Guatemalan Churches: The Maya Legacy in Organic Façades

Located in the center of Maya civilization and tradition, Guatemala features some of the world’s most spectacular archaeological sites, with extensive pre-Hispanic remains. The Maya of pre-Contact times believed in a pantheistic religion with many gods, and despite violent Spanish subjugation beginning in 1524, many of those traditions still survive. Coerced conversion had mixed results, as the Maya in certain territories often did not replace or abolish their beliefs in favor of Christianity, but rather added this new faith as another layer. This allowed Mayans to participate in their own rituals while maintaining Christian identity, blending religious cultures in a syncretic situation that saw art, music, festivals, and other events as unique and genuine dialogue. Today, contemporary Mayans in Guatemala maintain their linguistic dialects, along with traditional clothing and ceremonies of ancient rituals. The tenacity of the Maya people in upholding their longstanding customs and beliefs is reflected in the architectural embellishments that adorn Guatemala’s many churches. From small parishes to cities, a profusion of organic details is evident on the façades of even newly built Catholic churches. These flourishes exhibit relationships to Mayan glyphs and produce a unique visual vocabulary based on the ancient beliefs that connected man’s relation to nature as inherent to daily life. Disguised within these Christian landmarks, the adornments uncover the Guatemalan people’s enduring commitment to Mayan beliefs, despite waves of forced evangelization throughout their territories.

Permanencia y uso contemporáneo del calendario Cholq’ij/Tachb’al Amaq’ en tierras altas de Guatemala

In the highlands of Guatemala, the knowledge and use of the Cholq’ij, 260-day ritual calendar, has persisted among contemporary Maya groups. Although it has not remained unchanged since pre-Columbian times, its characteristics do not show significant modifications and its constituent elements have subsisted through time. Its transformations have obeyed social, political and historical processes; this demonstrate the capacity of adaptation of the Maya people of Guatemala. At present the Cholq'ij is the axis of references and endogenous cultural proposals. This paper describes some of its main characteristics and constituent elements. In adition, we explain the way that this calendar is understood, transmitted, systematized and used among the Mayan people from the highlands of Guatemala. Likewise, we discuss on its scope and contemporary applications.

Capturing the Forest

In chapter 15, Holley Moyes interprets ancient Maya cave sites as ritual venues that instantiated Maya cosmology, providing archaeologists with an unambiguous context for understanding the ritual life of ancient Maya people. Cave archaeologists strive to understand how and when these sites were used, who used them, and how. As sacred spaces, caves could be manipulated in political contests for the acquisition and maintenance of power. Space is a consideration in cave studies, but there has been little discussion of caves as built environments. In this chapter, Moyes discusses the structure of caves in Belize and outlines an analytical approach for relating structure to social process. Providing a case study from the cave at Las Cuevas, she argues that architectural elements evidence large-scale collective action during the tumultuous Late Classic period.

Making Maya Men

The Franciscan friar Diego de Landa, in the mid-sixteenth century, and the Holly-wood film producer and director Mel Gibson, in the early twenty-first century, created Maya men as beings with perverted and penetrated bodies. In 1566 Landa wrote his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, an extensive text about the Maya people. In 2006 Gibson released Apocalypto, a Hollywood film in which all dialogue was in Yucatec Maya. Landa and Gibson both argued that they showed the true Maya world, but each expressed a visceral reaction to Maya sacrifice and, in so doing, infested their own fantasies with nightmares of savage Maya men. This essay argues that by analyzing the voyeurism and fantasies of Landa and Gibson, we can come to terms with the position of Maya masculinity in modern Western imaginations. Moreover, by working to understand Landa’s and Gibson’s investments in perverse Maya men, we can think about why Western people formulate fantasies of colonized subjects. Finally, these fantasies of non-Western subjectivities can speak to the stakes involved in queer theory’s understanding of the social sphere, the heterosexual family, and the child as a sign of the future.

Locating Cave Entrances Using Lidar-Derived Local Relief Modeling

Lidar (Light detection and ranging) scanning has revolutionized our ability to locate geographic features on the earth’s surface, but there have been few studies that have addressed discovering caves using this technology. Almost all attempts to find caves using lidar imagery have focused on locating sinkholes that lead to underground cave systems. As archaeologists, our work in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve, a heavily forested area in western Belize, focuses on locating potential caves for investigation. Caves are an important part of Maya cultural heritage utilized by the ancient Maya people as ritual spaces. These sites contain large numbers of artifacts, architecture, and human remains, but are being looted at a rapid rate; therefore, our goal is to locate and investigate as many sites as possible during our field seasons. While some caves are entered via sinkholes, most are accessed via vertical cliff faces or are entered by dropping into small shafts. Using lidar-derived data, our goal was to locate and investigate not only sinkholes but other types of cave entrances using point cloud modeling. In this article, we describe our method for locating potential cave openings using local relief models that require only a working knowledge of relief visualization techniques. By using two pedestrian survey techniques, we confirmed a high rate of accuracy in locating cave entrances that varied in both size and morphology. Although 100% pedestrian survey coverage delivered the highest rate accuracy in cave detection, lidar image analyses proved to be expedient for meeting project goals when considering time and resource constraints.

Conversiones religiosas y redefinición de la etnicidad en el estado de Chiapas

Las diferenciaciones religiosas aceleradas que experimentan las comunidades indígenas del estado de Chiapas (México) son el fruto de la violencia intraétnica. En este movimiento de cambio de las afiliaciones religiosas, se definen nuevos lenguajes religiosos y modos de comunicación de las identidades individuales y colectivas que pasan por la elaboración de nuevas formas de secuencias rituales estructuradas en gran parte por el pentecostalismo. Debido a la adopción de estas nuevas creencias y prácticas religiosas flexibles se está redefiniendo el lazo con las tradiciones religiosas ancestrales y se construye una modernidad indígena fundada en el derecho al pluralismo ideológico. Esto se produce sin destruir la diferencia étnica y recomponiendo sus elementos de aquella en el sentido de una modernidad endógena relativamente autónoma. El pluralismo religioso otorga la oportunidad de construir una definición religiosa de lo político en continuidad con el imaginario maya de la realeza sagrada y lo hace escapar a las regulaciones exógenas de lo político oficial impuesto por el estado nacional, sin prescindir del derecho constitucional a la libertad religiosa. La adopción de nuevas expresiones religiosas no católicas sigue reforzando la diferencia étnica y permite encontrar mediaciones para combatir las desigualdades sociales en el seno mismo de las sociedades étnicas e intentar modificar las relaciones de subordinación de la etnia a la nación.Abstract: Intra-ethnic violence is bringing a rapid religious differentiation in the state of Chiapas (Mexico). Conversions and changes in religious affiliation produce new religious codes and modes of communicating individual and collective identities heavily influenced by ritual sequences borrowed from the Pentecostal tradition. At stake in the implementation of these new beliefs and practices is the reaffirmation of ancestral religious traditions and the possibility of shaping a Mayan modernity that recognizes ideological pluralism. Rather than denying the ethnic specificity of Mayan society, this process adapts elements of ethnic identity to meet the needs of a relatively autonomous and endogenous modernity. Religious pluralism provides the Maya people with the possibility of defining politics in a religious way, allowing them to assert their independence from the central government and its exogenous political regulation while appealing to the legal principles of religious freedom. Not only does the adoption of new, non-Catholic expressions of religiosity underline the distinctiveness of the Mayan civilization within Mexican society, it opens up new perspectives in the struggle against endogenous social inequalities and in the fight against the nation-state domination.Résumé : La différenciation religieuse accélérée que vivent les communautés indiennes dans l’état du Chiapas, au Mexique, est le fruit de la violence intra-ethnique. Dans ce mouvement de changement des appartenances religieuses, se définissent de nouveaux langages religieux et de nouveaux modes de communication des identités individuelles et collectives qui passent par la mise en forme de séquences rituelles structurées en grande partie par le pentecôtisme. Au travers de l’adoption de ces nouvelles croyances et pratiques religieuses flexibles se joue à la fois l’ancrage dans les traditions religieuses ancestrales et la construction d’une modernité indienne fondée sur le droit et la reconnaissance du pluralisme idéologique. Ceci s’opère sans détruire la différence ethnique mais plutôt en recomposant ses éléments dans le sens d’une modernité endogène relativement autonome. La pluralisation religieuse donne l’opportunité de construire une définition religieuse du politique en continuité avec l’imaginaire maya de la « royauté sacrée ». Il échappe ainsi aux régulations exogènes du politique légitime imposées par l’État tout en s’appuyant sur les principes juridiques de la liberté de culte. L’adoption de nouvelles expressions religieuses non-catholiques continue de souligner la différence avec le reste de la société mexicaine et permet de chercher les moyens de combattre les inégalités sociales au sein des sociétés ethniques tout autant que le rapport de subordination de l’ethnie à la nation.

Water, Cacao, and The Early Maya of Chocóla

Before the authors’ research, Chocolá was no more than an intriguing legend. Chocolá’s apparent political links to the greatest Preclassic southern Maya area polity, Kaminaljuyu, would make any discovery about Chocolá conceivably vital to a better understanding of Maya origins and New World archaeology, as both ancient cities are located in the Southern Maya Region. Two facts led researchers to search more specifically for the material bases for Chocolá’s rise to power: 1) Mesoamerica’s greatest rainfall, 2) cacao groves around the modern village lying atop the ancient city. Cacao was so important to the Maya that, mythologically, the cacao god was the maize god’s brother and uncle of the “Hero Twins,” conceived as the aboriginal creators of the Maya people. If water control systems have been documented archaeologically at virtually all great ancient cities around the world, cacao is uniquely a Maya “invention,” the Maya being the first people in the world to domesticate the plant and cultivate it through intensive agriculture. These two discoveries—impressive water management and cacao at Preclassic Chocolá—likely are not coincidental. A complex, hierarchical society would have been in place for arboriculture of water-thirsty cacao for long-distance ancient trade. Thus, two material substances, one necessary for human survival, the other highly valued throughout Mesoamerica as consumable and essential in Maya mythology, may explain, in part, how this and other Southern Maya “kingdoms of chocolate” may represent a “sweet beginning” for one of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world.