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.

The Maya: A Very Short Introduction

The Maya: A Very Short Introduction examines the history and evolution of Maya civilization, explaining Maya polities or city-states, artistic expression, and ways of understanding the universe. Study of the Maya has tended to focus on the 2,000 years of history prior to contact with Europeans, and romantic ideas of discovery and disappearance have shaped popular myths about the Maya. However, they neither disappeared at the close of the Classic era nor were completely conquered by Europeans. Independent Maya kingdoms continued until the seventeenth century, and while none exists today, it is still possible to talk about a Maya world and Maya civilization in the twenty-first century.

2. Maya genesis

By the first millennium bce, Maya civilization was manifesting itself in art, architecture, agriculture, and social structure. “Maya Genesis” looks at the birth of this civilization. The manuscript known as the Popul Vuh gives a detailed version of Maya creation, telling the stories of two mythical Hero Twins, bookended by tales of the creation of the earth and humans. Impressive structures such as the sites at Palenque linked creation myths and divinity to the visions and ambitions of ruling elites. New architectural and agricultural developments such as the “nixtamalization” of corn helped in the formation of denser communities and the emergence of a hierarchical and multilayered social organization.

7. Colonizations

“Colonizations” charts the invasions and dislocations experienced on an unprecedented scale by the Maya peoples since the sixteenth century. The Maya area is carved up among five nation-states—Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Agricultural centers such as Guatemala experienced slavery and exploitation in the nineteenth century, and in the latter half of the twentieth century, Mayas in Guatemala were subject to a campaign of violence and genocide. Their mystery has long entranced scholars of the Maya, giving rise to some extreme theories, including extraterrestrial involvement in Maya civilization. However, Maya history is a story not only of victimization, but also of adaptation and survival.

POLITICAL ALLIANCES AND TRADE CONNECTIONS OBSERVED IN THE CERAMIC RECORD OF THE CLASSIC PERIOD: THE PERSPECTIVE FROM THE MAYA SITE OF NAKUM, GUATEMALA

Recent research carried out at the Maya site of Nakum, located in northeastern Guatemala, has brought about the discovery of a large collection of ceramic artefacts. This substantial assemblage, apart from monochrome ceramics, includes fragments of polychrome vessels that are decorated with elaborate iconographic scenes and painted hieroglyphic texts. Most of them date to the Late Classic period (ca. a.d. 600–800), which represents the peak of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. The style of these ceramics, their iconography and accompanying glyphic texts, supplemented in many cases by mineralogical and physicochemical analyses of the ceramic samples, indicate that Nakum was part of a broad and complex network of political and economic interactions between various sites and polities of the southern Maya lowlands in the Classic period. During the first part of the Late Classic period, Nakum seems to maintain close relations with Naranjo, probably serving as its vassal at least from the reign of its renowned king Aj Wosal. After the victory of Tikal over Naranjo in the first part of the eighth century, Nakum shows closer cultural and political connections with Tikal. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Classic era, when we observe the profound collapse of lowland Maya civilization, Nakum elites gain political independence from their former overlords.

Cywilizacja Majów w nowych formach muzealnych. O przywłaszczaniu prekolumbijskiego dziedzictwa na rzecz meksykańskiej kultury narodowej

The Maya civilization in new forms of museum exposition. Appropriation of pre-Columbian heritage for the benefit of Mexican national cultureThe article is dedicated to the reconstruction and reinterpretation of pre-Columbian heritage by Mexican museums, with a special focus on the Maya civilization which is a permanent feature of the Mexican imagery and an object of artistic fascination. Characteristic of the history of the Yucatan, it is subject to symbolic manipulation and subordinated to the national culture. This is accompanied by the processes of its banalization, folklorization and commercialization which are facilitated by new audiovisual forms. References to the heritage are selective and the images are transformed and adjusted in order to develop apprehensible artistic products for the general public. Cywilizacja Majów w nowych formach muzealnych. O przywłaszczaniu prekolumbijskiego dziedzictwa na rzecz meksykańskiej kultury narodowejArtykuł poświęcony jest współczesnym działaniom w Meksyku w zakresie rekonstrukcji oraz reinterpretacji znaczenia spuścizny prekolumbijskiej dla kultury narodowej tego kraju, na przykładzie muzealnictwa. Chodzi zwłaszcza o dziedzictwo Majów, które jest trwałym elementem meksykańskiego imaginarium i obiektem artystycznej fascynacji. Charakterystyczne dla historii Jukatanu i jego ludności tubylczej, podlega ono zabiegom przywłaszczania na rzecz kultury narodowej, tj. podporządkowywania jako integralnej jej części. Towarzyszą temu procesy banalizacji, folkloryzacji oraz komercjalizacji spuścizny Majów, czego przykładem są nowe formy ekspozycyjne. Odniesienia do dziedzictwa mają charakter selektywny, obrazy traktowane są wybiórczo, adaptowane i poddawane obróbce audiowizualnej w celu wypracowania łatwych w odbiorze produktów artystycznych dla masowego odbiorcy, łączących w sposób swobodny przeszłość ze współczesnością.

JĘZYKOWO-KULTUROWE KONSEKWENCJE KONTAKTU MAJÓW Z HISZPANAMI

In the paper, an attempt has been made to describe the cultural and linguistic contacts between the local Maya civilization and the Spanish conquistadores. The consequences of that contact for the local culture and Mayan-Spanish interrelationships have been discussed. The authors emphasize that as a result of this intensive and long-time contact, the Spanish culture has not been completely imposed on the Maya culture, nor has Spanish language completely subjugated the Mayan language.