to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas and was advanced as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in 1992. Menchú symbolized something more malevolent for the political right: associated with the armed insurgency of the early 1980s, she was a highly controversial figure within Guatemalan conservative circles. They saw her Nobel Prize as a damaging validation of the opposition and disparaged her at every opportunity. She was vilified internationally several years later

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when a US anthropologist reported that Menchú had misrepresented certain details in her 1983 narrative. It unleashed a barrage of criticism and controversies about testimony (testimonio) as a genre and Menchú in particular as a suspect (i.e., politicized) narrator of the past (see Arias 2001). Menchú has withstood the criticism from all sides, but she and her supporters have clearly been frustrated by the accusations that her portrayal of Guatemala’s bloody past was called into question as “an ideological invention of the left.” In a statement released by the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, they took on the issue of her right to a historical voice, to protagonism, and the right to “witness” or expose the experiences of a people: Just when the commemorations of the five hundredth anniversary appeared to have left behind the arrogance . . . of those who have, until now, written history since the Conquest, now we see how some people celebrate . . . the appearance of these new chroniclers who attempt to return to their places—the same old place—those who had the audacity to add to the Official Story that which it was lacking: the vision of the conquered. . . . The testimony of Rigoberta Menchú has the value of representing not just the story of a witness, but rather the personal experience of a protagonist and the interpretation of that which her own eyes saw and wept over, that which her own ears heard, and that which they were told. . . . The testimony . . . has the bias and the courage of a victim who, in addition to what she personally suffered, had a right to assume as her own personal story the atrocities that her people lived through. . . . No one has the right or the authority to deny the pain that her heart felt and continues to feel. (Arias 2001:103–4) Menchú (2001:117) worries that state terror of the 1980s and ongoing repression in its aftermath had made remembering and recounting the past virtually impossible for most Mayas: “Guatemala’s history is impossible to change one way or the other,” she said in the midst of the controversy over I, Rigoberta Menchú, “because the crimes committed have sealed the memories of our people.”

Conclusion Those are the very memories now at stake as Guatemala struggles toward something new, struggles to unseal a past that Menchú feared was closed off. Past events themselves do not change, of course; the acts of repression are not undone. But neither are the more invisible acts of resis-

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Figure 8.2. Political street art, Guatemala; courtesy of HIJOS-Guatemala, #LaRevoluciónFlorece

tance, by the women discussed here and by Guatemalans of many walks of life, even if they have so far been in shadow. HIJOS-Guatemala offers evidence of that: their work demonstrates that memories of a history of resistance can be revived and live on, and they are all about possibility. As Jelin (2003:26) writes: “What can change about the past is its meaning, which is subject to reinterpretations, anchored in intentions and expectations toward the future. That meaning of the past is dynamic and is conveyed by social agents engaged in confrontations with opposite interpretations, other meanings, or against oblivion and silence. Actors and activists ‘use’ the past, bringing their understandings and interpretations about it into the public sphere of debate.” Guatemalans find themselves decidedly in that phase of change, with women and men—those who participated in social struggles of the twentieth century and a younger generation inspired by their stories—finding ways to use the past, confront the silences, and in so doing, change the meaning—and the potential—of a history of violence and resistance (fig. 8.2).

Notes 1. I use “Maya” to refer to indigenous people in Guatemala who belong to one of twenty-two different Mayan language groups. People usually have

172 / Betsy Konefal a more local understanding of identity and think of themselves as members of a particular community and perhaps secondly a broader grouping such as K’iche’, Mam, or Q’eqchi’. The more academic term “Maya” arose as a political concept and a call for pride in ethnicity beginning in the early 1970s, becoming widespread among indigenous intellectuals and activists in the Maya movements of the 1990s. 2. This slogan was adopted by the Zapatista movement in Chiapas and used on vivid red and black posters and T-shirts featuring a beribboned and masked Maya woman: “Las mujeres con la dignidad rebelde” (women with rebellious dignity). 3. For an analysis of gender-specific state repression against women in the Guatemalan conflict, see Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (1999c). 4. At the gathering to announce the findings of the UN-sponsored truth commission in Guatemala, Otilia Lux de Cotí, a K’iche’-Maya woman and part of the three-member committee overseeing the investigation, chose words that strategically distanced Mayas from a history of organizing, a “truth” she would have known to be only a partial one: “In the name of the Maya, living and dead,” Lux urged, “we ask the God of gods and all Guatemalans to pardon us, because we became involved in an armed conflict that was imposed on us and that was not ours” (McAllister 2003:4). 5. For a fuller examination of these contests and protests and their connection to Maya oppositional activism, see Konefal 2009, 2010:chapter 4. 6. Original (Spanish): “Hermanos de Panzós . . . su sangre la tenemos en la garganta.” 7. Original (Spanish): “Como genuina representativa de los mayas, me siento orgullosa de ser descendiente de la civilización más grande de América, la raza de la gran sabiduría, la raza que jamás muerta sería, una raza que en su silencio clama justicia, una raza oprimida y amargada . . . Raza mía, vuelve a ser libre y a ser poderosa . . . Hermano de tradición y de raza, no escondas tu linaje maya con una máscara de indiferencia y aculturización, no te acomplejes de tu apellido y no desprecies ni critiques a tu misma raza, porque tú eres maya dondequiera que vayas. Para tí hermana soberana de mi pueblo, . . . que . . . nuestros antiguos patriarcas, . . . iluminen vuestro camino y vuestro entendimiento, para el bien de nuestros hermanos campesinos que son explotados vilmente, no solo por los extraños, sino también por nuestra misma raza.” 8. Original (Spanish): “Yo pienso que si mi pueblo está atrasado no es tanto por culpa nuestra, sino del sistema que nos roden. Nuestro pueblo sufre tanta explotación, tanto abandono y tanta violencia provocada por personas inescrupulosas cuyo único deseo es mantenerse siempre sobre los demás. . . . Mi pueblo únicamente progresará uniéndose, porque la unión hace la fuerza. . . . Exhorto pues al pueblo indígena en general de Guatemala a cumplir el consejo de nuestros antepasados, ‘que no quede uno, que no queden dos, que todos se levanten.’” 9. Original (Spanish): “Hermanos: . . . con tristeza estoy aquí; . . . no en-

Maya Women and Resistance / 173 tré bailando, porque nuestro pueblo está viviendo una tragedia. Por qué estoy triste? Ustedes saben por qué; y es por lo que acaban de vivir nuestros hermanos cristianos de Panzós; sabrán que los mataron, y no sabemos por qué; será porque ellos son también indígenas, o será por que son pobres; yo sé que somos de la misma raza porque la sangre que corre en sus venas esa misma sangre corre en mis venas. Me da una gran tristeza, y no puede ser que yo esté bailando alegremente sabiendo que mis hermanos están llorando a sus seres queridos que han derramado de su sangre inocente. . . . Sinceramente siento lo que mis hermanos cristianos han vivido. . . . Ellos no tienen un pedazo de tierra donde vivir y es por eso que están reclamando sus derechos sobre lo que realmente les pertenece, o sea sus tierras; y es por eso que los han matado, habrán oído en todas las radios esta noticia o también habrán leído en todos los periódicos esta tragedia; ya todos los sabemos  . . . y mañana seremos nosotros, ¿verdad?” 10. For another case where an outspoken young woman won her local contest but was subsequently dethroned for her condemnation of the killings in Panzós, see Konefal 2010:102–4. 11. Original (Spanish): “Que la reciente matanza de nuestros hermanos indios de Panzós . . . no es más que la continuación de la negación, explotación y exterminio de siglos iniciado por los delincuentes invasores españoles. . . . Que el festival folklórico de Cobán responde a ese indigenismo opresor . . . hacen llegar a las reinas indígenas como simples objetos de observación turística, sin respetar nuestros auténticos valores humanos e históricos. . . . Que estando aún fresca la herida de Panzós, el comité organizador de dicho ‘show’ como era de esperarse no suspendió el mismo lo cual por sí solo demuestra dos cosas: grado de desprecio por la vida de nosotros los indios y la ausencia de una calidad moral y cultural de los organizadores.” 12. Original (Spanish): “Desde hace varios años, en que hemos venido sufriendo la cruel represión, somos miles y miles las que nos hemos quedado viudas, porque nuestros esposos, junto a otros familiares, fueron secuestrados, desaparecidos, asesinados y masacrados. . . . Luchamos por la justicia, porque nosotras las mujeres, más ahora como viudas, hemos venido sufriendo mucho desprecio y marginación por parte de las autoridades y personas con pensamiento de odio y discriminación. Necesitamos pues, estar en igualdad de derecho entre hombres y mujeres; entre indígenas y ladinas.” 13. The testimonio was more appropriately titled in Spanish Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (My name is Rigoberta Menchú and this is how my consciousness was born).

9 “We Will No Longer Yield an Inch of Our Identity” Antonio Pop Caal, 1941–2002 Abigail E. Adams We [indigenous] are the only authorities of our concerns. (Los únicos autorizados en esta materia somos nosotros.) —Antonio Pop Caal, December 12, 1972

With Maya intellectual Antonio Pop Caal’s 1972 declaration that the indigenous were the only authorities on themselves, he turned the tables on the Guatemalan elite’s century-long preoccupation with the so-called Indian problem (Konefal 2010; see Konefal, chapter 8, this volume). The “Indian problem” was the much-discussed thesis that indigenous peoples held back Guatemala’s entrance into Euro-centered modernity, a framing that did not permit full Maya citizenship or identity (see Adams 2009:34). Pop Caal’s declaration, from his essay “Réplica del indio ante una disertación ladina” (The Indian’s response to a Ladino argument), which was published in a high-circulation national weekly, became the rallying cry for a generation of Maya activists.1 Guatemalans mark their intellectual history by naming Generaciones (Generations), distinguished groups of individuals, such as the Generación de 1898, the Generación de 1920, and the 1960s Generación Comprometida, who grew up with the 1954 CIA-instructed golpe (coup d’état). Each Generación is united by the political challenges their members confront and by the similarities in their formation, such as participation in the same educational and civic institutions. For example, the members of the Generación de 1920, which included writer Miguel Ángel Asturias, tended to graduate from Guatemala City’s Instituto Nacional Central para Varones (National Central Institute for Boys), enroll at the Universidad de San Carlos, participate in the students’ Huelga de Dolores (Strike of Pain), and teach at the Universidad Popular (Peoples’ University) that they

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founded. They were the vanguard in overthrowing the dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera in 1920. It is time to recognize the contributions of several Maya Generaciones in Guatemalan history. I do not name these Generaciones, but in this chapter, I use the life of a remarkable man, Antonio Pop Caal, to explore the context, challenges, and accomplishments of an equally remarkable generation. Pop Caal and his peers were complicated, contentious but heroic faces of Maya resistance. Describing the contexts, contentions, and precedents of Pop Caal’s life in no way diminishes the scale of his courage and accomplishments. The cohort in which Antonio Pop Caal played such a powerful leadership role was born at the outset of World War II, raised during Guatemala’s Ten Years of Spring and counterrevolution, and educated and influenced by a newly activist postwar Catholic Church. These Maya activists founded social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s for land, identity, and student, youth, and civil rights (Konefal 2010). They figure prominently in the ethnographic literature of a certain era (i.e., Falla 1978; Warren 1978; Brintnall 1979). Pop Caal was a Maya intellectual, educator, former Catholic seminarian, lawyer, and Maya spiritual guide. He rose from an impoverished rural childhood through that postwar Catholic education system to doctoral candidacy in Spain and participation in the worldwide 1968 student uprisings. He then transformed into the “patriarch of contemporary Maya political thought,” the description coined by the late Enrique Sam Colop (Konefal 2010:60, 199n.11). By all reports, he was an introvert, “a man of few words,” dedicated from a young age to books, study, and the guitar. Nevertheless, he was a highly visible face of Maya resistance, an utterly emblematic figure as he led Maya ceremonies in a black beret, wool Momostenango jacket, and waist sash. He was a major thinker and organizer for Maya peoples, including Q’eqchi’-Mayas. And although he was a “man of few words,” he was a powerful and articulate spokesperson. In the 1972 words of his “Réplica” rang the voices of generations of militant Maya: “However, we will no longer yield an inch of our identity.”2

Childhood in the Verapaz This Maya hero’s story begins, classically, in very humble conditions but in a land of many exceptions and a powerful history of Maya resistance (see Kistler, introduction, this volume). Pop Caal was born June 13, 1941, to Marcelino Pop Yatz and Macaría Caal Macz, who were poor tenant farmers in the tiny settlement of Chirremesché. The community lay on the outskirts of today’s Cobán, the department capital of Alta Verapaz,

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and bordered the German-owned finca (farm) Samachach. Generations of Pop Caal elders worked for the German coffee entrepreneurs who transformed the Alta Verapaz from the later 1800s on. Colonial Verapaz (Land of True Peace) was administered by Bartolomé de las Casas’s Dominican order. It was a backwater, with some Dominican-run plantations, forced labor, and tribute, but also some protections from the exploitation experienced in Guatemala’s western and central highlands. Ladinos were restricted to Cobán, and Q’eqchi’-Maya smallholding and commerce shaped the countryside. In the 1860s, the Guatemalan state instituted liberal reforms that alienated land and labor from Q’eqchi’ communities and concentrated assets in the hands of Germans, other Europeans, and US investors in an effort to “modernize” the economy. Ladinos were freed to own land and live in other Verapaz towns and took over local government and commerce. By the time of Pop Caal’s birth, the norm was grinding poverty for Q’eqchi’ coffee workers living in the area. Pop Caal’s oldest brother, Esteban, recounts, “We were barefoot and used muslin tunics. . . . In those years, we lived a rigid and terrible situation of colonialism”3 (Revista Baqtun 2003). Pop Caal’s father identified education as the way up for his sons. As soon as each son reached school age, he walked him to Cobán’s elementary school for boys, Escuela Victor Chavarría para Varones. The long barefoot walk was the least of the children’s difficulties, remembers Esteban, because they did not speak Spanish, the classroom language. “It was not bilingual education. It was like receiving classes in Greek.”4 Their younger somewhat bilingual uncles helped a bit, and their father urged them, “You have to keep fighting; go again and try to stay”5 (Revista Baqtun 2003). Nevertheless, when Esteban reached third grade, the family could not support their schoolboys anymore and he dropped out of school. Antonio continued with a scholarship to Cobán’s parochial Colegio Padre Las Casas. Esteban remembers Antonio as very studious, begging his father for a candle to work into the night (Revista Baqtun 2003). The family later moved to Cobán’s Barrio Magdalena, a former German finca, site of a major coffee processing plant and home to an important urban Q’eqchi’ community (Terga 1991). Antonio’s childhood friend Julio Roberto Choc, who later also became a lawyer, recalled, “We had a poor but marvelous childhood. . . . Cobán was a very small town . . . with barely two or three cars and hardly even radios.”6 He remembers a boyhood culture of freedom to roam, swim, hunt with slingshots, or make toy cars with sardine cans and improvised wheels (Revista Baqtun 2003). Choc’s memories reflect the marginal status

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of Cobán’s indigenous community, the small world of the band of small boys, and the wartime disruption of the Verapaz German society, many of whom were deported and expropriated. Prewar Cobán under the Germans is described as a bustling place of brimming department stores that sold everything, including automobiles, streetlights, and electrical plants (Wagner 2001). While the Germans severely exploited the indigenous workforce, several were intrigued by Q’eqchi’ culture. Many Germans spoke Q’eqchi’, which enabled them to relate directly with their workers. Other Germans, such as the Sappers and E. P. Dieseldorff, were amateur ethnologists and contributed to the European romanticizing of the Q’eqchi’ people (Dieseldorff 1925; D. Sapper 1936; K. Sapper 1985; Terga 1991). The local Q’eqchi’ population did not buy this romance, however, and resisted planter oppression for generations. They revolted in 1865, 1877, 1886, and 1905, often in the form of spiritual revival (Wilson 1995:162– 63; Adams 2009). Greg Grandin has documented how early twentiethcentury Q’eqchi’s (most famously José Ángel Icó and his nephew Alfredo Cucul) fought for justice, using the modern nationalist discourse of citizenship, rights, and democracy and the tools of petitions, official correspondence, land invasions, peasant unions, protests, and adroit party politics, including with the Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajadores (Guatemalan Workers’ Party), during the Ten Years of Spring (2004:29). Cobán was also the site of the June 1945 Primera Convención de Maestros Indígenas de Guatemala (First Convention of Guatemalan Indigenous Teachers), where K’iche’-Maya activist Adrián Inés Chávez unveiled a new alphabet for the K’iche’ language and, in so doing, became “the intellectual father of the current ideas of pan-Mayanism” (Fischer and Brown 1996:57). Around the same time, a Pop Caal uncle stood up to his German boss and was thrown into the finca’s jail and consequently taken to the military base for drafting. He fled to the Quiché and never returned (E. Pop Caal, personal communication; Revista Baqtun 2003). It is unclear how these movements and experiences influenced the young Antonio Pop Caal.

In—and out—of the Catholic Church Major changes in the Catholic Church, however, were formative for Antonio Pop Caal and the other heroes of his cohort of Maya activists. Historian Bruce Calder identifies two movements that regalvanized a moribund Catholic Church in Guatemala’s countryside. I add a later third move-

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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ment. The first, which had a profound impact on Pop Caal, was the arrival of foreign priests, particularly after 1954. In 1935, the Verapaz diocese was restored under the Salesian order. But with the exception of the Salesians, the Verapaz increase in priests, largely foreign priests, came in the 1960s: Benedictines from South Dakota; others from Belgium (Calder 2004). Pop Caal was identified early on as a candidate for the priesthood, for a church that desperately wanted to ordain indigenous priests. The next two changes worked differently on Pop Caal than others in his cohort because each of these had far less of a direct effect on his youth. The second movement was Acción Católica Rural, developed under Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano in the 1940s (Calder 2004) to revitalize the Catholic laity and confront communism using a developmentalist framework and grassroots participatory education. The third movement included the priests who were radicalized by the more liberal Vatican II and confronted a conservative Catholic hierarchy. Pop Caal was not involved in the Catholic Action catechism movement that organized many young indigenous people. Catholic Action only reached the Verapaz in 1968 (Wilson 1995; Adams 1999), long after Pop Caal left. Pop Caal graduated with excellent grades from Cobán’s parochial primary school when he was eleven. The bishop of the Verapaz arranged for him to study college prep (bachillerato) at Guatemala City’s Seminario Menor de Santiago, also known as the Instituto Indígena Santiago, in 1952. The Instituto Indígena Santiago was founded by Monseñor Rossell in 1945 as part of his larger anticommunist developmentalism (Calder 2004:96). Later, with the 1960s Vatican II changes, it became an important center of indigenous conscious raising, including the creation of a pan-Maya identity (Konefal 2010:41). But by then, again, Pop Caal had moved on. After finishing his secondary studies in five years (and in those years, undergoing the 1954 coup), he studied philosophy for three years at Quetzaltenango’s Seminario del Espíritu Santo. Then, after one year at the Seminario Mayor of Valencia, in Franco’s Spain, he entered doctoral studies at the University of Salamanca, for an eight-year course of studies, four in philosophy and four in theology. There, the reserved seminarian became known as the “poet of Salamanca” for his articulate thoughtfulness and his guitar playing (Revista Baqtun 2003:9). Esteban Pop Caal remembers his younger brother’s frequent letters home. Pop Caal always expressed concern for his father’s health and struggles to support the family. He chafed at the different seminaries’ rigid discipline. He thought that he and the other seminarians were treated like slaves,

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which disgusted him (Revista Baqtun 2003; E. Pop Caal, personal communication). In the end, Pop Caal never finished his doctorate. In 1968, shortly before he was to be ordained a priest, he joined other foreign students at Salamanca, demanding greater freedom within the institution. This era was the height of worldwide student uprisings, protests, and massacres. In Salamanca, the leaders organized four thousand students, and Pop Caal was chosen to read the demands, a clear recognition of his leadership abilities and courage. Halfway through the protest, the authorities intervened, stopped the demonstration, and deported the organizers the next morning without further explanation (Revista Baqtun 2003; E. Pop Caal, personal communication). Pop Caal returned to a Verapaz undergoing “re-evangelization” by Vatican II–inspired Catholic priests, indigenous catechists, and, before them, evangelical Christian Protestants (Adams 1999, 2009). The US-introduced Protestant missions worked in the Q’eqchi’ language and developed and printed a Q’eqchi’ Bible (Sedat 1955), which finally woke up the Catholic missionaries to the importance of learning the Q’eqchi’ language (Wilson 1995). Esteban Pop Caal translated the catechism into Q’eqchi’ for the Salesians in 1956, more than twenty years after their arrival (de Leon 1985:129). Their fervent 1960s re-evangelization demonized many aspects of Q’eqchi’ spirituality. One catechist pamphlet, “Xtenamitex li Dios” (We, the people of God), stated, “It is necessary that we [Q’eqchi’s] reject fully the ways of our ancestors so that our lives bear fruit” (Wilson 1995:190). Esteban Pop Caal was active at this time in the Benedictine catechist movement, based out of the indigenous-focused Centro San Benito. He also worked with the Belgian priest Stephen Haeserijn, who arrived in neighboring San Juan Chamelco, in the early 1960s. Haeserijn was a marked outlier from the rest of the foreign Catholic priests. He took up important Q’eqchi’ language scholarship, working with Andrés Cuz Mucú, who later served as the first president of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, as well as Esteban, whom he thanked in the introduction to his book on Q’eqchi’ grammar (1969). Haeserijn deeply respected Q’eqchi’ spirituality and identity. His position was that the Q’eqchi’ term “yiosil” (godliness), used to describe the sacred nature of their world, also demonstrated their respect for the Christian God. After his deportation from Spain, Antonio found work in a Verapaz parish. Finally, six months later, a letter arrived from Spain, informing him that he was to receive three years’ “punishment” for his role in the stu-

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dent movement. After sharing the letter with his family, Pop Caal went to the Spanish priest of the parish where he was serving, quit the priesthood, and left the Catholic Church forever.

The Maya University Students Pop Caal searched for his next steps. To his frustration, no Guatemalan university would accept his previous coursework in philosophy or theology. He returned to secondary school for his teaching credentials, finishing the three-year magisterio (teacher education program) in one year. He worked for one year as the director of the primary school of Tactic, Alta Verapaz, before entering the Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales (law school) at the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) in 1972, living on savings from his year of teaching. He matriculated at a highly mobilized university, in which students were facing increasing state repression, murders, and disappearances (CEH 1999a). As a student at San Carlos, Pop Caal was active in the Asociación de Estudiantes Universitarios (University Students’ Association, AEU). USAC students had a history of protest, even before the Generación de 1920 founded the AEU in 1920. In 1898, medical students had started the Huelga de Dolores, the annual elite-lampooning carnival procession held the Friday before Good Friday in the capital’s streets. AEU members led the overthrow of dictators Estrada Cabrera in 1920 and Ubico in 1944. In 1962, USAC and high school students led two months of massive protests against the Ydígoras Fuentes regime, which ended in violent crackdowns and the murders of at least three students (Cazali Ávila 2002). Historian Heather Vrana frames 1965 as the year when USAC and other students, informed by dependency theories, turned to critical developmentalist activism, through literacy work, popular education, and other outreach to the urban poor and those in the countryside. Their critique included the question of ethnic oppression, a factor also in the selfcritique conducted by the remains of the early 1960s guerrilla groups, who acknowledged their inability to mobilize Maya (Arias 1990; Vrana 2013). Two books polarized the students’ discussions on Indian interests as revolutionary priorities, both published in 1970, both by USAC-affiliated scholars: Severo Martínez Peláez’s La patria del criollo (The country of the Creole) and Carlos Guzman Bockler and Jean-Loup Herbert’s Guatemala: Una interpretación histórico-social (Guatemala: A historical-social interpretation). Martínez Peláez argues that Indian identity was a construction of Guatemala’s colonial powers, still useful to the contemporary elite because ethnicity divided the poor against themselves. From his cla-

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sista (classist) or popular (popular) position, he argues that focusing on the differences between indigenous and Ladinos was counterrevolutionary (Martínez Peláez 1970; Konefal 2010:56). The sociologists Guzman Bockler and Herbert, who worked in the late 1960s in the “Maya capital” of Quetzaltenango, argued instead that “internal colonialism,” based on racist ideologies of Indian inferiority, was the foundation of the Guatemalan regime and the country’s severe social problems. They argued that indigenous peoples must recover their stolen lands and history and that Ladinos and Mayas must together destroy the colonial ideologies that perpetuate ethnic oppression (Hale 2006; Konefal 2010:56–57). Indigenous young people and students had organized before the 1960s around indigenous issues, such as literacy, consumer and farmer cooperative formation, and access to office. In Quetzaltenango, Maya students and intellectuals, including students at the city’s USAC branch, started a group and publication called Castajik (Awaken, in K’iche’-Mayan) (Konefal 2010:59). Members of Castajik described to historian Betsy Konefal how shocked they were by the discrimination they experienced with the majority Ladino students, even the politicized ones. As divisions sharpened between the clasistas and those youths centered on the indigenous community, the Ladino students mostly hewed to Martínez Peláez. In the capital city, Maya young people, working with others inspired by the Guatemalan church’s new Indigenous Pastoral Commission, created an Association of Indigenous University Students in the early 1970s. The association was a safe place for the minority Maya university students. Pop Caal played a major role in the association, which held annual Seminarios Indígenas (Indigenous Seminars) over the December holidays. Konefal’s interviewees described the seminaries as large retreats that gathered Maya young people from across Guatemala in one place for extended analysis of Maya culture, oppression, and identity (Konefal 2010).

The “Réplica” Less than a year after arriving at the USAC, Pop Caal published his major essay, “Réplica del indio ante una disertación ladina.” Perhaps his previous experience in international student movements and university circles helped him land so confidently on his feet in the new and polemical milieu. The essay hit the newsstands in the December 12, 1972, issue of La Semana (its cover that week featured a well-endowed topless white woman). The publication was shortly before the first Seminario Indígena was to be held in Quetzaltenango. Pop Caal explained to Konefal later that he wrote the essay so that an indigenous person would finally have a voice in the

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national press commentary on the Indian situation. Others have summarized well the landmark essay (see Konefal 2010:61). Here, I add my reading of this rich essay. In it, Pop Caal’s tone is educated, articulate, and defiant. He opens by curtly rebuking Ladinos who find Indian life fashionable: “We [indigenous] are the only authorities of our concerns.”7 His leading attack must have been heightened by the publication date, December 12, the Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, which is celebrated in Guatemala to this day by parading Ladino children in regional Maya dress as “inditos” (little Indians) (see also Hale 2006:188– 92). His overall argument is that despite the ideological, religious, political, military, and educational means used by the Spanish colonizers, modern state, and foreign interests to subjugate indigenous peoples and then assimilate them through Ladinoization, Guatemala’s indigenous peoples have not lost their identity, numbers, or future. Instead, he argues, they have maintained extraordinary cultural continuity and conservatism. He uses the dependista (dependency theory) terms and internal colonialism frame of Guzmán Bockler and Herbert to analyze the colonial and postcolonial agrarian exploitation of indigenous peoples, through encomienda (grants of land and people; see Kistler, introduction, this volume) and minifundismo (small-scale farming), the violent ongoing theft of their lands, and the constitution’s hypocritical defense of private property that does not acknowledge the real owners of the land. Throughout his essay, he recruits various allies to support his assertions of the continuity of Maya culture and identity, including anthropologists, the French ethnohistorian Raphael Girard, French art critic Edith Recourat, and even the Ladino Jorge Garcia Granados. But he calls out Ladinos for their ignorance of the indigenous condition, for fetishizing the Ladino/ indio dichotomy, for their lack of culture, and for their desperate parasitic search for an identity, including usurping Maya culture: “We will no longer yield an inch of our identity.” He turns to the term “indio,” which is insultingly used by Ladinos and elite, when they are not condescendingly deploying its diminutive form “indito” as a false endearment. He urges his fellow indígena to reclaim the label indio as their own: “It honors us more than it demeans us, and [sets] a challenge to Ladinos. . . . We have never dreamed of becoming Ladinos, and not just because they are mediocre, but because we are convinced of our value and our future.”8 In the Ladino political “fiction” “Guatemala,” he concludes, “is a majority indigenous country . . . not just biologically, but because we have seized the consciousness of [our] identity.”9 The essay traveled throughout Guatemala and the indigenous communities of the Americas. Pop Caal presented it in 1974 at the Congress of Americanists in Puebla, Mexico. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla anthologized it

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in the collection Utopia y revolución (Utopia and revolution) (1981:145– 52). It was later translated into English and published in Akwesasne Notes as “The Situation of Indian Peoples in Guatemala,” in Berkeley, California (Konefal 2010). Following Pop Caal’s lead, many indigenous activists adopted “indio” as a term of pride. For example, Betsy Konefal relays the slogan on the banner that indigenous peasants of the Comité de Unidad Campesina flew in 1980 after their January occupation of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City was put down so violently by the Guatemalan armed forces that only the Spanish ambassador survived: “For every indio who falls, thousands of us rise up” (Konefal 2010:123).

On Our Own Two Feet As the essay’s impact spread, Pop Caal turned his genius to organizing people around the issues of the “Réplica,” despite the considerable opposition from both the left and right against setting the recovery of Maya identity as a priority. He was busy in the Seminarios Indígenas and in other indigenous organizations, and he helped found the Coordinadora Indígena Nacional, a network of the various groups forming in the mid-1970s (Konefal 2010:65–67). He continued to write and represented Maya Guatemala in international meetings held in Canada (1975), the United States (1980), and elsewhere. Although he had rejected Christianity in 1969, he joined the many Maya who frequented the Maryknoll Order’s Centro Indígena in the capital city’s Zone 8. There, he organized a group, Cabracán, whose members practiced clandestinity and were described by others as “radical” because of their nativistic “rejection of Western goods and habits” (Velasquez Nimatuj 2004; Konefal 2010:61). They were admired by other Maya activists, but the need for secrecy went deep; they were regarded with suspicion by the state, but also as counterrevolutionary in both above-ground popular and armed circles. Maya interested in identity recovery were seen as bourgeois or elite traitors to the more oppressed of their race (Arias 1990; Cabracán member, personal communication). The group grew to over five hundred members (Velasquez Nimatuj 2004). Its members lived and met in the capital but worked in different Maya communities on indigenous cultural revitalization and rights. They also studied Maya spirituality. On October 12, 1978, Pop Caal received the staff of the Maya spiritual guide from his teacher, Eusebio Saquic Chan of western Guatemala’s San Andrés Xecul (E. Pop Caal, personal communication). The date, perhaps as was true for the date of the publication of his “Réplica” on the Day of the Virgin Guadalupe, is significant: It was Columbus Day, and that same year, the very idea of celebrating Columbus Day was denounced by the Maya publication Ixim (Konefal 2010:26).

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For the group, the name Cabracán meant “with two legs” and referred to the being in the Popol Vuh who controlled earthquakes. “Pop Caal explained that the choice reflected the idea of Mayas standing on their own two feet and also referred to the devastating 1976 earthquake in Guatemala” (Konefal 2010:60–61). The 7.5 earthquake struck February 4 and left thirty thousand Guatemalans dead and over seventy thousand injured. According to Esteban, Pop Caal was scheduled to take his final law exams on the very day of the earthquake. He was hurt badly and recovery took months. While healing, he joined the many students and Maya activists who threw their considerable energies into earthquake relief. Pop Caal worked in Rabinal and Chimaltenango (E. Pop Caal, personal communication). The earthquake, called the “earthquake of the poor” by many, was an eye-opening experience for urban middle- and upper-class young people, who streamed to the countryside to volunteer. Many simply had no previous experience with the level of poverty suffered by their compatriots in rural and indigenous communities. As the days and weeks passed following the earthquake, the government’s incompetence in caring for its people and responding to the crisis, as well as the levels of corruption involved in handling the massive influx of international aid, became patently obvious (Arias 1990; Cazali Ávila 2002; Bastos and Camus 2003:44; Konefal 2010:68–69). The scale of antigovernment protest surged with many new participants, with the 1977 Ixtahuacán miner’s strike, joined by workers from the Pantaleón sugar plantation, and the following year, 1978, the massive urban transport strike. The Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC, Committee for Peasant Unity) was founded in 1978 as well. The state’s violent response ratcheted up after the earthquake, with murders of university activists and the Panzós massacre (see Konefal, chapter 8, this volume, for a discussion of this event) occurring in 1978, the same year Pop Caal was installed as a Maya spiritual guide. As the violence sharpened into mass bloodlettings under the military dictator Romeo Lucas Garcia, who was born and raised in Alta Verapaz speaking Q’eqchi’ fluently, many Cabracán members and other Maya activists chose armed struggle. “Antonio Pop warned them that it was not an indigenous struggle and that the costs would be irreparable. He was not wrong”10 (Velasquez Nimatuj 2004).

Return to Verapaz As the violence escalated throughout the country, Pop Caal returned to his roots in the Verapaz in the late 1970s but remained active nationally

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and renowned internationally. He continued his work in spiritual and legal service to Q’eqchi’s and other Maya peoples. He and Gloria Dominga Tecún Canil, also a lawyer, married in 1979. They raised three children, Iquibalam Pop Tecún, Itzamná Pop Tecún, and Dalia Ixmucané Pop Tecún, and adopted a fourth, Julio Tecún (Pop Tecún family, personal communication). Pop Caal earned his USAC diploma as a lawyer and notary in the early 1980s. He was the first Q’eqchi’ lawyer and, as such, the first to work in the Verapaz without a translator, carrying the Q’eqchi’ peoples’ defense of their legal rights through the courts (Sieder 1997; see Carey 2013 for other Maya). Q’eqchi’-Mayas had previously developed the office of guisach, a paralegal who served as a go-between for Q’eqchi’s and the legal system, particularly in land matters. As a fully credentialed lawyer, Pop Caal served as a powerful resource for his people. He helped found the Asociación de Abogados y Notarios de Alta Verapaz (Association of Lawyers and Notaries of Alta Verapaz). Pop Caal deepened his spiritual movement building in the Verapaz. He created and published a Q’eqchi’ calendar every year. He celebrated the Uayeb’, the five unnamed or “crazy” days of the haab’ (the Maya solar calendar), and the Waq’xaqib Batz (Eight Monkey, the first day of the Maya divining calendar, the tzolkin) in the Verapaz from 1978 onward (E. Pop Caal, personal communication). He was in high demand as a spiritual guide, celebrating many births and weddings. He joined with a small group of young Verapaz spiritual seekers. They were catechists connected with the Benedictines’ Centro San Benito in Cobán, which began in the late 1970s to recover the very “ways of our ancestors” so demonized in the 1960s and 1970s catechism pamphlets mentioned previously. The Belgian priest Haeserijn was an important ally for the group and also spoke at the Seminarios Indígenas (Konefal 2010). The Verapaz seekers were in touch with Maya spirituality renewal groups elsewhere, including Pop Caal’s Cabracán. The Maya spiritual guide Eusebio Saquic Chan of western Guatemala’s San Andrés Xecul, the guide who had initiated Pop Caal, worked with the group. The group centered their worship activities on a sacred site, Chajxucub’. They found the site after an elderly relative of one of the young seekers dreamed about it and its name. The young people followed the dream’s instructions to locate it on the outskirts of Cobán. Helped by Saquic Chan, they built a small house and altar on the hilltop site and placed a Maya cross there. The site and the group of seekers gained a regional and national reputation. In fact, in May 1978, a group of organized Q’eqchi’ from Panzós visited the group in Cobán, went to Chajxucub’, and then, in Andrés Cuz Mucú’s words, “returned to their deaths” (volvieron a sus

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muertes) in the Panzós massacre a few days later (Adams 2009). As the counterinsurgent violence intensified in the Verapaz, the group of seekers itself scattered and abandoned many of their practices. Some of their number joined the armed and clandestine movements; at least one of them, Vitalino Calel, died. With the tentative opening of a peace process and civilian rule in the mid-1980s, the group picked up their identity and spiritual work again. During the same years, Pop Caal reemerged as a leader and advisor to the new forms of the now-called movimiento maya (Maya movement) in Guatemala. He was one of the founders of the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala, ALMG) in the 1980s. He traveled to Chicago for a 1992 quincentenary international meeting of indigenous leaders. He formed the group of Q’eqchi’Maya spiritual guides of Alta and Baja Verapaz, Petén, Izabal, and Belice. He was active in many Maya organizations, including FUNMAYAN, the Asociación de Ancianos de Petén, and Naleb’, an organization founded by his nephew, Alvaro Pop. Maya activists after the 1980’s counterinsurgent violence continued to face many divisions in their movements. While the movimiento maya flourished during the peace process and postwar years, it also fractured and fragmented (Bastos and Camus 2003). The differences among Maya activists in the 1960s and 1970s over whether to take up arms, whether to work with Ladinos, and whether to adopt class or ethnicity as the revolutionary priority now polarized into a culturalista/popular (culturist/ popular) dichotomy. Pop Caal was part of these conflicts, as he had been before the acute violence, and now conflict carved rifts within the Verapaz circle. Severe disagreement escalated over the Chajxucub’ site when Pop Caal decided to build a scale model of Tikal for the education of the numerous visitors to Chajxucub’, which others in the group opposed as desecration. The quarrel halted the recognition of the site by the Ministry of Culture and Sports as “patrimonio cultural y natural de la nación” (cultural and natural patrimony of the nation). Other quarrels sparked between Pop Caal and the group, such as the exact timing of the Uayeb’ (see Adams 2009). At the time of his death, the conflicts were unresolved. On October 9, 2002, he was kidnapped and held for ransom. His body was recovered on December 17, and he was buried the next day in a massive Maya ceremony (Adams 2009). His life was eulogized in many national publications and newspapers (see Prensa Libre 2002). Three men were arrested in connection with the crime, and one confessed to Pop Caal’s murder, but the murder was never fully investigated by the government to the satisfaction

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of his family, colleagues, or community. To this day, it is unclear what motivated the abduction, whether he was targeted for his profile as a Maya leader or whether he was another victim of the increasing violence, insecurity, and impunity suffered by Guatemalans today. His death was a bad death at a bad time, shocking and inducing shock. It continues to be decried by the community for whom his memory and work are foundational (Velasquez Nimatuj 2004).

Conclusion: “For Every Indio Who Falls, Thousands of Us Rise Up” One of the key themes for this volume is the relationship between historymaking and Maya heroes. Antonio Pop Caal is one of those heroes, remembered to this day for his voice, intellectual leadership, and organization of national and Q’eqchi’-Maya movements for rights, land, identity, and spiritual recovery. He is clearly held in esteem “and recognized in part for his . . . personal assets, including wisdom, intelligence, strength, abilities, or bravery” (Kistler, introduction, this volume). This chapter provides a fuller account of his life for the historical record. He is a complicated and contradictory hero, a fact that is certainly true for all heroes when scholars dig deep enough. For the Maya, neither humans nor heroes have to be unidimensional. Their understanding of the potential shape-shifter in every being and their cliché acknowledges individual complexity: “Cada cabeza es un mundo” (every head is its own world). Pop Caal was not afraid of taking controversial positions or actions. Drawing on another non-English word, he was “decidido,” which translates as “firm,” “clear,” “decided,” and “stubborn.” Following Pop Caal’s life (as well as the lives of others in his cohort) helps rectify one issue in the writing about the Maya movement, which is the assertion that it was always divided between culturalistas and populares. His life spanned the emergence of multiple waves of Maya activism, and he served as a leader and inspiration for Maya with diverse positions on how to bring about social change, long before the differences hardened and reduced to the post-1980s culturalista/popular divide. Those activists who were labeled as culturalists have been portrayed in the literature at times as less militant, less confrontational, cowed by the violence, and taking up marginal, less controversial issues—or simply removed from the reality of agrarian hardship (Fischer and Brown 1996; Konefal 2010:56). Pop Caal’s life and that of his many colleagues overturn this stereotype, given the risks they undertook, the force with which they spoke, and, for Pop Caal, the connection he maintained with the rural poor throughout his career as a lawyer.

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Some culturalists are portrayed as indios permitidos, or “authorized Indians” in Hale and Millaman’s term (2005; Hale 2006). The term refers to “good Indians,” who work to promote assimilationist—or ethnocidal— state objectives, including by working within state structures. Clearly, Pop Caal as indio was no abject, collaborationist indio permitido. He worked adroitly within established Euro-centered structures of government such as the courts, informed perhaps by the formative part of his life in the Catholic Church, with its discipline and hierarchy. Even though he describes Guatemala as a “Ladino fiction” and its constitution as hypocritical in his “Réplica,” his vocation as a lawyer and as a founder of the ALMG depended on the rule of law and the constitution (rewritten after his “Réplica”; see also Sieder 2011). His work carved out Maya access as citizens to the judiciary and to the education system. He never entered party politics, although he was heavily recruited, unsuccessfully, including to run as a vice presidential candidate for the Frente Democrático Nueva Guatemala. He was also a major agent in recovering history and heroes for his people. From his “Réplica” on, he insisted that his people, the Maya, were the rightful authors of their own history (although allies such as Raphael Girard were welcome to contribute to the work) and that that history continued unbroken from the pre-Columbian era to the present. He was a fervent and persuasive educator of his people as he published Maya calendars, observed calendrical and life passage celebrations, and built the Tikal scale model at Chajxucub’ to educate visitors. The focus of his revisionist work was decidedly pan-Mayanist, a unified universal vision promoted often at the expense of local agency and variation. The image of his dogged attempts to complete the Tikal model contrasts with the reformed methodology of spiritual recovery later employed by his brother Esteban in Verapaz Q’eqchi’ communities. Esteban described to me how he and others now went to “pay attention and learn” (hacerles caso y aprender) from the elders, rather than the previous oneway pedagogical approach they had used when younger, which was to hold workshops and “teach” and indoctrinate community member about Maya identity. Finally, Pop Caal’s story undermines a trope about the progression of Maya consciousness, which is the narrative that Pop Caal’s famous generation was the first to think and act critically on their condition of oppression. The trope is that, apart from a few pioneers or precursors, the postwar period with its economic changes, developmentalism (even artificial fertilizer), and the newly energized anticommunist Catholic Church raised up the material and opportunistic conditions for indigenous youth,

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who became newly conscious, if not bourgeois. Pop Caal’s fuller story and legacy demonstrate his generation as a group of activists who as indigenous people stood firmly in the long durée of Maya modernity and agency and whose histories include past, present, and future generaciones of Maya activists.

Notes 1. The term “Maya” is widely used to refer to speakers of languages in the Mayan language family, to people who identify with the corresponding cultural group, and for the político-cultural movement(s) that emerged largely in the 1980s. I use the term both as it is widely used, and as Pop Caal came to use it. I also use terms that he and other activists used over the decades, such as Q’eqchi’, “indígena,” and, famously for Pop Caal, “indio.” 2. Original (Spanish): “Sin embargo, nosotros ya no estamos dispuestos a ceder un ápice de nuestra identidad.” 3. Original (Spanish): “Éramos descalzos y usábamos camisoncitos. . . . Aquellos años se vivía una fuerte y terrible situación de colonialismo.” 4. Original (Spanish): “Porque tampoco había educación bilingüe, todo era en castellano. Para nosotros era como ir a recibir clases de griego.” 5. Original (Spanish): “Ustedes tienen que seguir luchando, vayan otra vez y traten de mantenerse.” 6. Original (Spanish): “Tuvimos una niñez pobre, pero maravillosa. . . . Cobán era un pueblo muy pequeño . . . apenas habían dos o tres carros y casi ni se escuchaba radio.” 7. Original (Spanish): “Los únicos autorizados en esta materia somos nosotros.” 8. Original (Spanish): “Nos honra más que nos denigra . . . y [significa] más que un reto para los ladinos. . . . Nosotros jamás hemos soñado en ser ladinos, y no solo porque comprendamos la mediocridad de ellos, sino sobre todo porque estamos convencidos de nuestro valer y de nuestro porvenir. 9. Original (Spanish): “Es un país de mayoría indígena . . . no sólo en el aspecto biológico, sino sobre todo en la toma de conciencia de [nuestra] identidad.” 10. Original (Spanish): “Antonio Pop les advierte que no es la lucha indígena y que el costo será irreparable. No se equivocó.”

10 “There Are No Heroes”/“We’re All Heroes” Kaqchikel Vendors’ Reflections on National Holidays and National Heroes Walter E. Little

On slow days in the Compañía de Jesús artisan marketplace in Antigua Guatemala, the vendors keep busy by putting their goods in order and doing other kinds of productive work such as mending the textiles they sell, weaving small items, and crocheting bags. They stave off boredom with idle conversations about life in their hometowns, the daily news, and local gossip. During one of these long lulls between customers on February 20, 1997, while conducting my doctoral fieldwork, I asked my Kaqchikel vendor friends what they did to celebrate Tekun Umam. One of them laughed and answered, “Nothing” (majun). I pressed them, “Why is that? Isn’t he a national hero? In fact, a Maya hero?”1 Another vendor responded with a question, “How important is someone who is on the fifty-centavo bill?”2 Indeed, there are only Ladino leaders on all the banknotes above fifty cents of the Guatemalan currency, the quetzal. Realizing that I was not going to get anywhere, I dropped this line of inquiry. During my fieldwork on vendor identity politics and economy from 1996 to 1998, I had hoped to get some thoughtful commentary about the one Maya whose accomplishments had been elevated to a national holiday. The marketplace in the Compañía de Jesús, where I conducted my initial research, was relocated between the popular fried chicken restaurant Pollo Campero and the municipal bus station, where vendors continue to alternately ignore, criticize, and capitalize on the national holidays. The vendors’ dismissal of Tekun Umam marks the departure point for on-and-off again discussions for nearly twenty years about national holi-

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days and the concept of hero that I have had with Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors who sell in Antigua, Guatemala. Although this conversational thread is minor within the scope of my research on Maya vendors (Little 2004a, 2015), this holiday and hero conversation weaves through various moments of my annual ethnographic research sojourns to Guatemala to the present (Little 2015). Admittedly, Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors who mainly sell handwoven textiles to foreign tourists make up a narrow segment of the Guatemalan population. However, their work puts them in a political-economic space that gives them easy access to national news and puts them in a place, Antigua, in which they are regularly reminded that they are outsiders with respect to national politics. Vendors, in general, have high levels of literacy for Guatemalans. They read the newspaper on a daily basis, for example. Those vendors from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, the primary vendors offering their opinions on heroes and holidays, come from the town with the highest literacy rate in Guatemala at the time of my initial research in the 1990s. Since then, some of them have obtained university degrees, while continuing to work as vendors. They and, even more so, their children have been fully integrated into the national school system, which has exposed them to politically dominant Ladino ideas. These facts, which I discuss more thoroughly elsewhere (Little 2004a), and that they live and work in the region of the country where Ladino and foreigners have significant social, political, and cultural influence place them at the center of non-Maya political power, which has opened spaces for successful vendors to make quite good livelihoods. In the context of the national politics of state holidays and national heroes, Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors have very strong opinions about the subject of heroes—not at all favorable. My discussion about holidays and heroes touches briefly on three other national holidays—Día del Ejército (Army Day), Día de la Independencia (Independence Day), and Día de la Revolución (Revolution Day)—because Kaqchikel’s participation in these add another layer to how they reinterpret national discourses that have served to marginalize them. Despite this marginalization, these vendors, most of whom are women, have inserted themselves into the economy of one national holiday, Día de a Hispanidad, formerly known as Día de la Raza, held on October 12, while tending to ignore the one holiday dedicated to a Maya hero, the day commemorating Tekun Umam, recognized on February 20. In this chapter, I explore the reasons for vendors’ rather cynical comments about these holidays, discuss how their economic participation shapes their opinions about heroes, and explain why they claim both “there

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are no heroes”3 and that Mayas “are all heroes.”4 I argue that their opinions about holidays and heroes should be understood as more than just critiques of the state. Rather, as women, the vendors offer a gendered perspective about the representations and celebrations of heroes that challenges the state-level and community-level forms of patriarchy. However, it is through their sales of specialty items to Ladinos on these holidays that they publicly ridicule Ladino concepts of Mayas and reinscribe themselves as heroic figures in their communities.

On Heroes In the short book Héroes de la vida cotidiana: Personajes mayas, volumen 1 (Heroes in everyday life: Maya characters, vol. 1), Ricardo Lima writes, “These are not people chosen at random. They are profoundly human with a great sense of solidarity with their fellow humans and with a living conscience of the cultural reality that defines their existence” (1991:5).5 As Lima explains, the five Mayas profiled in the book were chosen as examples that help strengthen Maya cultural values and ethnic belonging.6 None profiled in the book fit the classic, Western sense of hero, “a historical person or mythological character” (see Kistler’s introduction to this volume). There are no descriptions of Tekun Umam or other well-known Maya mythical and historical figures from the Popol Vuh (D. Tedlock 1996) or the Kaqchikel Chronicles (Maxwell and Hill 2006) that have appealed to non-Maya students of Mesoamerica. According to Campbell (2004:18), “the hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms.” He (Campbell 2004; also see Raglan 2003) explains that there is an archetypical pattern for heroes in which they have adventures to supernatural places, acquire supernatural powers themselves, and overcome great otherworldly obstacles and tests before returning, being reborn in some way along the way, to their home. Such is the path for the hero twins in the Popol Vuh, Hunahpú (Hunter) and Xbalanqué (Jaguar Deer), who journey between quotidian and spiritual realms to defeat the lords of Xibalbá and eventually are transformed into constellations (D. Tedlock 1996). The twins are significant for precisely the same reason that mythic heroes elsewhere are: they provide important cultural practices to their descendants (Busse 2005). Gossen (1999), likewise, frames Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s story to overcome great odds to become a world human rights leader as an epic hero narrative. By contrast, Lima’s (1991) book resists this kind of hero. One of those featured, Andrés Curruchich, the renowned Kaqchikel-Maya

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painter from San Juan Comalapa, who exhibited his work in Guatemala and the United States from the 1930s until his death in 1969, does not fit the typical hero and, for that matter, is not someone generally regarded by the handicraft vendors as a hero. Just as Lima resists what I consider the archetypical universal hero described by Campbell (2004) and Raglan (2003), Maya vendors reject the quotidian heroes in Lima’s book. Although Curruchich was well respected by and considered one of Comalapa’s most important residents, the vendors I spoke with do not think he is particularly heroic. I take these themes up in subsequent sections, addressing the vendors’ generally poor attitudes about national holidays, their negative opinions about Tekun Umam Day, and their economic and political reframing of the Día de la Hispanidad, which is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States. I conclude with a discussion of why Maya vendors resist universal concepts of hero and why they put a gendered, even feminist, twist on their particular concept of hero.

National Holidays I started attending holidays with Kaqchikel handicraft vendors from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santa Catarina Palopó, San Juan Comalapa, and elsewhere from the time I started Kaqchikel language studies in 1994. While they were eager to share their local holidays, such as patron saint celebrations and other local events, they were less enthusiastic about the national holidays. As one Kaqchikel vendor woman joked on Día del Ejército in 1994, “The best way for you to spend the holiday is here in the marketplace with us.”7 I had been curious to see whether any Mayas would go to watch the parade, a procession of military equipment and soldiers. “What are you going to do then?”8 I inquired. “Nothing but sell to tourists,” she answered. A Kaqchikel vendor man nearby commented, “There’s nothing to see. No one will be there. Why do you want to see the arms that have been used against us?”9 “Indeed, why would I?” I asked myself and, then, skipped the parade. It is easy to comprehend why Mayas, in general, would ignore Día del Ejército, given the historical legacies of state violence aimed at Mayas in Guatemala (Smith 1990; Carmack 1988; Little and Smith 2009). The publication of the United Nations Truth Commission report, “Guatemala Memory of Silence,” and the Catholic Church’s “Recovery of the Historic Memory” indicated the conflict resulted in at least two hundred thousand Guatemalans killed and more than one million displaced, most of whom were Maya. Although the vendors from the nearby Kaqchikel towns San

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Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santa Catarina Barahona, and Santa Maria de Jesús suffered little direct violence from the thirty-six year conflict that ended in 1996 with the Guatemalan government and guerrilla forces signing a peace accord, those vendors from towns in the departments of Chimaltenango, Quiché, and Huehuetenango experienced the violence firsthand, fleeing to the relative safety of Antigua, where there was potential to earn money and send their children to school. To write that the Maya vendors merely ignored the national holidays Día del Ejército on June 30, Día de la Independencia on September 15, and Día de la Revolución on October 20 would be to overlook their experiences with the state but, also, their continued relationship to it. While the marketplace vendors could choose to ignore these holidays that one San Antonio Aguas Calientes vendor woman told me angrily “are to remind us of the government’s ability to kill us,”10 their school-aged children are compelled to participate in activities related to these holidays. My experiences with these holidays are mainly in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a place that managed to largely avoid the violence, be it statesponsored violence or more recent generalized criminal violence, of the last forty years (Little and Smith 2009; Smith and Offit 2010; O’Neill and Thomas 2011). Students are encouraged to write essays and poems, sing patriotic songs, and draw pictures, all of which bother their parents. In the words of one, these holidays “celebrate the history of killing our people.”11 In San Antonio Aguas Calientes, parents and their children resist these holidays in various ways while, at the same time, participating in the required school activities. What relates directly to the handicraft vendors, more than other forms of resistance, is exhibited in the parade processions for those respective holidays. Unlike the parades held in nearby Guatemala City and Antigua that display symbols of the state, the parades in San Antonio present the diversity of Guatemala’s Maya culture through textiles. School-aged children dress in the traditional hand-loomed Maya clothing from towns throughout Guatemala. On my first occasion of seeing the Día de la Independencia parade in 1998, I asked my friend Ixkem why they took this approach when their own town-specific costume was quite splendid. She replied, “Because this is how we show the government that we are here, that we have our culture, and that we are all together even though we wear different clothes and speak different languages.”12 Although Maya vendors have been critical of the Maya cultural resurgence movement, as I discuss elsewhere (Little 2004b), I suspect that this comment and other similar ones I heard that day and during other national holidays demonstrate the penetration of the Maya movement activists and intellectuals, like Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil (1994, 1997, 2006), Estuardo Zapeta (1999), and other Mayas who were regularly in the media

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during the 1990s espousing varying degrees of autonomy for Mayas and promoting a pluricultural Maya state. Similar to the Maya beauty pageants, especially, the national-level contest Rabín Ahau (see Konefal 2010; Konefal, chapter 8, this volume), the parades in San Antonio highlight distinctly Maya cultural values and material culture. Their aim was not so much to confront the state—usually a risky prospect—but to counterpose it with positive presentations of Mayaness. Such manifestations of Mayaness, as Hale (2006) points out, illustrate forms of permissible neoliberal multiculturalism. Maya handicraft vendors and weavers play a key role in the contestation of the state in national holidays by providing the clothing for the children. Maya women vendors from San Antonio purchase high-quality clothing from Maya women textile traders from other regions of Guatemala. Most of their business involves purchasing goods that sell well to foreign tourists, such as tablecloths, table runners, and placemats, but they will use disposable income to purchase clothing for their children to participate in the national holiday parades, just as long as it is “Maya not Ladino.”13 Poorer vendors and weavers who cannot afford to purchase this clothing, which can run in the hundreds of dollars for a complete outfit, will borrow it from financially better-off family and friends. They emphasized to me that it has to be “authentic and well made”14 and what “children from those towns would wear at their fiestas.”15 One woman explained, “They can’t be like the indio [Indian] clothes we sell the Ladinos on Día de la Raza [Día de la Hispanidad].”16 I explain this distinction between clothing types at greater length in the section “Día de la Hispanidad, October 12.” Maya vendors use their merchandise not only to make money but also to contest their relationship with the state at the expense of non-Maya Ladinos. For Kaqchikels in San Antonio, national holidays serve as annual reminders of the Ladino political domination that they peacefully contest through local celebrations of Maya material culture. These everyday acts of resistance (Scott 1990) are not, however, considered heroic—just part of ongoing everyday life. In the words of one weaver, Ixkamey, “it is not fighting, but to not show our culture is to not be Maya Kaqchikel.”17 Día de Tecún Umán, February 20 Generally, handicraft vendors ignore and Kaqchikels downplay February 20, the day commemorating controversial national hero Tekun Umam. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding Tekun Umam, and scholars debate whether he actually lived and just what the narrative of his defeat and death in 1524 by the Spanish mean (van Akkeren 2004; Chinchilla Mazariegos 2013; Maxwell and Cuma Chávez, chapter 1, this volume).

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I focus on the vendors’ opinions with some general observations of Kaqchikel community practices in relation to the Día de Tecún Umán. Anthropologist Carol Hendrickson (1995:79–80, 90) summarizes the prevailing national attitudes about Tekun Umam in the media and notes that this day is mainly celebrated in Guatemala City. She explains that such occasions, including Día de la Hispanidad, provide a space for nonMaya Guatemalans to embrace elements of Maya culture in relatively neutral ways, such as dressing up in stereotypical Maya clothing. This use of Tekun Umam persists in the Guatemalan news media, which annually publishes stories about him, on or near the holiday, questioning his existence and reaffirming the relatively subordinate position of Mayas in Guatemalan society (see Maxwell and Cuma Chávez, chapter 1, this volume, for more on this issue). As Vrana (2014:124) points out, even liberal Ladino university students “reiterated the prejudices and stereotypes that cast indigenous citizens as dupes, illiterates, and uncivilized” in the Tekun Umam celebrations. Articles on Tekun Umam in the Prensa Libre in recent years, for example, report that he is a national hero who is fading from national consciousness and school children know very little about him (A. Martínez 2014). In another article, the newspaper (Prensa Libre 2014) explains that there are a number of different positions about Tekun Umam ranging from myth to reality. A Guatemalan sociologist Guillermo Paz Cárcamo (F. Martínez 2014) argues that he is definitely a myth, whereas historian Christopher H. Lutz (González 2015) contends that he definitely existed. However, in the summer of 2016, the Guatemalan government announced that Tekun Umam has been officially relegated to legend, despite a number of historians and archaeologists arguing the contrary (van Akkeren 2004; Chinchilla Mazariegos 2013). After having read about these debates for years, it is not particularly surprising that handicraft vendors are rather cynical about el Día de Tecún Umán and do not bother to celebrate. As one woman vendor from San Juan Sacatepéquez commented, “It really doesn’t matter if he lived, the Ladinos just celebrate their creation. The national hero Tekun Umam isn’t our hero.”18 In the marketplace itself, the few Ladinos who enter to buy items to identify with Mayaness on that day (see Hendrickson 1995) will ask vendors why they are not honoring their national hero. Knowing that a truthful answer—that they do not feel a particularly connection to the holiday or the way that Tekun Umam has been embraced by national society—would hurt sales, vendors will try to get Ladinos to think about Mayas’ economic marginalization and relative poverty. I have heard vendors tell them that they really “want to celebrate” (quieren celebrar) but

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they “have to work” (tienen que trabajar) or they will not “be able to feed and clothe our families” (poder dar comida y ropa a nuestras familias). A Ladino couple, who were shopping for “something traditional” (algo tradicional) that they could use on their home altar, told a vendor woman from San Antonio that it was a shame that she had to work on the day of her national hero. The vendor replied that it made her very sad that she was not able to hear her daughter read a poem about Tekun Umam at her grade school’s convocation. Later the vendor said to me, “I heard my daughter practicing the poem—just nonsense. And she knows it too, but she has to do it.”19 Mayas throughout Guatemala have had to listen to these discourses from the media and the schools about Tekun Umam. These discourses play a large part in their attitudes about this figure, be they cynical, ambivalent, or enraged. Handicraft vendors, in general, just do not put much thought into el Día de Tecún Umán. While it is just another day for them to make sales, there is an underlying annoyance, even impatience, with the day, which is reflected in their attitudes. Maya intellectuals have developed quite powerful, scathing critiques of Tekun Umam that are strikingly similar to those of the handicraft vendors and speak to what bothers them. In Las huellas de b’alam: 1994–1996 (The footsteps of the jaguar: 1994– 1996), Kaqchikel-Maya columnist and anthropologist Estuardo Zapeta (1999:200–201) writes, “Primary school was full of irrelevant lies and inventions called lessons . . . false history like the beast of Tecún Umán [sic]. . . . Such are the stupidities that they teach our children in primary school.”20 According to the Jakaltek-Maya anthropologist Victor Montejo (2005:56), Maya school “children learn that freedom for Maya people was forever denied them at that fatal moment,” when Tekun Umam was slain by Pedro de Alvarado. Kaqchikel anthropologist Irma Otzoy (1999) takes a similar position, which Konefal (2010:27) explains in the period “of state-sponsored violence in the late 1970s and 1980s rendered such official gestures outrageous.” In one of my random conversations with the handicraft vendors, during a lull in business, I tried to get them to talk about Tekun Umam. After some prodding, when they realized that I was not going to leave the topic alone, they started to give me their perspectives. “Look,” explained one Kaqchikel male vendor, “We’re taught that our ancestors couldn’t distinguish between Alvarado and his horse. And because of that, Tekun is a fool.”21 One of the Kaqchikel women vendors sitting in the stall next to the man commented, “Yes, that is what we’re taught. True, a beautiful quetzal bird appears when he is killed, but he’s dead and the Spaniards win.”22

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She pauses and, then, asked rhetorically, before answering her own question, “What kind of hero is that? Not a hero, but someone who is crazy, weak, foolish. That is not a hero.”23 One of the other Kaqchikel female vendors added, “That why there are no heroes, not for us. According to the Ladinos, this is our hero, the country’s hero. The most important indigenous hero was a fool. That’s what they think of us.”24 The conversation concluded with the general agreement that because Tekun Umam was framed as a hero this way, they just would not have anything to do with him and that there were really no Maya heroes. Hence, it is how the state recognizes Tekun Umam as a national hero that informs the vendors’ attitudes about heroes. Where Montejo (2005) argues that freedom is denied to Mayas in the national teaching and commemorations of Tekun Umam, the vendors reject this narrative, but they also reject the state construction of hero. Día de la Hispanidad, October 12 The national holiday that the handicraft vendors pay attention to but do not participate in is the Día de la Hispanidad, which is also called Día de la Raza and is celebrated in the United States as Columbus Day. The holiday, which alternately marks the commemoration of Christopher Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, celebrates mestizaje and racial diversity throughout the region and recognizes the contributions of Spain to Latin America, has long been controversial in Guatemala and, in general, the rest of the Americas (Ycaza Tigerino 1950; Benedetti 1992; Pardo Sanz 1992; Konefal 2010). Although news media coverage of Día de la Hispanidad tends to be schizophrenic, with reports and commentaries on celebrations and protests (for example, Morales 2001; Prensa Libre 2010; Castro 2014, 2015), Mayas have been very vocal in their rejections of it. In the twenty-plus years that I have conducted ethnographic research in Guatemala, Maya leaders have regularly denounced the day with protests speaking out and editorials written against the government in ways that have changed little since Hale’s (1994) analysis of Mayas’ antiquincentenary manifestations. Konefal (2010:27) writes that Maya activists call it the “Day of Disgrace” and that Mayas take to the streets to protest the legacies of injustice and violence against them. In a similar vein, Rehm (2011:132) reports that Maya leaders reject the holiday, stating it should be called “Day of Mourning, Day of Sad Remembrances.” Given the political controversies surrounding the Día de la Hispanidad,

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I was a bit perplexed by the Maya handicraft vendors’ enthusiasm for it when I spent the holiday with them for the first time in 1994. I did not grasp at the time why they would be vested in a holiday that was so thoroughly rejected by the leaders in their community. As noted, Hendrickson (1995, 1997) explains that non-Maya Guatemalans dress up during the Día de la Hispanidad and Día de Tecún Umán in Maya clothing to selectively embrace Maya culture in a nonthreatening way. When I learned of this practice, I expected the vendors to be outraged by it, as it seemed to be as offensive as a white American dressing up in black face or wearing the stereotypical feathered “Indian” war bonnet. The vendors set me straight, explaining that Día de la Hispanidad is one of the times that they can make decent amounts of money from Ladinos for their textiles. It is customary for Ladino parents throughout the country to dress their preschool and elementary-aged children in “Indian” clothing. I place “Indian” in quotation marks here to highlight how both Ladinos and the Maya vendors characterize this clothing. With very little effort, I could see that the clothes they sold to Ladino families were not at all what they themselves wore. It was an invented style that they called “Indian clothes” (ropa india) or “indigenous clothing” (ropa indígena). These clothes were also substantially cheaper than those that the vendors and their family wore, made with inferior threads and dyes and woven with less care. In addition to watching sales in the Compañía de Jesús artisan marketplace, I traveled with some of the vendors to Guatemala City to observe them selling in front of the National Theater and in the Plaza Constitucional in front of the National Palace. In general, the clothes were sold at far higher prices than the tourism-oriented textiles that foreigners purchased and even for more than some used Maya clothing in decent condition. In fact, from shortly before the Día de la Hispanidad on October 12 until the Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe on December 12, Maya handicraft vendors noted that they enjoy seasonal sales of cheaply made Indian clothes (ropa indígena) to Ladinos. In the latter holiday, for nearly two hundred years, non-Maya children dress symbolically until they are seven—boys as Juan Diegos and girls as Marías—to illustrate their respect for the Virgen de Guadalupe’s help in protecting them. As Taracena Arrióla (2005:175) points out in his detailed historical analysis of the holiday, they “are not looking to assume the identity of the ‘other,’ but just to adopt their clothing so as to offer a gesture to the Virgen in order obtain her favor or to show appreciation of her.”25 For the most part, the clothes that Ladinos purchase from the vendors are not conceived of as

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a vehicle to connect or identify with living Mayas. Rather, Taracena Arrióla (2005:182) explains that Ladino were ambivalent about the clothing, “admiring the beauty of the clothes but without giving importance to the cultural identity that it reflected.”26 At first, I thought most of the Ladino consumers seemed oblivious to the inferior quality and stylistic differences of the clothes they were purchasing for their children. However, it became apparent in conversations with them that they tended to not know there was a difference in the clothing’s quality, assuming Mayas’ clothes were basically inferior. They did recognize the clear differences in style. For most, this was important. Several customers made comments such as, “Of course, these clothes are not the same as their clothes; these are what the original indígenas wore, not what indígenas today wear.” Some Ladinos do know the differences, sometimes obtaining contemporary hand-woven Maya clothing and sometimes knowing but conforming to Ladino conventions and wearing the invented clothes. Rather than being offended by the Ladinos dressing up as “Indians,” the vendors saw economic opportunity and a way to make fun of Ladinos. The months from October to December tend to be very slow for them, with few international tourists, foreign students, or Protestant missionary groups visiting Guatemala at that time. Sales to Ladinos are an important way for them to make money and to demonstrate their cleverness. I regularly watched foreign tourists anguish about being taken advantage of by vendors and paying well over market value for textiles. The few Ladinos, who purchased typical tourism textiles in the marketplace, bargained with a ruthlessness that made me uneasy, but those purchasing on the Día de la Hispanidad did not, often not even questioning the high prices for such cheaply made clothes. Vendors saw this behavior as utterly foolish and, while they are put off by aggressive haggling, which is not a common practice in the tourism marketplace (Little 2004a), they also marveled at the Ladinos’ complacency about the prices they charged. Where Tekun Umam generates vendors’ commentaries about heroes, Día de la Hispanidad and Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe do not. As one Kaqchikel woman vendor from San Antonio explained, “The holiday [Día de la Hispanidad] is not about that [heroes and leaders]; it is about . . . well, I don’t know what it’s about. Ladinos imagining something that never was.”27 On another occasion, a different Kaqchikel woman vendor from San Antonio commented, “It’s a way for Ladinos to pretend to be Indians and to show how Indians were beaten by the Spaniards and benefit from Spanish culture.”28 At that same occasion, another vendor woman added, “They don’t bother to learn our culture or even think about it. The day is

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for them to show how Guatemala was made better, for them maybe but not for us.”29 The vendors, however, see the Día de la Hispanidad and the Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe as ways to gain an advantage over Ladinos through cleverness, mirroring the Maya folktales about the characters Rabbit and Coyote. In these commonly known and shared stories, the intelligent, creative, and quick-witted Rabbit consistently outsmarts the brutish and dim-witted Coyote (Sexton 1992; Montejo 1995; Peñalosa 1996). These stories are popular among Mayas, especially the handicraft vendors, because they are empowering, as they see themselves as Rabbit and Ladinos as Coyote, who can only take what he needs by force. Being clever, Rabbit can turn the tables on Coyote. This is exactly how they see their “Indian clothing” sales to Ladinos on Día de la Hispanidad. They insist that this is not about heroes and heroic acts because this is just everyday behavior, everyday forms of resistance (see Scott 1990) that are the daily lived reality for all Mayas. This attitude is one reason that they do not subscribe to Lima’s thesis that there are quotidian Maya heroes. “None of us are heroes,” one Kaqchikel vendor woman told me. “Taking care of your family. Struggling with Ladinos [she used the word “mo’soi’,” which is also “foreigner” and “outsider”] is our life. It is being and living. There is nothing special about that.”30

Conclusion: From “No Heroes” to “We Are All Heroes” Given the politics of national heroes and national holidays that embrace Maya leaders and culture, it is not surprising that Mayas themselves would summarily reject or choose to ignore them. In the case of the handicraft vendors with whom I have worked over the years, they may be even more sensitive to and annoyed by these holidays because they work in a city, Antigua, where they are reminded of their secondary status in the nation through daily acts of discrimination in a city that self-identifies as Ladino. The vendors do not expect to be regarded as equals, just that life will be hard and, if one is like Rabbit, one can do well. Working in Antigua also ties them into national debates about Mayas’ places in the larger Guatemalan society, gives them greater access to news media coverage of national holidays, and allows them to see firsthand how Ladinos celebrate Tekun Umam and Día de la Hispanidad. Rather than express outrage and protest, as Maya political activists advocate, they try to figure out ways to take advantage of the Ladinos who are pretending that they are Indians. I am using the term “Indian” as an identity that the vendors do not embrace themselves. They, too, use the term to distinguish

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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themselves from the play-acting Ladinos. “They are indios, not Mayas,”31 one woman told me. At the same time, there is more to their rejecting the category of hero and figuring out ways to economically dupe Ladinos, even making fun of both the hero concept and Ladino consumption folly. Although tricking a Ladino consumer, especially on one of the national holidays that embrace Guatemala’s indigenous history and heritage, is to be admired, behavior that is boastful and egoistic, such as bragging about how much money one makes, what luxury possessions one has, and claiming to be a leader (for that matter, a hero), is discouraged and subject to ridicule. Vendors projected humility to each other and downplayed their financial successes. For them, the concept of hero is tied to Ladino egoism and a construction of Ladino values that undervalues Maya culture and tends to minimize Mayas’ contributions to Guatemala. If heroes are a Ladino construct in the context of Guatemalan identity politics, then no Mayas are heroes. If everyday life for all Mayas is the struggle against some form repression or social, political, or economic injustice, then there are no heroes. “Or we are all heroes,”32 according to one Kaqchikel vendor woman. In Baudilio Leonel Caté Otzoy’s (2010) thesis, he applies the term “hero” to Maya leaders from Guatemala’s precolonial and colonial past but not to contemporary leaders. My interpretation of this, obviously shaped by my conversation with Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors, is that these heroes from bygone times conform to the Ladino-national construction of hero, and contemporary leaders are merely leaders and not heroes because they actively resist national anti-Maya politics through various acts of dissent. They are leaders by virtue of being recognized for their skills and fearlessness to confront the Guatemalan government and Ladino economic and political hegemonies, but this is a title bestowed on them. Unlike the heroes in Caté Otzoy’s (2010) thesis who are only men, there are many Maya women leaders, suggesting that Maya women have played significant roles in the shaping of contemporary life in public spheres. Feminist scholars have been critical of the concept of heroes, particularly because they argue it “perpetuates the logic of domination” that is part of patriarchal systems (Fisher 1988:212). Heroes, according to Fisher (1988:217), cannot “provide definitive answers or solutions” to the kinds of changes to society that women need. If the hero is extraordinary, often from elsewhere (Campbell 2004), then, this appears to keep solutions out of reach for Mayas such as the handicraft vendors. It also, especially in the political context of Guatemala, makes it seem that such solutions can only come from outside Maya culture, not from within. This argu-

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ment is something that the vendors pointedly reject, which articulates with one of Fisher’s (1988: 221) points that heroes can be manipulated to further agendas of elites and reinforce their ideals. The vendors’ refusal to embrace the national holiday of Tekun Umam is their way to dissent and show that they do not accept the national Ladino discourses. Their rejection of the indigenous-oriented national holidays and heroes corresponds with another feminist perspective that the coexistence of victims with heroes “forecloses a discussion of multiple . . . identities and experiences” (Safri and Graham 2010:106). In the context of Maya vendor women’s dissenting attitudes, to accept these particular holidays means accepting the terms of the state, the version of history the makes Mayas powerless victims. Similarly, Maya intellectuals (Otzoy 1999; Zapeta 1999; Montejo 2005; Cojtí Cuxil 2006) argue for Mayas to envision alternatives to the Ladino national discourses, drawing on distinctively Maya cultural values. This, however, does not mean looking for and turning to heroes for inspiration and guidance. In fact, it is exactly the opposite, as such inspiration and change must come from all Mayas. The handicraft vendors reject the national heroes because the former position supports hegemonic ideologies of what is essentially an antiMaya state. Their rejection of the singled-out quotidian Maya heroes that Lima (1991) describes is more complicated but related to their rejection of the category itself as a mechanism that inhibits action and disempowers rather than empowers Mayas, especially, Maya women. This point is where I find a correlation between feminists’ perspectives (Fisher 1988) and Maya intellectuals’ positions (Otzoy 1999; Zapeta 1999; Montejo 2005; Cojtí Cuxil 2006) on heroes. On the rare occasions that I heard the vendor women state that “we’re all heroes,” I understood it as their being facetious, poking fun at the concept and those celebrated as heroes, be they national heroes or everyday Maya heroes (Lima 1991). However, with more reflection on the cultural and political contexts of their work as vendors in a tourism marketplace, where primarily foreigners purchase their handicrafts, the declaration “we’re all heroes” is also another way of rejecting the privileging of particular individual, past or present, and emphasizing Mayas’ collective resistance. It calls attention to the legacies of violent repression and social, political, and economic marginalization of Mayas by the Guatemalan state, without reducing them to victims, inferior to Ladinos (or before them, Spaniards). Although their main position is to reject the concept of hero and ignore or profit from holidays that purport to celebrate Guatemala’s Mayas,

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“we’re all heroes” undermines the creation of national holidays and heroes and highlights the common everyday struggles faced by Mayas living in Guatemala.

Notes 1. Handicraft vendors use Maya as one of several different self-identities. In Mayas in the Marketplace (Little 2004a), I describe the ways that vendors use several different identities for instrumental purposes. In the context of conversations about heroes they use the term “Maya.” 2. Original (Kaqchikel): “La nimaläj winäq chupam jun billete de cinquenta?” 3. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man k’o ta taq heroes” The gloss of “hero” in Kaqchikel is mama’al. It is also glossed as “ancestor” and used to refer to nobles (Morejón Patzán and Ajsivinac Sián 2011). In the Kaqchikel Chronicles: The Definitive Edition (Maxwell and Hill 2006:472), mama’al is used as “office of the mama,” which in this context would refer to noble. Over the course of my conversations with Kaqchikel vendors, they never used the Kaqchikel word “mama’al”; they always use “hero.” 4. Original (Kaqchikel): “Qonojel taq Maya’ e héroes.” 5. Original (Spanish): “No son personajes escogidos al azar. Son personas profundamente humanas con un gran sentido de la solidaridad entre sus propios hermanos y can una conciencia viva de la realidad cultural que define sus existencias.” 6. Conversations with Kaqchikel vendors were almost exclusively in the Kaqchikel language. I am intentionally vague when it comes to names of individuals for a number of reasons, among them to help protect their anonymity, to respect the privacy of their opinions, and to not harm their economic prospects. 7. Original (Kaqchikel): “La más ütz chi yak’oje’ wawe’ qik’in pa k’ayib’äl chi yab’e ke la’ pa ri feriado.” 8. Original (Kaqchikel): “Manjun po k’ayin chi re’ ri turistas.” 9. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man k’o ta chi natzu’. Man e k’o ta winaqi’ ke la’. Achike roma narayij natzu’ ri taq q’aq’ chi re xuk’usaj chi qe’.” 10. Original (Kaqchikel): “Nkina’ röj chi ri gobierno ntikïr yöjrukamisaj.” 11. Original (Kaqchikel): “Nk’owisaj ri historia chi xekamisan qawinaqi’.” 12. Original (Kaqchikel): “Roma achiel nqak’üt chi re ri gobierno öj k’o wawe, chi k’o qakaslemal, chuqa öj junam, man junam ta qatzyaq chi nqakusaj chuqa man junam ta qatzijon ri junam taq chab’äl.” 13. Original (Kaqchikel): “Maya’ man mo’s ta.” 14. Original (Kaqchikel): “Kan qitzij chuqa’ ütz xb’anatäj.” 15. Original (Kaqchikel): “Ak’wala pa taq tinamït xtkik’usaj pa taq kinamaq’ij.”

National Holidays and National Heroes / 205 16. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man e k’o ta achiel ri tzyaq indio chi nqak’ayij chi ke ri mo’soi’ pa ri Día de la Raza.” 17. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man chayonïk ta, po wi man nqak’üt ta qak’aslemal, junam chi man Maya’ Kaqchikel ta.” 18. Original (Kaqchikel): “Man k’atzinel ta wi xk’äs rija’, ri mo’soi’ xaxe nkik’owisaj achike xkib’anataj rije’. Re héroe nacional re’ man qahéroe ta.” 19. Original (Kaqchikel): “Xinwak’axaj wal nutijoj ri ri pach’un tzij – puro chuj taq tzij. Ke ri rija’ retaman chuqa’, po k’o chi nub’än.” 20. Original (Spanish): “La primaria estuvo repleta de mentiras e inventos irrelevantes llamados lecciones . . . historia falsa cómo el bestia de Tecún Umán [sic]. . . . Vaya estupideces las que le enseñan a nuestros hijos en la primaria.” 21. Original (Kaqchikel): “Tatzu’. Xöjtijon chi qamama’ qatit man xeketaman ta achike xk’o ri Alvarado o ri kej. Roma ri’, ri Tekun jun ch’uj.” 22. Original (Kaqchikel): “Ja, re re’ xöjtijon. Qitzij, jun jeb’ël manq’uq’ nsaqirisaj toq xkamisäx, po kaminäq rija’ k’a ri’ ri kaxloni’ xech’akon.” 23. Original (Kaqchikel): “Achike taq héroe k’o rija’? Manäq héroe, po jun winäq ch’uj, manjun ruch’uq’a, nakan. Re re’ man héroe ta.” 24. Original (Kaqchikel): “Achike roma man e k’o ta taq héroes, man qichin ta röj. Achike nkib’ij rije’ mo’soi’, re re’ qahéroe, ri héroe del país. Ri más k’atzinel héroe indígena xb’e jun nakanal. K’a ri, rije’ nkinojij pa ruwi’ roj.” 25. Original (Spanish): “No se busca asumir la identidad del ‘otro,’ sino tan sólo adoptar su vestimenta para ofrecer el gesto a la Virgen con el fin de obtener su favor o en agradecimiento del mismo.” 26. Original (Spanish): “Admirando la belleza de los tejidos pero sin darle importancia a la identidad cultural que éstos reflejan.” 27. Original (Kaqchikel): “Ri feriado man ta roma re re’; re re’ roma . . . pues, man wetaman ta achike roma ri’. Rije’ mo’soi’ nkiwachik’aj pa ruwi ri’ ri man xb’anataj ta.” 28. Original (Kaqchikel): “Jun rub’anikil chi ri mo’soi’ ye’ok’ achiel indígenas, ruk’utun achiel ri kaxlani’ xech’akon pa ruwi’ ri indígenas chuqa ri k’aslemal kaxlan yeruto’.” 29. Original (Kaqchikel): “Rije’ man yesamaj ta nkiketamaj pa ruwi’ qak’aslemal o man nkinojij pa ruwi’ re’. Chi ke rije, ri q’ij ruk’utun achike moda ri Guatemala xpe más jeb’ël kik’in, kin jub’a, po man qik’in ta röj.” 30. Original (Kaqchikel): “Majun oj k’o héroes. Ruchajin awach’alal. Qak’aslem, atijon awuchuq’a chire’ ri mo’soi’. Xaxe roma oj k’o, oj k’as. Manjun k’o ta k’atzinel pa ruwi’ re re’.” 31. Original (Kaqchikel): “E k’o indios, man Maya’ ta.” 32. Original (Kaqchikel): “O qonojel oj taq héroes.”

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Archival Documents Archivo de la Iglesia Católica de Chamelco 1555

Real Cédula de San Juan Chamelco

Archivo de la Parroquia de Momostenango 1974

Farewell Speech of 1973 reina indígena of Quetzaltenango. Delivered September 7, 1974

Archivo General de Centro América (AGCA) n.d. 1900 1912 1913 1914 1915 1928 1930a 1930b 1930c 1943 1944a 1944b

Inventario 1884–1924, leg. 22785, Direccion del Hospital General 1871–1879 Indice 116, Chimaltenango, leg. 1a, ex. 25 Indice 116, leg. 13A, ex. 1 Inventario 1884–1924, leg. 23070, Presidential Decree (December 23, 1913) Indice 116, leg. 15c, ex. 45 Indice 116, leg. 16c, ex. 39 Jefatura Política de Sacatepéquez (JP-S), Carta de Guatemala a Jefe Politíco de Sacatepéquez (June 23, 1928) Jefatura Política de Sacatepéquez (JP-S), Carta de dirección del Hospital “Pedro de Bethancourt” a Jefe Político (June 2, 1930 USMSC, Guatemala Collection, Box 7, folder 61) Jefatura Política de Sacatepéquez (JP-S), Nómina de las parteras en esta ciudad, Antigua, Guatemala (November 23, 1931) Jefatura Política de Sacatepéquez (JP-S), Nómina de las comadronas que existen en el Departamento de Sacatepéquez (August 27, 1932) Inventario 1884–1924, leg. 23234, Presidential Decree (May 4, 1943) Jefatura Política de Chimaltenango (JP-C), Francisca Tacen obtener licencia como comadrona empírica (August 12, 1943) Jefatura Política de Chimaltenango (JP-C), Leg. 88A, letters from

236 / References inspector de Sanidad Pública to intendente de San Martín Jilotepeque (June 7, August 10, 1944) and Jefatura Política Departmental certificado por Francisca Tacen (August 4, 1944) Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (AGEY) 1919 1922

Poder Judicial, vol. 119, exp. 32 Poder Judicial, vol. 131, exp. 002164

Archivo Municipal de Patzicía (AMP) 1941a 1941b 1942

Paquete 126, Libro de Sentencias Económicas (September 21, 1941) Paquete 126, Cayetana Aju solicitud para licencia de comadrona (September 23, 1941), Delegado Técnico de Salud Paquete 107, Libro de Sentencias Económicas (May 19, 1942)

Loyola–Notre Dame Library Special Collections 1948

Guatemala Collection, Box 20, Informes Folder, letter from San Miguel Duenas mayor Jorge Hernández to Governor (May 28, 1948)

University of Chicago Library Archives n.d.

Robert Redfield Papers, Box 45, Folder 9

Published Legislation Decreto de Ley 1344 1960

Guatemala: Congreso de la República, www.infile.com/leyes/ visualizador_demo/index.php?id=8184, accessed November 28, 2015

Governmental Decree 1935 1955

Articles 98 and 99 (April 16, 1935) #74, Section F, Article 15 (May 9, 1955)

Méndez, Rosendo P., compiler 1938

Recopilación de las leyes de la República de Guatemala, 1935– 1936, vol. 54 (Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional)

Contributors

Abigail E. Adams is professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at Central Connecticut State University. She is the coeditor of International Volunteer Tourism: Critical Reflections on Good Works in Central America with Katherine Borland and After the Coup: An Ethnographic Reframing of Guatemala 1954 with Timothy J. Smith. Fernando Armstrong-Fumero is associate professor of anthropology at Smith College. He is the author of Elusive Unity: Factionalism and the Limits of Identity Politics in Yucatán, Mexico and translator of the first English-language edition of Manuel Gamio’s Forjando Patria. He has published works in journals such as American Ethnologist and American Anthropologist. David Carey Jr. holds the Doehler Chair in History at Loyola University. His books include I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898–1944, Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive, Engendering Mayan History: Kaqchikel Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875–1970, Ojer taq tzijob’äl kichin ri Kaqchikela’ Winaqi’ (A history of the Kaqchikel people), and Our Elders Teach Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives. He also has edited Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History, Latino Voices in New England with Robert Atkinson, and Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics with Gema Santamaría.

238 / Contributors

Allen J. Christenson is professor of pre-Columbian studies at Brigham Young University. His publications include Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community, a two-volume critical edition of the Popol Vuh, and Bearing the Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World-Renewal. Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma Chávez serves as an indigenous language instructor at Tulane University. Her publications include Manual para Maestros: Cultura Maya e Interculturalidad, K’ak’a’ Ruk’u’x Amalia, with Rebecca Plummer Rohloff, and the forthcoming Oxlajuj Aj: Ruka’n Wuj. S. Ashley Kistler is associate professor of anthropology at Rollins College. She is the author of Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. She has published articles in journals including the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Anthropology and Humanism, Collaborative Anthropologies, and the Latin Americanist. Betsy Konefal is associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary and the author of For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960–1990. Her current project examines relationships between Maya resistance and state repression, looking to sites of massacre to understand causal links between histories of activism and genocide. Stephanie J. Litka is a lecturer of anthropology at the University of Dayton. Her research interests include community-based tourism and language contact among the Yucatec Maya. Walter E. Little is professor of anthropology at the University at Albany, SUNY. He is the author of Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity, coauthor of Street Economies in the Urban Global South and La ütz awäch? Introduction to the Kaqchikel Maya Language, and coeditor of Textile Economies: Power and Value from the Local to Transnational and Mayas in Post-War Guatemala. W. George Lovell is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and professor of geography at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He has thirteen book titles to his credit, among them Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala and A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala. Christopher H. Lutz is a cofounder of Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA) and the Maya Educational Foundation. He is the author of Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773: City, Caste and the Colonial Experience and two Spanish language works and has served as a coauthor and coeditor with W. George Lovell, Wendy Kramer, Karen Dakin, Robert Carmack, John Early, Margot Schevill, and Coryn Greatorex-Bell on a number of works.

Contributors / 239

Judith M. Maxwell is the Louise Rebecca Schawe and Williedell Schawe Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Tulane University. Recent publications include Ulïk ri Oxlajuj Ajmaq’: La llegada de las Trece Naciones with Ajpub’ García Ixmata’ and Manual para la enseñanza de un segundo idioma with Ajpub’ García Ixmata’, Saqijix Candelaria López, and Celia Ajú.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG), 13, 71, 74, 179, 186 Adams, Abigail E., 17, 63 Aguilera, Miguel, 107 ajkun, 85 Aj Poop B’atz’: absence from official Guatemalan discourse, 65; befriending of Spanish priests to protect people from violence of conquest, 61, 68–69; in Chamelco’s history, 66–67; contemporary perceptions of shaped by Guatemalan hegemonies and folkloric work, 66; documenting of, 70– 72; entered cave in Chamil at end of life, 69; erection and inauguration of cathedral in Chamelco to house Spanish bells, 68–69, 79nn7–8; life and significance, 67–70; as mediator of value systems of Q’eqchi’ and Spaniards, 70, 77; named “Lifelong Governor” of Verapaz provinces of Guatemala, 63, 69, 76, 80n14; recognition of heroic status by Catholics and followers of Maya-based religious practice, 67, 77; stories of

told publicly during community and family celebrations, 67; story of as hidden transcript of Q’eqchi’ resistance, 65–67, 70, 78; as symbol of Q’eqchi’ values and authenticity, 1, 15, 61, 65, 67–69; transformation from historical into mythological figure, 61, 65, 69–70. See also San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala Aj Poop B’atz’ Day, 15, 72–76 Aj Poop B’atz’ Project: bilingual book for children about life and importance of Aj Poop B’atz’, 76–77; and collaborative ethnography, 64–65; Grupo Aj Poop B’atz’, 63, 70 Ajú, Cayetana, 142 Almagro, Diego de, 53 Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. See Panzós, Alta Verapaz; Q’eqchi’ communities, Alta Verapaz; Rabín Ahau national pageant Alvarado, Diego de, 52 Alvarado, Gonzalo de, 45, 48 Alvarado, Jorge de: founding of Santiago, 50; intensification of war against

242 / Index Kaqchikels, 49–50; role in conquest of Guatemala, 49; temporary command of Guatemala in 1526, 40, 53–54 Alvarado, Pedro de: battle with Tekun Umam, 20–24, 26; death in 1541 during Mixtón rebellion in Nueva Galicia, Mexico, 55; demand for gold from and threats against Kaqchikels, 37, 43, 47, 51; explosive temperament, 43; invasion of Tz’utujil region and demands for tribute, 97n3, 98n4; letters to Hernán Cortés, 21, 24, 41; plan to build armada to sail to Spice Islands, 46, 54; seizure of Maya communities, 10; unsuccessful foray into Peru, 53; unsuccessful foray into western El Salvador, 43; voyage to Spain in 1526, 40, 49; voyage to Spain in 1536, 54; war against Kaqchikels, 44–48. See also KaqchikelMayas, and Spanish invasion Álvarez, Rosa, 145 Amaya, América, 143 Amerindian Perspectivism, theory of, 116n5 Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 26 Annals of the Kaqchikels. See Memorial de Sololá Antigua, Guatemala, 88–89, 91, 143, 190–91, 194, 201 Arana, Francisco Hernández, 38 Árbenz, Jacobo: agrarian reform legislation, 12; forced from office by CIAbacked operation, 12, 162 Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (AGEY), 126 Armstrong-Fumero, Fernando, 16– 17, 138 Arrióla, Taracena, 199–200 Asociación de Abogados y Notarios de Alta Verapaz, 185 Asociación de Ancianos de Petén, 186 Asociación de Estudiantes Universitarios, 180 Asselbergs, Florine, 42, 49

Asturias, Miguel Angel: member of Generación de 1920, 174; ode to Tekun Umam, 29 Atalay, Sonia, 64–65, 73 authenticity: as essentialist concept, 6, 102–3; Guatemala state appropriation of historical Maya figures as symbols of, 2, 8, 25–26, 160; and Maya handicraft vendors, 195; and Maya indigenous identities, 3, 5–6, 61, 65–69, 70–72, 77–78; Mexican state appropriation of historical figures as symbols of, 2, 8; and Rabín Ahau pageants, 7, 163–64, 167 Ay, Manuel Antonio, 106, 110, 116n4 Aztec empire, and value of alliances with imperial aggressor, 42 “Baile de la Conquista” (dance-drama), 21, 27–28 Balam Naj, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 118n13 Barahona el Viejo, Sancho de, 98n4 Barbachano, Miguel, 106 Barrera, José María, encounter with cross carved into tree, 107 Barrera, Lorenzo “Lol”: association in local stories with murders and violence in Pisté, 127–29; association with negative moral qualities by descendants, 122, 134; and Burning of Yaxcabá, 126; role in postrevolutionary state in Yucatán, 122 Bastos, Santiago, 14 b’atab’, 105 Batalla, Guillermo Bonfil, Utopia y revolución, 182–83 Beana, Santiago “San”: association in local stories with murders and violence in Pisté, 127–29; association with negative moral qualities by descendants, 122, 134; and Burning of Yaxcabá, 126; role in postrevolutionary state in Yucatán, 122 Belehé Qat (B’eleje’ K’at), Ahpoxahil: death in 1532 while forced to wash for gold, 40, 51, 56; elected king

Index / 243 after death of kings Hunyg and Lahuh Noh, 38; head of Xahil clan, 38; known as Sequechul or Sacachul to Spaniards, 37, 45–46, 56; littleknown heroic status, 15, 37–38; spearheaded Kaqchikel resistance to Spanish invasion, 15, 37; surrender to Alvarado in 1530, 40, 50. See also Cahí Ymox (Kaji’ Imox), Ahpozotzil Benjamin, Walter, 3 Bevington, Gary, 105 Bode, Barbara, 27 Books of Chilam Balam, 5 Borg, Barbara E., 38, 56n3, 59n28 Bourdieu, Pierre, 3 Bricker, Victoria, 85, 89, 90 Briones, Pedro de, 48 Caal Macz, Macaría, 175 Cabezas Carcache, Horacio, 21 Cablahuh Tihax “Don Jorge,” 51 Cabracán, 183–85 Cabrera, Manuel Estrada, 143, 175, 180 Cacchiquel and Cakchiquel. See Kaqchikel-Mayas, and Spanish invasion Cahí Ymox (Kaji’ Imox), Ahpozotzil: capture of in 1535, 54; contemporary lack of attention to deeds of, 47; elected king after death of kings Hunyg and Lahuh Noh, 38; flight from Santiago, 51, 52; hanged in 1540, 45–46, 54–56; head of Zotzil amaq’ (lineage), 38; imprisonment in Santiago, 45–46, 54–55; known as Sinacán or Sinacam to Spaniards, 37, 45–47, 52, 55–56; leader of Kaqchikel rebellion between 1524 and 1530, 15, 37, 56; little known heroic status, 15, 37–38, 47; and second Kaqchikel uprising, 51–54, 56; surrender to Alvarado in 1530, 40, 50. See also Belehé Qat (B’eleje’ K’at), Ahpoxahil Cajamarca, Peru, 150 Cakhay, Guatemala, 59n28 Calder, Bruce, 177

Calel, Vitalino, 186 Campbell, Joseph, 192–93 Campeche, Yucatán, 101 campesinos, 111; and Comité de Unidad Campesina, 169, 183; and land reform under Decree 900, 12; organizing and guerrilla activity in Panzós, Alta Verapaz, 161 Can Ek, Jacinto (Jacinto Kanek), 1, 106 Carey, David, Jr., 17 Carlos V, King, 68, 98n10 Carlsen, Robert, 98n4 Carmack, Robert M., 21, 38 Carrillo, Hernán, 48 Carrillo Puerto, Felipe, 9, 16–17; assassination in 1924 during local coup, 121; associated with process of “civilization” and attainment of “culture” in local communities, 128–29; commemorated as “martyr” for revolutionary cause in state and in Mexico, 121–23, 134; governor of Yucatán between 1922 and 1924, 121; omission of aspects of Yucatecan socialism in hero cult of, 126; oral narratives about, 123–25; performances of Maya culture, 123–24; role in development of Chichén Itzá, 124–25; Socialist Party of Yucatán activist in late 1910s, 121; stories about distribution of arms to peasant communities, 123–25; and value of humility, 18n5 Castajik, 181 Castañeda, Quetzil, 105 Casteñeda Paganini, Ricardo, 26 Caste War Museum, Tihosuco, Mexico, 109 Caste War of Yucatán, 12, 16; assumption of politicians and scholars of race as basis for, 117n7; official start of on July 30, 1847, 102; one of largest indigenous uprisings in Latin American history, 100, 114; Treaty of Tzucacab, 106; úuchben ba’atabil versus “Caste” misnomer, 116n3; Yucatec-Maya allies among Mexicans and Belizeans, 102, 118n18. See

244 / Index also Pat, Jacinto; Talking Cross of Yucatán (Cruz Parlante) Castro, Viveiros de, 116n5 Castro Blanco, Jésus, 28 Caté Otzoy, Baudilio Leonel, 202 Catholic Action movement: anticommunist and anti-indigenous, 139–40; attacks on cofradías, 140; instigation of 1967 unrest in San Juan Comalapa, 140 Catholic Church, Guatemala: Acción Católica Rural, 178; arrival of foreign priests after 1954, 178; Indigenous Pastoral Commission creation of Association of Indigenous University Students, 181; newly activist after WWII, 175, 177; radicalization of priests by Vatican II, 178; “Recovery of the Historic Memory,” 193; re-evangelization of communities and demonization of Q’eqchi’ spirituality, 179 Catu, Germana: death in 1967, 140; forbidden by husband to become midwife, 149; lay leader in Catholic Action movement, 139–40, 154; leadership role rooted in ability to resist and to accommodate, 138, 140; maintained traditional midwifery practices in face of state pressure to regulate, 17, 137–38, 153–54; miracles attributed to after death, 151– 52; never asked for payment of her services, 150; reference to as “fighter of poverty,” 151; reversal of dominant healthcare paradigm, 146–48, 153; supernatural powers attributed to painted image of, 140, 152, 154; symbol bridging chasm between Maya and Ladinos, 152, 154 CBPR (community-based participatory research), 64–65 ceiba, as central tree of world, 106 cenotes, 106 Centro San Benito, Guatemala, 179 Chajxucub’, sacred site built by Pop Caal, 185–86

Chamil, Guatemala, 75 Chancah Veracruz, Mexico, 112 Chan Kom, 122, 125, 128, 131–32 Chávez, Adríán Inés, 177 Chávez Petzey, Diego, 94, 99n14 Chávez Sojuel, Nicolás, 86–87, 90, 95 Chi, Cecilio, 106, 110, 116n4 Chichén Itzá, Mexico, 101, 124–25 Chij Xot, Guatemala, 49 Chimaltenango, Guatemala, 14 Chiquita, Dionicia, 143, 151 Chiya’, Guatemala: abandoned by Tz’utujil population after conquest, 82; Alvarado’s siege of, 97n3 Choc, Julio Roberto, 176–77 Christenson, Allen J., 16 Christianson, Tanja, 150 Chunpom, Mexico, 112 Cimé, Eustaquio, of Chan Kom: ambivalent local accounts of role as cacique politician, 125–26, 132, 134; attempt at reconciling rural suspicion of politics with notions of modernization, 131–33; autobiography, 125, 132; and Burning of Yaxcabá, 126–27, 134; primary informant of anthropologist of Robert Redfield, 122; role in founding schools in Chan Kom, 134; vision of authority and social and economic progress, 133–34 Clendinnen, Inga, 5, 104 Cobá, Mexico, 101, 108, 111 Cobán, Guatemala: Barrio Magdalena, 176; Colegio Padre Las Casas, 176; department capital of Alta Verapaz, 175; and German planters, 176–77; site of Primera Convención de Maestros Indígenas de Guatemala, 177 cofradía: Catholic Action attacks upon, 140; dedicated to celebrating town’s primary Catholic saints on their designated days, 79n5; document detailing journey of Aj Poop B’atz’, possibly from Resurrección cofradía of Chamelco, 79n13; leadership invested in couple, 30; and Mapla’s Sojuel, 85–91, 95; reading of Aj Poop

Index / 245 B’atz’ story from historical documents during public celebrations, 67; of Santiago Atitlán, and independence of Tz’utujil religious practices from Catholic control, 86–88; system of in Santiago Atitlán, 98n6 Cofradía of San Francisco/Ánimas, 95 Cofradía of San Juan, 89, 91 Cofradía of Santa Cruz, 88, 91 collaborative ethnography, 64–65. See also Aj Poop B’atz’ Project Colop, Enrique Sam, 175 comadronas empíricas, 142–43 comadronas títuladas, 142–43 Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), 158, 161, 169, 172n4 Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC), 169, 183–84 Comité Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala (CONAVIGUA), 167–68 Compañía de Jesús marketplace, Antigua, Guatemala, 190, 199 congregaciones, resettlement of rural Maya into Christian communities, 11 Connerton, Paul, 3 Contreras, Daniel, 15, 56n3; counternarrative to accounts of Kaqchikel rebellion, 46–49; on heroic role of Kaqchikel kings, 37–38, 56; on second rebellion of Kaqchikels, 51–55 Cook, Garrett, 117n8 Coordinadora Indígena Nacional, 183 Cornelio, guardian of Talking Cross at Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 112–13 Cortes, Hernán, 41, 48 cross symbolism: cross as axis mundi, 106; incorporated syncretically into Catholicism, 106–7; talking crosses as symbols of earthly manifestation of deities who guided people’s lives, 107. See also Talking Cross of Yucatán (Cruz Parlante) Cruzo’ob (people of the Cross): Cruzob used as abbreviation of, 118; ethnically neutral term, 102; formation of independent state of Chan Santa

Cruz (now Felipe Carrillo Puerto), 107; strong legacy of in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 112 Cruz Parlante. See Talking Cross of Yucatán (Cruz Parlante) Cucul, Alfredo, 177 culturalista/popular dichotomy, in Maya movement, 186–88 Cuma Chávez, Ixnal Ambrocia, 15, 28, 31, 33n9, 66 Cuma Chávez, Kawoq, 31 Curruchich, Andrés, 192–93 Cuxil, Demetrio, 194 Decree 900, 12 De la Huerta Rebellion, Mexico, 121 de Leon, Petronila, 145 dependísta, 180, 182 Día de la Hispanidad (formerly Día de la Raza), 191, 198–201; denounced by Maya leaders as “Day of Disgrace,” “Day of Mourning,” or “Day of Sad Remembrances,” 198; economic and political reframing of, 193; news media coverage of celebrations and protests, 198; occasion for Ladinos to embrace Maya culture by dressing in stereotypical Maya clothing, 195– 96, 199–201. See also KaqchikelMaya handicraft vendors Día de la Independencia, 2, 194 Día de la Revolución, 191, 194 Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Guatemala, and parading of Ladino children in “Maya” clothes as “inditos,” 182 Día del Ejército, 191, 193 Día de Tecún Umán, 2, 191; and news media stories questioning existence of Tekun Umam, 196; occasion for Ladinos to embrace Maya culture by dressing in stereotypical Maya clothing, 196, 199. See also Tekun Umam (Tecún Umán) Dias, Francisca, 149 Dias, Pascuala, 151 Díaz, Francisco, 38 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 48

246 / Index Douglas, Bill, 149 Dzul, Ruben, 128 Earthquake of 1976, Guatemala, 140, 152, 155n10, 184 Editorial Cholsamaj, and contemporary Maya orthography, 56n2 Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), 169 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, women’s roles in, 157, 172n2 El Gráfico, 164 encomiendas, 10–11, 182 Escamilla, Primitivo, of Cuncunul, 126 Escuela Nocturna de Adultos Número 4, 26 ethnohistories, as form of power in some Maya communities, 1, 5, 9 European immigrants: forced labor of Maya on plantations and haciendas, 11–12, 176; removal of land from indigenous communities to Europeans in Guatemala, 176 Falla, Salvador, 26–27 Fallaw, Ben, 132 Farriss, Nancy M., 104 Felipe Carrillo Puerto: Museo Maya, 108–9; pilgrimage center and tourist destination, 107, 118n14; site of Talking Cross, 100, 101, 107; stronger legacy of Talking Cross than in other centers, 112 feminist scholars, criticism of concept of heroes and heroism, 202–3 Fernández, Oscar, 63 Fischer, Edward F., 3, 6 Fisher, Berenice, 202–3 Foucault, Michel, 3, 103 Frente Democrático Nueva Guatemala, 188 Fuentes y Guzmán, Francisco Antonio de: account of Kaqchikel rebellion, 45–47; account of K’iche’ nawals, 25; accounts of battle of Tekun Umam and Alvarado, 21–24, 26; Recordación florida, 45

Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR), 12– 13, 161–62 FUNMAYAN, 186 Gabbert, Wolfgang, 102 Gall, Francis, 59n28 García, Jordan Pilar, 27 Garcia Granados, Jorge, 182 gendered norms, and concept of hero, 9, 193 Generación de 1920, Guatemala, 174, 180 Generaciones, used to mark Guatemalan intellectual history, 174 Girard, Raphael, 182 Girard, René, 130 Gmelch, Bohn, 103 Goetz, Delia, 38, 56n3 Gossen, Gary H., 192 Grandin, Greg, 9, 162, 177 Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Mérida, Mexico, 108 Grupo Folklórico San Cristóbal, Totonicapán, 27 Guatemala: anticlerical legislation, 83; 1954 CIA-backed golpe, 161, 174; forced labor of Maya on European plantations, 11–12; historical sites of, 39; inequality between Ladino and indigenous populations, 13, 88, 137; Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria (INTA), 161; Ixtahuacán miners’ strike of 1977, 184; October Revolution (Ten Years of Spring), 12, 161–62, 175; and the “problem Maya,” 159–60; seizure of Maya agricultural land, 12, 176; state appropriation of historical Maya figures as heroic symbols of indigenous authenticity, 2, 8–9, 25–26, 160; state attempts to force Maya communities to assimilate Ladino norms, 83, 137–38, 144, 160, 182; urban transport strike of 1978, 184 Guatemala City, 88 Guatemalan Civil War: effect on Santiago Atitlán, 12–13, 93; massacre of Maya communities, 12–13, 15, 93,

Index / 247 155n10, 158–59; and 1978 massacre of Q’eqchi’-Maya farmers in Panzós, 17, 160–62; Maya women and resistance to, 159–67 Guatemalan Workers Party, 161 Gucumatz, 84 Guerrero, Gonzalo, 1 Guzmán Bockler, Carlos, 180–82 haab’, 185 haciendas: cultivation and processing of henequén plant on, 11; Jacinto Pat as owner of, 16, 100, 105; Maya as indentured servants on until early twentieth century, 11–12, 176 Haeserijn, Stephen, 179, 185 Hale, Charles R., 14, 188, 195, 198 Hanks, William F., 104 Hanson, Allan, 6, 66 Hassig, Ross, 41 Hendrickson, Carol, 160, 199 henequén plant, cultivation and processing of on Spanish haciendas, 11 Herbert, Jean-Loup, 180–82 Hermans, Hubert, 103 hidden transcripts, 3, 65–67, 67, 70, 78, 148 hieroglyphic texts, of ancient Maya, 5, 18n4, 71 HIJOS-Guatemala, “La Revolución Florece,” 162–63, 171 Hill, Robert M., 57n7 historicity, 18n3; and cultural revitalization in Latin America, 63–65; in Maya life, 3–7 Hobsbawm, Eric, and “invention of tradition,” 6, 66 Holom Balam, Guatemala, 48 Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, hero twins in Popul Vuh, 192 Hurtado, Luis and Rocael, marimbistas, 28 Icó, José Ángel, 177 Indigenous Rights Referendum, Guatemala, defeat of, 14 indio: adopted by indigenous activists

in Guatemala at behest of Pop Caal, 182–83; used by Guatemalan pageant participants to refer to indigenous peoples, 164; used in sixteenth century to refer to indigenous peoples in Guatemala who belonged to the Mayan language family, 56n1, 66; use of term by Guatemalan government to refer to indigenous peoples, 159 Instituto Guatemalteco de Tourismo (INGUAT), 160 Instituto Indígena Santiago, Guatemala City, 178 internal colonialism, 181 International Indigenous Women’s Forum, 169 Irma, guardian of Talking Cross at Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 113–14, 119n27 Iskin-Neha’ib, 23 Iturralde Traconis, Jose María, 126 Itzamná, spoke through crosses, 107 Ixim, 183 Iximché, capital of Kaqchikel kingdom, 38, 48, 56n3 Ixtahuacán miners’ strike of 1977, Guatemala, 184 Izard, Miquel, 27 jach maya, 105 Jelin, Elizabeth, 158, 171 Jilotepeque, Kaqchikel homeland, 38 Jones, Grant D., 107, 119n23 Joo No’j K’iq’ab’, submission to Spanish, 97n3 Juárez y Aragón, J. Fernando, 25–26 kapixay, 95 Kaqchikel Chronicles, 34n24, 192 Kaqchikel language, 19n6 Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors, and national “Maya” holidays: advantage over Ladinos as mirror of Maya folktales about Rabbit and Coyote, 201; celebration of patron saint celebrations and local holidays, 193; claim that “there are no heroes” and that

248 / Index “we’re all heroes,” 192, 203–4; criticism of Maya cultural resurgence movement, 194–95; critique of national holidays celebrating “heroes,” 18, 190–91, 193; and Día de Tecún Umán, 190, 195–98, 203; forced to participate in required school activities for their children, 194, 197; gendered view of concept of hero, 193; high levels of literacy, 191; invocation of Maya ethnicity in work and profit from tourism, 135; national holidays as reminders of Ladino political domination, 195, 202; profits from sales of cheaply made “Indian” clothes to Ladinos, 199–201; projection of humility to one another, 18n5, 202; purchase of Maya clothing for their children to participate in local holiday celebrations, 195; resistance to national holidays celebrating the killing of Maya, 193–94; view of contemporary leaders, 202; view of Tekun Umam of legends as “fool,” 197–98 Kaqchikel-Mayas: self-identification of, 154n1; titles and ranking of leaders, 38, 56n3 Kaqchikel-Mayas, and Spanish invasion: abandonment of Iximché, 43–44; asked to aid Spaniards in fall of Utatlán, 41; counternarratives of rebellion, 47–49; documentary sources and historical context of rebellion, 38–40; initial alliance with Spaniards, 40–43, 82; Kaqchikels inaccurately referred to as Tlaxcalans of Guatemala, 40; rebellion of 152430, 15, 37, 43–50; second rebellion of early 1530s, 37, 52–54; surrender of Kaqchikel chiefs to Spaniards, 40, 50–51. See also Alvarado, Jorge de; Alvarado, Pedro de; Belehé Qat (B’eleje’ K’at), Ahpoxahil; Cahí Ymox (Kaji’ Imox), Ahpozotzil; Memorial de Sololá Kempen, Harry, 103 K’iche’ language, 19n6, 22, 177

K’iche’-Maya: first four progenitors of as naual uniac (nawal people), 84, 92; leaders in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 168; one of three Maya kingdoms dominating the western highlands of Guatemala, 82; and Spanish invasion (See Tekun Umam) Kiju, Diego, 96–97 kipus, kinawal, 25 K’iqab’, 22–24, 26, 31–32, 33n6 Kistler, S. Ashley, 15–16, 138 Konefal, Betsy, 13, 14, 17, 181, 183, 197 Kramer, Wendy, 49, 59n27 K’walkoj, 89–90, 98n10 “La Conquista.” See “Baile de la Conquista” (dance-drama) Ladinos: attempts to embrace Maya culture on national days of celebration, 182, 195–96, 199–202; control of land, commerce, and local government in Verapaz, 176; discrimination against indigenous students at Universidad de San Carlos, 181; gendered norms of assimilated by indigenous population, 9; identification of Aj Poop B’atz’ as a mythological character, 65, 71; Kaqchikel vendors’ rejection of Ladino notions of indigenous population, 18, 192, 195, 196– 97, 199–203; respect of some for Germana Catu, 140, 146–48, 151– 54; state attempts to force Maya communities to assimilate norms of, 83, 137–39, 142–46, 160, 182 Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, 27, 82, 85, 97 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 176 La Semana, 181 Lassiter, Luke Eric, 64 Latin America, historicity and cultural revitalization in, 63–65 Levenson, Deborah T., 9 Libro Segundo de Cabildo, 38, 52, 53, 54, 57n4, 57n7 Libro Tercero de Cabildo, 52, 57n4 Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 49 Ligas de Resistencia, 123, 126 Lima, Ricardo, Héroes de la vida cotid-

Index / 249 iana: Personajes mayas, volumen I, 192–93, 203 Litka, Stephanie J., 16, 105 Little, Walter E., 2, 18, 66, 204n1 Loewe, Ronald, 101 Lovell, W. George, 9, 10, 11, 15, 21 Luján Muñoz, Jorge, 21 Lutz, Christopher H., 9, 15, 21, 196 Lux de Cotí, Otilia, 159, 168–69, 172n4 Mamá Maquín (Adelina Caal): image with other martyrs in “La Revolución Florece” by HIJOS-Guatemala, 162–63; leader of struggle to regain land and dignity for Q’eqchi’s, 161– 62; and 1978 massacre in Panzós, Alta Verapaz, 9, 17, 160–62; namesake for women’s rights organization founded by refugees in Chiapas, Mexico, 162; Organización de Mujeres Guatemaltecas Refugiadas en México “Mamá Maquín,” 162 Mam peoples of Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, 46 Marco Rojuch, 93 Marín, Luis de, 48 Marko T’ula, Santos, 64 Martínez Fajardo, Gustavo Adolfo, 26 Martínez Peláez, Severo, La Patria del criollo, 180–81 Maryknoll Order, Centro Indígena, Guatemala City, 183 masewales, 112 Maudsley, Alfred P., 48, 95 Maxwell, Judith M., 15, 33n9, 66 May, General Francisco, 114, 118n13, 119n28 Maya communities, Guatemala: belief that ancestral gods live within blood and define political and social power, 95; celebration of emblems of indigenous power and agency, 1–2; disassociation of some communities from Maya identity, 14; efforts of Spanish colonials and Guatemalan government to marginalize history of, 63; historical knowledge, identity, and power, 65–66; history and historicity

in, 3–7, 10–14; marriage as rite of passage to adulthood, 30; recording of cosmologies in colonial era, 5; resurgence movement, 8, 13; state seizure of agricultural land, 12; views of controversial figures imposed upon Mayas through national hegemonies, 2; written tradition as essential to historical knowledge, 71. See also specific Maya groups Maya communities, Mexico. See Yucatec communities Maya highland kingdoms, Guatemala: creation of religious elements for different purposes, 117n8; K’iche’, Kaqchikel, and Tz’utujil, 82; prolonged warfare among and vulnerability to Spanish conquest, 82 Maya identity politics, 3–5; “Maya” as collective referent to members of Mayan language-speaking communities with shared history and values, 5, 154n1, 171n1; “Maya” as popular term of ethnic classification, possible reasons for, 117n7; Maya identification as form of resistance, 4 maya mezclado, 105 Maya oral tradition, 1, 5–6, 83, 123– 29, 178 Maya women and resistance, Guatemala: founders and members of nationallevel nongovernmental organizations, 167–68; and Guatemalan armed conflict, 17, 157–67; postwar activism, 167–70. See also Catu, Germana; Mamá Maquín (Adelina Caal); Menchú Tum, Rigoberta; midwives, in Maya communities of Guatemala; Rabín Ahau national pageant; reinas indígenas; Tuyuc, Rosalina McAllister, Carlota, 7 McAnany, Patricia, 84 Medina, Domingo A., 70 Memorial de Sololá, 5, 57n7; account of Kaqchikel rebellion, 43, 46; on Alvarado’s demand for gold, 45, 51; on Alvarado’s meeting with Kaqchikel kings, 40; composed by Xahils, 38;

[128.104.46.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-04 21:08 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

250 / Index on execution of Kaqchikel kings and other lords, 55; on Kaqchikel alliance with Spaniards, 41; portrayal of processes of alliances and negotiations, 42; on Spaniards war against Kaqchikels, 48, 50 Menchú Tum, Rigoberta: and Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC), 9; contested status within Maya communities, 9; disparaged by conservative right, 169–70; exile in Mexico and arrest upon return, 169; involvement in campesino movement, 169; opposition to co-option of Tekun Umam by non-Maya, 29, 32; public opposition to state violence against indigenous people, 17, 159, 169; receipt of Nobel Peace Prize, 9, 17, 152, 169; Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, 9, 170; testimonial narrative, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, 169– 70, 192 Mendelson, E. Michael, 81, 83, 90–91, 95–97, 99n11 Mérida, Mexico: founding of in 1542, 101; Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, 108 Mex, Barnabas “Bar” (pseudonym), 128–29, 134, 136n4 Mexican-American War, 102 Mexico: appropriation of historical figures as heroic symbols of indigenous authenticity, 2, 8; Caste War Museum, Tihosuco, 109; Chichén Itzá, 101, 124–25; commemoration of Felipe Carrillo Puerto as martyr for revolutionary cause, 121–23, 134; De la Huerta Rebellion, 121; Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Mérida, 108; Mixtón rebellion in Nueva Galicia, 55; Zapatista movement, women’s roles in, 157, 172n2. See also Yucatán Peninsula; Yucatecan Socialism; Yucatec communities midwifery in Guatemala, and state regulation: establishment of Division of Maternal and Child Health, 144– 45; eventual willingness of Ladino

doctors to incorporate indigenous knowledge, 147, 153; increased state attacks on indigenous practices after independence, 141; limited influence of state efforts on health beliefs in Maya communities, 145–46; medical professionals’ attribution of high infant mortality rate to midwives, 141– 42, 148; recognition by authorities of formally educated midwives (comadronas títuladas) but not those without formal training (comadronas empíricas), 142–43; regulation of obstetric care motivated by desire to perpetuate Ladino norms and male dominance, 144; state attempts to undermine traditional practitioners by establishing biomedical practices and regulations, 17, 137–46; state mandate for licensing and training of midwives, 141–42, 144; state persecution of those without licenses and restrictions upon practice of those who obtained them, 144 midwives, in Maya communities of Guatemala: ability to function in both Ladino and Maya worlds, 150; acceptance of whatever patients offered in payment, 150–51; as alternatives to Ladino, male, and biomedical dominance, 146, 148, 153; assertion of expertise in communities and legal system, 145–46; avoidance of state-mandated licenses and training classes from 1930s to 1960s, 142– 45; ceremonial rituals reifying gender constructs, 149–50; coding of language when speaking about women’s reproductive lives, 148; discouraged by husbands from becoming midwives, 149; flexibility in regard to gender constraints, 138–39, 149; inability to obtain state licenses due to illiteracy and poverty, 142–44; often censured and ostracized by community, 149–50; policing of practices among midwives themselves, 144; and preference by Maya women for

Index / 251 home birth with midwife, 145; responses to state demands ranging from resistance to eluding authorities to collaboration, 17, 137–38; revered members of communities, 151; treatment of Ladinos, 145–46, 153–54 Miguel, Father, 87–88 Millaman, Rosamel, 188 milpa, 113 Mola, Carlos Loret de, 132 Mondloch, James L., 21 Montejo, Francisco de, 101, 198 Montejo, Victor: El Q’anil: Man of Lightening, 10; Maya Intellectual Renaissance, 9; on Tekun Umam narrative, 197 Moros y Cristianos (dance drama), 27–28 movimiento maya: challenges to, 13– 14; culturalista/popular dichotomy, 186–88; favoring of self-designation as “Maya,” 154n1; fragmentation in postwar years, 186; and Pop Caal, 186 Mucú, Andrés Cuz, 179, 185–86 Muñoz, Luján, 57n7 Nachi Cocom, 16 Nahuat, Manuel, projected words of cross into Yukatek, 107 Naleb’, organization founded by Alvaro Pop, 186 nawals: individuals who can transform into animals or birds, 24, 25, 29, 31, 33n9; individuals with ability to predict future and perform miracles, 83–84 O’Brien-Rothe, Linda, 95 October Revolution of 1944, 12 Offit, Thomas, 117n8 Oglesby, Elizabeth, 10, 159 Orellana, Sandra L., 90 Oriente, Socialist antiheroes of, 125–29, 133–35 Otzoy, Irma, 197 Otzoy, Simón, 30–32, 45 Oudijk, Michel, 41–42 Oxi’ Kej, 26

pan-Maya identity, 6; and Adrián Inés Chávez, 177; consolidation of through speeches of indigenous pageant queens, 163–64; and designation of Maya, 4; disassociation of Maya from, 14; and Instituto Indígena Santiago, 178; and Pop Caal, 188; and spirituality, 8 Panzós, Alta Verapaz: campesino organizing and guerrilla activity, 161; and Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), 158, 161; gain and loss of land by Q’eqchi’-Mayas in 1952 agrarian reforms and 1954 coup, 161; 1978 massacre in, 9, 17, 160–62, 186 Paq’alib’al (place of appearance or manifestation), 86–87, 92–93, 95, 96–97 Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajadores (PGT), 161, 177 Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI), 130 Pat, Cecilio, 110 Pat, Filomento, of Tekom, 126 Pat, Jacinto, 109–11; contemporary accounts of, 110–14, 119n22; founding leader of fight for peasant rights and ethnic equality during Caste War, 100, 103, 105–6, 111–12; indigenous elite leader, 103, 105–6; killed by rival in September 1849, 106; moderate stance during war, 103, 116n4; signing of Treaty of Tzucacab after defeat of forces, 106; support for unification of Yucatán Peninsula with rest of Mexico, 110 Pat, Leonardo, 110–11, 116n4 Patch, Robert W., 104 Paul, Benjamin, 149 Paul, Lois, 149 Paula García Peláez, Francisco de, 56n3 Paz Cárcamo, Guillermo, 24, 56nn1– 2, 196 PBSUCCESS, CIA-backed operation to remove Árbenz from power in Guatemala, 12 Pec, Venancio, 106

252 / Index Pino Suárez, Mexico, 101, 108, 110 Pipils of Cuzcatlán, 46 Pisté, Yucatán, 122–29, 131, 136n4 Pixab’äj, and María Tekun, 30 Pizarro, Francisco, 53 Polo Sifontes, Francis, 42–43, 52, 54 Pop, Alvaro, 186 Pop Caal, Antonio, 14; and Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG), 186, 188; and Asociación de Estudiantes Universitarios (University Students’ Association, AEU), 180; and Association of Indigenous University Students, 181; building of scale model of Tikal at Chajxucub,” 186, 188; childhood in Verapaz, 175–77; creation of Q’eqchi’ calendar and celebration of Maya calendrical events, 185, 188; creation of sacred site Chajxucub’, 185–86; as “decidido,” 187; education, 176– 80; first Q’eqchi’ lawyer, 180; formation of Q’eqchi’-Maya spiritual guide groups, 186; founding leader of Maya resurgence movement, 17; and founding of Asociación de Abogados y Notarios de Alta Verapaz (Association of Lawyers and Notaries of Alta Verapaz), 185; and founding of Coordinadora Indígena Nacional, 183; injury in earthquake of 1976 and work in earthquake relief, 184; kidnapping and murder of in 2002, 17, 186–87; leader and advisor to movimiento maya, 186; organization of Cabracán, 183–84; participation in 1968 student uprisings at Salamanca and deportation from Spain, 175, 179; renouncing of priesthood and Catholic Church, 180; return to Alta Verapaz in late 1970s, 184–85; and Seminarios Indígenas, 183; spiritual and legal services to Q’eqchi’s and other Maya, 185; and staff of Maya spiritual guide, 183; work to revive Maya spirituality, 17–18. See also Pop Caal, Antonio, “Réplico del indio ante una disertación ladina”

Pop Caal, Antonio, “Réplico del indio ante una disertación ladina,” 174– 75, 181–83, 188; anthologized in Batalla’s Utopia y revolución, 182– 83; assertions of continuity of Maya culture and identity, 182, 188; encouraging indígenas to reclaim term “indio” as their own, 182; organization of indígenas around issues of, 183; presented at Congress of Americanists, Puebla, Mexico in 1974, 182; translated into English and published in Akwesasne Notes, 183; use of concepts of dependísta and internal colonialism to explore colonial and postcolonial exploitation of rural Maya, 182 Pop Caal, Esteban, 176, 178–79, 188 Popol Vuh, 5, 46, 84, 87, 92, 192 Pop Tecún, Dalia Ixmucané, 185 Pop Tecún, Iquibalam, 185 Pop Tecún, Itzamná, 185 Pop Yatz, Marcelino, 175 Portillo, Alfonso, 169 Portocarrero, Pedro de, 45, 49, 53 Prensa Libre, articles on Tekun Umam, 196 Primera Convención de Maestros Indígenas de Guatemala, 177 Provencio, Felicitas, 142 Puc, Juan de la Cruz, 117n10 Q’eqchi’ communities, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala: forced labor of Q’eqchi’Maya on European plantations, 11– 12, 176; nineteenth-century revolts against German oppression, 177; office of guisach, 185; oral tradition, 1; Ten Years of Spring, 177; transformation of historical leaders into mythological leaders, 63. See also Aj Poop B’atz’; Panzós, Alta Verapaz Q’eqchi’ language, 78n1 Quauhquechollan, Guatemala, 49 quetzal, 24–26, 31, 32 Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 22–23, 33n10, 33n12, 181 Quintana Roo, Yucatán, 101, 104, 110, 114

Index / 253 Quiyavit Caok, 54–56, 60n40 Q’umarkaj, Guatemala, fall of, 97n3 Rabín Ahau national pageant, 163, 195; call by pageant contestants for boycott of national festival after Panzós massacre, 164–65, 167; condemnation of pageant as form a modern colonialism, 7, 163–64. See also reinas indígenas Racanac, Dominga, 143 Raglan, Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 193 Real Cédula of Chamelco. document naming Aj Poop B’atz’ as “Lifelong Governor of the Verapaces,” 76, 80n14 Real Tribunal del Protomedicato, Guatemala, 141 Recinos, Adrián, translations of Memorial de Sololá, 26, 38, 44, 47, 56n3 Recourat, Edith, 182 Redfield, Robert, 122, 125, 128, 131–34 Reed, Nelson A., 102, 106 reinas indígenas: condemnation of Panzós massacre, 166–67; use of pageant speeches to condemn state repression and violence against Maya, 17, 163–67 Restall, Matthew, 41–42, 101, 117n7 Rojas, Diego de, 48, 53 Ronquillo, Gonzalo, 54 Ross, Amy, 159 Rossell y Arellano, Archbishop Mariano, 178 Ruíz Silva, Antonio, 26 Rukab’, Cofradía San Juan, story of Mapla’s Sojuel, 91 Sa’ Campana, Chamelco, 68 Sacatepéquez, Kaqchikel homeland, 38 Sahagún, Fr. Bernardino de, 84 Sahlins, Marshall: concept of “indigenization of modernity,” 6; and historicity, 3; and indigenous response to globalization, 6 San Andrés Xecul, Guatemala, 183, 185 San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, 191, 193–94

San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala: celebration of Aj Poop B’atz’ Day, 72, 73–75; collaborative ethnography in, 62–63; designated by Spaniards as pueblo de indios and thus semiautonomous, 66; honoring of ancestors through emulation, 67; identification of citizens as grandchildren of Aj Poop B’atz’, 62; location in Alta Verapaz, 66; Q’eqchi’ residents, 66; statue of Aj Poop B’atz’ and depiction of on town seal, 62; and tales of Aj Poop B’atz’, 1, 15–16, 61. See also Aj Poop B’atz’ San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, 193 Santa Catarina Barahona, Guatemala, 194 Santa Catarina Palopó, Guatemala, 191, 193 Santa Maria de Jesús, Guatemala, 194 Santiago Atitlán. See Tz’utujil-Maya community, Santiago Atitlán Santiago de Guatemala: founding of, 50; proceedings of the city council of, 38 Saquic Chan, Eusebio, 183, 185 Scott, James, 3, 63, 148, 195, 201 Seler, Eduard, 59n28 Seminario Mayor of Valencia, Spain, 178 Seminarios Indígenas, Association of Indigenous University Students, 181, 185 Shook, Edwin M., 59n28 Shore, Bradd, 3 Sierra O’Reilly, Justo, 116n3 Si Pop, Sebastian, 74 Smith, Carol, 150 Socialist Party of Yucatán (PSY): municipal and community leaders who facilitated the rise of, 121–22; violence associated with activities, 125. See also Yucatecan Socialism Sojuel, Francisco (Mapla’s): aid to Tz’utujils during violence of Guatemalan Civil War, 93–94; attempts on his life, 90–93; believed to have the ability after his death to interact with living in times of need, 97; believed to live with other nawal ancestors in cave of Paq’alib’al, 92–

254 / Index 93; and cofradía worship, 85–88; defender of life in face of otherworldly forces, 90; defender of Tz’utujil rights and practices from Spanish persecution, 83, 88–90; described as nawal acha who could prophesy future and perform miracles, 84–85; described as partly mortal person and partly an ageless founding ancestor from time of creation, 16, 81; disappearance of, 90–93; honorific attached to name, 97n2; and K’walkoj (two-headed eagle), 89–90; power as nawal to transform himself into a stone, 90; power in thwarting enemies of Tz’utujil people, 81; stories of preserved through oral tradition, 83; and value of humility, 18n5, 86. See also Tz’utujil-Maya community, Santiago Atitlán Sommer, Doris, 3 Spanish invasion: effects on Maya communities, 10–11. See also Alvarado, Pedro de; Kaqchikel-Mayas, and Spanish invasion “speaking idols”: and Spanish Virgin apparitions, 107; used to communicate with supernatural realm, 107. See also Talking Cross of Yucatán (Cruz Parlante) Stuart, David, 95 Sullivan, Paul, 104–5 Swezey, William R., 57n7, 59n28 Tacchibichen, Yucatán, 126 Tacen, Francisca, 144 Talking Cross of Yucatán (Cruz Parlante), 16; blend of pre-Columbian and Catholic traditions, 114–15; ceremonial centers of, 112–13; daily mass at shrine, 113; “daughters” of engraved Cross, 118n13; embodiment of human attributes, 116n5; found during Caste War and served as political and spiritual leader of rebel forces, 100, 107, 112, 116n5; guarded and interpreted by tatich or nohoch tata, 107; housed in

Chan Santa Cruz (now Felipe Carrillo Puerto), 107–8; local guardians of, 112–14, 119n23; rival centers of cross worship coinciding with segmentation of rebel forces, 107–8; role in saving local fighters from death, 113–14 Taller de Historia Oral Andina, Bolivia, 64 tatich or nohoch tata, 107 Tec, Don Carlín, 123, 127, 129, 133 Tecún, Julio, 185 Tecún Canil, Gloria Dominga, 185 Tekun, Maria, 30–32, 36n39; and Pixab’äj, 30 Tekun Umam (Tecún Umán), 1; accounts of battle against Pedro de Alvarado, 15, 20–25, 37; appropriation of image to embody a diverse array of causes, 9, 21, 37; celebrated as national hero by Guatemalan state, 2, 8, 15, 21, 25–27, 29, 32, 55; celebration in dance, 27–28, 32, 56; celebration in poetry, 29–30; celebration in song, 28–29; characterization of in dominant discourses, 24–27, 196–97; cognomen consisting of title of office and a relationship term, 21–22; as Commander in Chief of K’iche’ armies, 26; controversy over celebration of as national hero, 29, 32, 197–98; grandson of Ajaw K’iqab’, 23–24, 32; historical sources documenting deeds, 20–24, 32; link to the quetzal, 22–27, 29, 31, 34n24; portrayed as embodiment of strength, liberty, and will to defend his people, 26, 28, 30; portrayed as ruler at Totonicapán (Chwi Miq’ina) over Tzijb’achaj canton, 22; statue of in Avenida Roosevelt, Guatemala City, 21; wife of (Maria Tekun), 30. See also Día de Tecún Umán Tihosuco, Mexico: Caste War Museum, 109, 116n4, 118n14; home of Jacinto Pat, 100–101, 105, 108 Tinúm, Yucatán, 122, 134 Título de Ajpop Huitzitzil Tz’unun, 21, 23, 34n17

Index / 255 Título de Ajpop Kecham, 21 Título de la Casa Ixquin-Nehaib, 20–21, 23, 33n3, 33n12 Título de Totonicapán, 22 Título Koyo’i’, 20, 21, 22–24 Tixcacal Guardia, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, 112 Tlaxcala, alliance with Spaniards against Aztecs, 40 tourism: effect on indigenous communities in Yucatán Peninsula, 111, 114– 15, 131; profit of Kaqchikel-Maya handicraft vendors from, 135 Treaty of Tzucacab, 106 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 3 Tulum, Mexico, 112 Tunatiuh or Tonatiw. See Alvarado, Pedro de Turner, Victor, theory of liminal dramas, 130 Tuyuc, Rosalina, 152, 159, 168 tzolkin, 185 Tzololá (Sololá), Kaqchikel homeland, 38, 56n3, 59n28 tzut, 95 Tz’utujil language, 97n1 Tz’utujil-Maya community, Santiago Atitlán, 16; belief in ancestors who still live in world and aid descendants, 84–85; belief in animal companions or counterparts to gods and other individuals, 90; belief in continued presence of Sojuel as living person in community, 94–95, 97; belief in recency of golden era of ancestors, 96; belief that rituals founded by ancestors can restore life-generating powers of world, 81; belief that traditions of ancestors are disappearing, 96; cofradía and Tz’utujil religious practices, 86–88; cofradía system in, 98n6; colonialera church, 83, 98n10; preservation of traditional institutions because of submission to Spanish invaders and lack of strong clerical presence, 82– 83, 98n4; reference to powerful ancestors as nawals, 83–84; uprising of

a group against Spanish invasion, 46; view that important events recur, 85; violence against and slaughter of residents during Guatemalan Civil War, 93–94. See also Sojuel, Francisco (Mapla’s) Ubico, Jorge, 155n10; attempts to position Guatemala as modern nation, 143; in mythology of tzuultaq’a, 63– 64; overthrow of, 180; and seizure of Maya agricultural land, 12 United Fruit Company, 12 United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 169 United Nations Truth Commission report, “Guatemala Memory of Silence,” 193. See also Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) Universidad de San Carlos (USAC), critical developmental activism of students, 180 Uxmal, Mexico, 101 Valladares, Lorena, 143 Valladolid, Yucatán, 107; known as la ciudad heroica, 108; site of historical uprisings, 108 Van Akkeren, Ruud, 21 Vázquez, Francisco: account of Kaqchikel rebellion, 44–46; account of second Kaqchikel rebellion, 52– 55; Historia de la Provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Guatemala, 46, 57n7 Villa Rojas, Alfonso, 108, 125, 128, 131 Villigrán family, ill treatment of Tz’utujils, 88 Vrana, Heather, 180, 196 Warren, Kay B., 5 Way, J. T., 13 Weeks, Andrew, 95 Whitehead, Neil, 3 Wilhelm, Ronald W., 32 women and resistance: central role in public expression of memories of state violence and repression in Latin

256 / Index America, 158; roles in Zapatista movement, 157. See also Catu, Germana; Mamá Maquín (Adelina Caal); Maya women and resistance, Guatemala; Menchú Tum, Rigoberta; midwives, in Maya communities of Guatemala; Rabín Ahau national pageant; reinas indígenas; Tuyuc, Rosalina Xekul, título referenced by Fuentes y Guzmán, 23–24 Xelajub’ No’j, Guatemala, 20, 33n10. See also Quetzaltenango Xepau, Guatemala, 48 Ximénez, Francisco, Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala, 24, 46, 82 Xocen, Yucatán, 107, 117nn9–10 Yanes, Edwin, 29–30 Yaxcabá, Yucatán: Burning of, 126– 27; and Yucatecan Liberal Party (PLY), 126 Ye’kuana (Venezuela) history, written record of to conform to national standards, 70–71 Yucatán Peninsula: conflict between Mexican centralists and Yucatecan federalists, 102; population of nearly one-million Yukatek-Mayan speakers, 101 Yucatecan Liberal Party (PLY), 126 Yucatecan Socialism: contrast between

hero and antiheroes of, 125–29, 134; and term “compañero,” 133. See also Socialist Party of Yucatán (PSY) Yucatec communities, 19n7; adaptation, syncretism, and ideological agency, 104–5, 117n8; agency gained from view of cultural heroes, 100–101; ambivalence toward politics of Maya identity, 122, 135; belief in deceased ancestors who still live in world and assist descendants, 84; centrality of tourism to local economies, 131; concept of “tranquility” and principle of ool, 130–31; cyclical understanding of time and history and acceptance of globalism, 104–5; subject to white Yucatecan control in postcolonial period, 11–12, 102 Yucatec communities, and politics: limited development of and suspicion toward grassroots activism, 122, 129, 132, 134–35; local association of professional politicians with graft and violence, 129; negative portrayal of local Socialist militants in rural oral histories, 125–29, 133; rural attitudes toward relationship between politics and culture, 131; and violence associated with electoral outcomes, 129–30, 134 Yukatek-Mayan language, 19nn6–7, 103 Zapeta, Estuardo, 194, 197 Zurrilla, Francisco, 52, 53