Mayan Catholicism in Chichicastenango

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Issue Date: DECEMBER 1987 Volume: 02 Page: 503

PEOPLES

Mayan Catholicism in Chichicastenango

BY MERLINDA. FOURNIER

History explains the mix of Mayan and Catholic religion as still practices inside the church of Santo Tomas in this Guatemalan city.

Merlinda. Fournier is a free-lance writer, residing in Washington, D.C. she recently returned from a fact-finding tour of Guatemala.

Despite a history of enforced political and economic submission to the Spanish, the Guatemalan Indian descendants of the Maya have clung with remarkable tenacity to their religious ethics and cultural integrity. Some three hundred ethnic groups, speaking variations of at least seventeen distinct Mayan languages, persist to this day. From the ancient pyramid-temples of Tikal to the modern folk Catholicism of Santo Tomas Chichicastenango, their long pilgrimage is visible. Under successive military regimes in this century (civilian rule was restored in Guatemala only in January 1986), these highlanders were again under siege.

The backbone of this contemporary confrontation is a land-tenure system through which the ladinos (westernized Guatemalans) still dominate the indigenous peoples. Approximately 70 percent of Guatemala's arable land is held by 20 percent of the population, according to statistics cited by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Mayan Indian farmers live on a subsistence level from one year to the next. Mountain villagers often burn jungle bush to create new fields for their crops. Rain is crucial, but uncertain. It does not always come. Such vagaries of fate are believed to be the work of the gods, who can be either beneficent or malevolent.

To the Indian, land is sacred. It is more than just the means necessary to produce maize for survival; Land is believed to be loaned to a man by his ancestors. It therefore forms the base upon which both the individual's family life and the community's socioreligious structure can stand.

For this reason, land reform was the promise most often held out by Marxist guerrillas when they solicited peasant aid for the insurgency that expanded throughout the sixties and seventies. "For each guerrilla shooting there are ten Indians working behind him": became the government view, and every peasant became suspect. Guatemalan army massacres of civilians became a standard counterinsurgency tactic. By the army's own admission, anti-guerrilla campaigns left some 440 villages destroyed and more than thirty thousand natives dead.

A military presence is still very visible in the country, but these political troubles have at least made the government more aware of those Mayan needs that were previously exploited by the guerrillas.

What the textbooks say on Mayan religion comes into surprising focus. Recalling that eh Mayan cosmos is neutral, and that the forces of nature and destiny are capricious and must be propitiated with sacrifice, some Maya will undoubtedly have interpreted these latest massacres, including the violent earthquake of 1976, as retributions for their sins.

The Mayan Worldview

Multiple aspects of a single deity are common in Mayan thought, Itzamna, god of the Mayan elite and their cities, is also the god, or rather gods, of the earth's four corners. Itzamna's long, serpentine bodies, snaking outward from the cardinal points, form the heavens just as the four walls of a pyramid form the temple. The earth's four corners are so significant in Mayan cosmology that even Tikal's vast network of ancient structures was oriented on that basis. The "city" of Tikal, a civic-ceremonial center, covers some forty-eight square miles; its monumental ruins today remain mostly shrouded in lush jungle growth. Surprisingly, the calculations of Tikal were founded on magnetic rather than true north. Each direction is visualized as a colored roadway: red for east, white for north, black for west, and yellow for south. The black road is a graphic element in the mythology, for it is the road to Xibalba (hell). From the earth's green midpoint rises the great Ceiba (First Tree of the World). Its branches and roots intertwine throughout the thirteen layers of sky and nine layers of underworld, forming the Ceiba's symbol, a pre-Hispanic cross.

In the evolution of Mayan mythology, Itzamna's four aspects were confused with, and later replaced in peasant religion by, the four chacs (reptile-like gods who possessed four different aspects related to the four different directions), another permutation of the rain god. The long-nosed Chacs, riding on the backs of flying serpents, pour rain from their calabashes across the newly planted fields. In fact, legend goes, it was the mightiest Chac who first gave corn to man. Throwing thunderbolts from the heavens, he cracked the giant boulder under which the precious kernels had lain hidden. A ceremony called the Chachaac is still relied on today to invoke the rain god when he seems to have overlooked the correct time for planting. But as with all Mayan divinities, the Chacs are not necessarily benevolent. The rains may not come. The fierce gaze of Ah Kinchil (the sun god) may scorch the earth and hunger may come instead.

In Mayan thought, beyond the fixed corners of the earth there is time. It is the orderly movement of the seasons and planets, the never-ending cycle of lucky and unlucky days that allows man to order his actions in accordance with destiny. Thus, the Maya framed numerous systems for timekeeping. For both the individual and the community, the tzolkin (count of days) became an unfailing guide. This ritual calendar encapsulated all the forces of destiny, and even today the astrology of "daykeepers", using corn kernels and coral seeds to mark the days, dictates much of a Mayan's daily lie. However, this ritual timekeeping was not sufficient for the inquisitive Maya, who developed astronomical calculations as well. The Long Count, based on the tun (360-day units), became the pinnacle of their calendrical skills. It allowed any event within historical time to be fixed with certainty. Inscriptions of the Long Count serve to define the span of the classic period, the Mayan Golden Age: A.D. 250 to 900.

Then it was over. Suddenly, Tikal and the great Mayan centers of the lowlands collapsed. Mexican invaders? Overpopulation? Agricultural exhaustion? Trade failure? Peasant revolt? Evidence fro each theory has come to light. However, just as research is moving away from the oversimplified" priest-plus-peasant" view of Mayan society to an appreciation of the complex, stratified nature of its cosmopolitan centers, newer studies lead scholars to believe that some as-yet-unknown combination of stress factors precipitated the fall of classic culture. But, although questions remain, the results of the collapse are clear. The civic structures of the community disappeared--monumental construction ceased (some-times in midbuilding), and fields tended with intensive farming techniques died back. The priestly aspects of Mayan religion failed; the theology and sciences so the temple cults crumbled; and the Long Count was lost. In Tikal mute testimony of this impoverishment are the scattered stelae, replaced upside down by survivors attempting to maintain a semblance of ancient traditions.

The Toltec invasion

After the decay of classic culture, in El Peten, the smaller city-states of northern Yucatan and the Guatemalan highlands came under the influence of Toltec invaders. Quasi-historical texts recount the saga of Topiltzin, ninth of the Toltec rulers to bear the title of Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent). Quetzalcoatl, a god descended to become an early king, is the cultural hero of Mayan religion. He is god of springtime and agriculture, a patron of poetry and art, the lord of healing and hope -idolized for his wisdom and gentleness. But he was a god with one weakness; he lost his priestly celibacy. Banished, Quetzalcoatl made his way to the Gulf Coast, where he set sail for the Red Land of sunrise. As his namesake, Topiltzin also fell to desire, marrying outside the nobility and putting himself at odds with the more militant of his knightly orders. Defeated in a bloody civil war, Topiltzin and his followers fled their capital city of Tollan (now Tula, a site some twenty miles north of Mexico City). They too sailed from the Gulf Coast.

In A.D. 987, the Maya recorded the arrival from the west (i.e. Mexico) of a man calling himself Kukulcan (Feathered Serpent). He wrested Yucatan from its Mayan rulers and established his capital at Chichen Itza. While the Yucatan experienced a resurgent splendor under this new ruler, many tribes of highland. Guatemala were drawn into the kingdom of the Quiche Maya. "The tribes came," claims Dennis Tedlock's translation of the native Popul Vuh (council book), "whether small or great and whatever the titles of their lords, adding to the greatness of the quiche. As splendor and majesty grew, so grew the houses of gods and the houses of lords…When the tribes burned offerings, they came before Tohil first…They came away in unity, having heard, there at Quiche, what all of them should do." In time, however, the Quiche lost much of their original heritage and were absorbed by the Mayan peasant culture. Consequently, the Guatemalan tribes retained their individual identities and no homogeneous culture ever existed.

Many Toltec customs assumed importance to the Maya, notably the religious prominence of idols and the cult of the feathered serpent, which required human hearts as sacrifice. New architectural techniques and artistic styles, and a more secular, militaristic social order were also adopted. This social structure persisted until the colonial government divided the Indian population into approximately 315 townships.

Each township, called a Pueblo, is a distinctive social and sometimes linguistic unit. Its inhabitants consider themselves a separate people. They have their own unique customs, dress, economic specialties, patron saints, fiestas, and market days. Endogamy heightens their exclusivity.

Within the four corners of his pueblo, a man will be nurtured by the land of his ancestors. Here the "daykeepers' will help him chart his destiny. Here he will marry and raise his children. To the Indian, marriage is a mystic union of man and woman: To be a complete person, a person must marry. The sanctity of marriage is reasserted during all formal occasions--when a husband is always accompanied by his wife. The ritual greeting exchanged at such a time is, literally, "There, married one." But this ideal union can be easily violated--no only by adultery, but by harsh words or even secret thoughts. Family quarrels are considered the chief source of offense to the ancestors and as such create untold anxiety and guilt. Much of man's personal religions is dominated by his desire to protect his household and seek pardon for any domestic sins.

The impact of Catholicism

The Spanish conquest moved rapidly, and only thirty-two years after Columbus landed in Santo Domingo, Pedro de Alvarado crossed into Guatemala. While the search for slaves and gold was the driving force of the conquistadores, God was the force that drove the early missionaries. Educated under the fanatic zeal of the Spanish Inquisition, these friars were under a moral imperative to convert the idolatrous Maya. Thus, along with Pedro de Alvarado came the Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Mercedarians. By 1545, these four orders were engaged in systematic efforts to convert the native population, often herding the Indians into communities around a church for monastery to supervise their indoctrination. But the priests were too few and the conversion process, where it occurred, too hurried. Instead, a highly syncretic faith emerged, weaving traditional and Christian practices into a new whole. In fact, and ironically so, the Maya often despise the more secular ladino for not practicing "true" Catholicism.

In her study Maya Society Under colonial rule, historian Nancy M. Farriss of the University of Pennsylvania pinpoints the original impact of Spanish Catholicism on the Indian population. She reflects:

Acknowledging the political sovereignty of the Spanish king and acknowledging the spiritual sovereignty of the Christian God must have appeared at first as familiar and related acts of vassalage from a defeated people; the symbol of conquest in the Mesoamerican tradition, after all, was a burning temple…[However] to accept this new personage as a sacred being, even as an especially powerful one, was not the same as accepting Him as the only sacred being in the cosmos. And it was the Judeo-Christian God's intolerance of rivals that created the crisis in the Maya's corporate relationship with the supernatural.

The colonial church, however, distinguished superstitious folk rites--confined to the individual household and milpa (shifting fields)--from idolatry--public ceremonies celebrated, until the conquest, in the temples and plazas. Superstition was only a venial sin righted by light penances. But secret, underground services conducted by an Ah Kin (native priest) brought severe punishment--the lightest sentence was a hundred lashes. The friars' vigilance soon reduced public worship to the prescribed Christian format. However, this conformity did not necessarily represent theological understanding and agreement. The rapid rise of Catholicism may have actually been fostered by a number of pre-Hispanic ritual elements that resembled those in Christian rites.

Ritual purity was one area in which Mayan thought paralleled Catholic practices. Fasting and continence were considered essential preconditions for most ceremonies. Moreover, the Christian concept of Christ's sacrifice and the sanctity of his blood were readily appreciated. Most Mayan ceremonies required a blood sacrifice. Anything from a small bird to a human heart could be offered. But it was more common for an individual to offer his own blood. This was done by running needles or stingray spines through the ear, cheeks, lips, tongue, or genitals. The blood was then smeared over the mouths of the idols, ritually feeding them. Even more remarkable was the traditional Mayan use of baptism and confession. Puberty rites included both practices. After confession, children were sprinkled with 'virgin' water, that is, water collected deep in the bush where women did not walk. Confession took place not only at puberty, but in adulthood, especially in times of illness or crisis. A priest was preferred, but confession to a spouse or relative was equally effective in hearing confession.

Church and state

Despite its apparent acceptance, the most traditional Christian precepts or practices often suffered an inexplicable twisting in the process of transmission. The transplantation of the Spanish brotherhoods (cofradias) to the New World underlines this fact. The original cofradia was a voluntary organization of devotees dedicated to a specific saint--supported by yearly dues and supporting its members through masses, rosary recitations, or personal funeral services. But Christianity's concept of personal salvation never did take root, and for the Maya, ritual life remained a collective enterprise, a fusion of church and state necessary to ensure the continuation of the community. Thus the Mayan cofradia is primarily a public institution supported by the entire community and charged with the ritual care of the saints, the community's new divine guardians. In fact, the authority of the cofradia and its officers comes from the ancestors--whom the Maya consider to be the enforcers of moral law and social order.

Today, the cofradias continue to illustrate that preservation of the community and its costumbres (traditions) remains the goal of each individual. The time and money a man contributes to these brotherhoods equals the prestige to which he and his family are entitled. To attain the wealth necessary for such service, a man must fulfill his "natural" role. For a man to be a man he must own land and grow corn; manual labor is thus the foundation of economic and spiritual fulfillment. Mayan worldview is distinctively sex-based. For men the world is the milpa, the ever-shifting fields, while for women it is the kitchen with its three-stoned hearth. The relationship is viewed as complementary.

The major expense for members of the cofradias, and the outstanding religious expression of the community, is the fiesta. In Chichicastenango, fourteen different confradias and their respective saints round out the Catholic calendar. Days of preparation climax in a grand procession. In mid-morning, after mass, the saint's image is carried through streets jammed with people from both town and country. Church bells, marimbas, and drums join in joyous cacophony. The plaza explodes with fireworks. In several hours, the fiesta relaxes into drinking and dancing. But apparently these are all externals and not the central rites. In here book Chichicastenango--A Guatemalan Village, anthropologist Ruth Bunzel of Columbia University clams, "The ceremonies in the cofradias are concerned less with the cult of the Saint than with the ancestors, and with Christ as the fountain-head of tradition…One can speculate as to why the idea of continuity should be so persistently reiterated in the one aspect of life in which the break with the past has been the most dramatic."

Market days at Chichi

In the village of Santo Tomas Chichicastenango (called chichi for short), the normally drab town square comes alive with richly colored textiles on market days--Thursdays and Sundays. Most of these textiles are external expressions of the tenacious faith of the Maya, of their adoration of nature and respect for time or destiny. In fact, thread is used symbolically by the natives today to express a deep, continuity with their past. In the highlands, a man's saco (jacket) and a woman's huipil (a sleeveless blouse made from a rectangle of cloth) are still embroidered (by men!) with the cosmology of their Mayan ancestors: the red of sacrificial blood, the yellow of sunlight and corn, the gray of moonlight, and the green of hope. Furthermore, 149 distinctive patterns not only picture the world of myth but also identify their owners' village, occupation, and even marital status.

Besides its agricultural base, Chichi is primarily a place where traders live, both selling their own surpluses and acting as the middlemen of the highlands. Local specializations and the complex trade patterns between the coast and the highlands can be traced back to pre-Columbian times. According to anthropologist Sol Tax of the University of Chicago, it may be commercial institutions that have helped isolate the Indians' worldview from foreign intrusions, including that of modern tourism. The practice of posada is one example of such an institution. Posada is the customary use of private homes by travelers and traders, a common practice in rural societies. In Guatemala, relations between guest and host are kept strictly impersonal. Such a practice taught the Maya to restrict interpersonal relationships to their own pueblo, while at the same time facilitating travel and trade. This ingrained concept has been extended to Western tourists and even to ladino residents in the township.

On the east and west, the plaza of this city is flanked by twin white washed churches, Santo Tomas and El Calvario. Even though Chichi's market is one of the largest and most colorful in the highlands, it is the Church of Santo Tomas that brings in busloads of tourists. This is the one place where a casual observer can participate in the folkways of the living Maya. Here the old gods--the forces of nature and time--the ancestors, and the Catholic saints all have their place. It is unique. The church (erected about 1540) was set on the site of a Mayan "holy ground." Converts reportedly refused to attend mass if not allowed to worship both old and new gods. "And that is why you must not call us Indians,' a local guide explains to tourists, adding that "to a Guatemalan, Indieo means hard-headed." The hardheadedness must, however, be found in the refusal by the Maya to abandon their gods in Chichi. Hence, they prefer to be referred to by the tourists as natives or aborigines.

The protestations of Catholic Church officials concerning these "pagan" rituals practiced on its steps and within its walls in Chichi have been to little or no avail. However, the government, conscious of native needs and the profitability of large numbers of tourists coming to witness this religious intermix, has consistently sided with the Maya Quiche. Thus, the smoke of copal incense rises continually from the quemada, a concrete altar at the foot of Santo Tomas' grand flight of stairs. On the steps, a jumble of men, some in native costume and others in ladino or Western garb, swing censers and murmur prayers, cleansing themselves before entering the church proper. Tourists are not allowed on the stairs, which are reminiscent of the grand steps of Mayan pyramids. They are asked to enter Santo Tomas via a side door through the monastery. Once inside, they are not allowed to take photographs. These simple rules are meant to prevent recurrence of native resentments; aggressive tourists once caused the Quiche to put a ban on tourism for four years in the early 1930s.

Ancestors and the living

The local tour guide provides a culturally flavored explanation of the ceremonies and services that can be witnessed inside the church. His old friends and neighbors kneel at the low wooden platforms that line the main aisle of the church, each sacred to specific saints and ancestors. On each platform, dozens of little tallow candles flicker among small heaps of flower petals. "They are not praying," he says softly. "We do not pray. We talk to our divinities, telling hem honestly what hurts, what makes us happy, what our neighbors are doing, anything. We even get angry. Right now, everyone is serious. We need the rains to come."

Many devout people can be seen setting out candles two by two: They believe that is gesture will reinforce the seriousness of their request for favors and miracles. It is believed that ancestors of the fourth generation will take notice. Under normal circumstances, these ancestors will have traveled so far in the afterworld that they have forgotten the living. But his has also purified them, making them ready to act as reliable messengers to the divinities. People can be seen scattering flower petals among the flickering candles, while sprinkling aguardiente (a rum distilled from brown sugar) on them.

The Maya do not believe in reincarnation. They hold that there is a better life, a better world. This picture of rest and the fulfillment of wisdom and beauty is found in the symbolism of Kukulcan. Understandably, cemeteries are built on a high place or mountain, to allow the soul to be free to fly up and away.

Maya, as Catholics, drink outside as a concession to the church. And a concession it is, for to the Maya drinking is an act of worship, pleasing to the gods who wish to see men happy. Because drunkenness is a religious institution--at the fiesta of Santo Tomas nearly everyone in town may be drunk for almost a week--alcoholism has become a general social problem.

Although tourism is one of Guatemala's chief sources of foreign currency, it acts even more as a force to help preserve the nation's cultural heritage. As witnessed above, these traditions are not corrupted by tourists, because they are--in an inviting way--asked to be respectful to these traditions.