Last weekend we went to Lago de Atitlan, a 1,000'-deep freshwater lake in the mountainous/volcanic Guatemalan highlands. The lake abides in a caldera formed by an ancient eruption, and has since human time observable been a site of great significance to the Maya who populated the region in the pre-Columbian era. There are actually archaeological sites beneath the water, but to observe these you must be high-altitude deep-water dive certified, a task for which I am doubly unqualified.
The purpose of the trip was to relax for the weekend, but I was keen to imbibe the distinct local Maya culture. There are over 20 Mayan groups living in Central America today, with distinct languages and cultural traditions. The villages around Atitlan are comprised of predominately Kaqchikel and Tzutujil Mayans. In a neat bit of colonial treachery, the Kaqchikels were enlisted by conquistadores at the dawn of Spanish conquest to defeat their then neighboring faction, the K'iche Mayans, before themselves falling victim to subjugation. Now the Kaqchikeles and Tzutujiles enjoy relative cultural autonomy, maintaining a more or less traditional way of life in the villages around the Lake, such as the one I visited, Santiago de Atitlan.
During my one full day in Santiago I took the opportunity to visit a Cofradía, a meeting hall where an interesting amalgamation of Catholicism and the shamanic Tzutujil religion is practiced. A few other students and I witnessed the blessing of an American philanthropist (and funder of excavations at San Bartolo). Two Tzutujil nahuals, or shamans, presided over the ceremony, one swinging incense around those to be blessed and the other (pictured above) playing guitar. In this picture the elder nahual has just inundated his guitar with incense from the Copal tree, floating a generous amount of the fragrant smoke into the cavity of his instrument. He played with his guitar nearly vertical and as he did a stream of smoke slowly trailed out around his hands and engulfed him in a pale, sun-inflected cloud. Cool image.
After the Cofradía we visited this guy, Maximon, a rather enigmatic Tzutujil god. Maximon is a local legend, and spends each year at a different house, making his annual trip during Semana Santa (the week at the end of Lent). On his way to his new home Maximon spends a few days at a Tzutujil temple adjacent to the Catholic church in the center of Santiago. The Tzutujil equate Maximon with Judas Iscariot, and when he is placed in his temple he is simultaneously viewed as hanging on his suicidal tree and jeering at the imposed religion of European others. Local legend has it that Maximon fights Jesus on Easter. When I saw him he was accompanied by a lit sculpture of Jesus in his sepulcher and two attendant nahuals. Maximon gets by on donations (such as those I paid just to visit him for a few minutes), and he puts the money to good use, "consuming" 40-60 eighths of liquor and a few packs of cigarettes a day (he smoked two cigarettes while I was there). I was told by our translator that while he's drunk he is taken advantage of by witches, who take away his curing power. However, when he wakes up to the holy nahuals he sobers up to his mistakes and regains his supernatural efficacy. Interesting guy.
To conclude our day we visited a Franciscan church where the Catholicism was a bit more clear cut. The main claim to fame of the church, however, was a fantastically intricate carved wooden altar, a towering masterpiece that took its craftsman eight years to complete. The iconography of the altar complicated a completely Catholic reading of its symbolism, as it featured such undeniably Maya adornments as the maize god and nahuals dressed as Maximon surrounding and ascending such expected imagery as Christ crucified and the mournful Mother.
My weekend concluded back in the unambiguously Catholic Antigua. There is an elaborate church procession every Sunday during Lent through the streets of town, featuring two marching bands, giant lit floats, and innumerable purple-robed Padres and altar boys. I managed to catch a lull in the motion long enough to capture this image of Jesus. He is attended on this float by lilacs, a tree, Greek columns and very Western angels, perhaps a no less conspicuous admixture of divergent cultural elements than what I saw in Santiago.
Now that I'm leaving Antigua, a quick word as to what exactly I've been doing in between all these disturbingly vacation-like side trips. Besides Spanish class, I've also been working in the laboratory that houses all of the artifacts unearthed from San Bartolo for two hours a day. As I've mentioned, San Bartolo possesses now-famous spectacularly preserved Maya murals dating to around 100 BC. Over half of the murals, however, exist in the state visible here, that is, in the form of over 9,000 (and counting) fragments of destroyed stucco wall. One of the main objectives of the archaeologists working here is to piece together, literally, the amazing imagery of the murals, using as a rough guide the art of both Preclassic maya predecessors and San Bartolo's iconographic descendants, notably illustrated manuscripts of the 16th century K'iche Mayan creation myth the Popol Vuh and the numerous lived Mayan religious and artistic traditions practiced today, one small part of which you have glimpsed here. In fact, the nahual guitarist pictured above has been to San Bartolo, making the 8-hour trip with full religious paraphernalia and a small orchestra of traditional instruments after hearing about the murals in 2004. My professor, William Saturno, described the ritual to me, which involved the burning of Copal and playing of guitar and drum. It moved him deeply, he says: "this is the first time these walls have heard this music in 2,000 years."
I know this is terribly long, but it's two weeks and many introspective days-worth of images and observations. The next week might slow my roll a bit, as I'll be on the road. Three nights in Copan Ruínas, Honduras, where I'll visit the country for the first time and see the artistically sophisticated Maya site of Copán. Then three days in Flores, Guatemala, where I'll revisit the most monumental Maya site, Tikal. After that, it's off to San Bartolo for two and a half months of mural-gazing, hard-digging, hammock-sleeping, no-running-water-but-somehow-constantly-internet-connected tent living. There will be much more to write.
-Josue
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