The pagan beliefs that enrich Mexico and Guatemala

by **proldic** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:16 pm

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1071-1874905_2,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art..._2,00.html</a> The pagan beliefs that enrich Mexico and Guatemala Mary Ann Sieghart Dateline: Oaxaca It was supposed to be the Day of the Dead, but it turned out to be the Nearly-All-Week of the Dead. Long before real Hallowe’en, Oaxaca’s balconies were draped with life-size skeletons in crazy poses. Even a bench sported a couple of skeletons in conversation, the white one with a moustache tenderly putting his arm round the pink one. They do death differently in Mexico. And what a way to do it! Market stalls are piled high with skulls, some made of sugar with brightly coloured icing for eyebrows, others coated in sesame seeds with misshapen peanuts for teeth. On October 31, the serious celebrations begin with a Day of the Dead breakfast: hot chocolate, sweet bread, and a banana-leaf-wrapped parcel containing chicken in a spicy chocolate sauce. By 10pm we, along with most of Oaxaca, are at the main cemetery, some four miles out of town. There, stilt-walkers arrive in garish costumes, having tottered all the way from the centre. Outside the cemetery, the atmosphere is redolent of an August bank-holiday fair: packed with crowds, the street contains fairground rides and cheap stalls with tacky plastic prizes. Inside is weirder still. The walls are honeycombed with tombs, a lighted candle in each recess. The graves are decorated with marigolds, lilies and candles. In the far corner is a stage from which a torch singer, dressed in Morticia Addams make-up and ghostly robe, belts out a cabaret number. Then a troupe of actors dressed as angels performs a slapstick comedy, hitting each other over the head with balloons. It is as if you can feel the pagan Mexico thrusting its way up through the crust of Catholicism. You sense this most powerfully in the indigenous Indian communities. We move on to the cemetery in Xoxocotlan, an outlying Indian village. There the ground is bright orange, even in the middle of the night, for the carpet of marigolds, spiked by beer and Coke bottles, is so brightly lit by candles. Around each intricately decorated grave sit the relatives of the dead person, eating, drinking and chatting for all the world as if this were a normal family picnic. There’s a carnival feel to the way the Mexicans approach death, a sense of delicious expectation that the spirits of your loved ones will return to visit you if you tempt them with an offering of their favourite tipple. The atmosphere is not grave at all. For, if you believe that your ancestors are present in your everyday life, why should you be gloomy in remembrance of them? The Mayan Indians, who predominate in Mexico’s Chiapas and Guatemala, are highly spiritual and nominally Catholic, for the Spanish conquistadors imposed their religion on the indigenous people just as they imposed everything else. Every cemetery is a thicket of crosses; every village contains a church. The casual eye might mistake this for Catholic piety. But the Maya, who craft colourful masks to sell at market, have turned Catholicism into a mask of its own. From the outside, each church looks like a standard Spanish place of worship. Go inside, though, and you often discover that it is being used instead as a Mayan temple. In the church of Chamula, up in the mountains of Chiapas, the pews and altar have gone and the floor is carpeted with pine needles. Candles burn all over the floor. Dotted about are families who have paid a shaman to cure them. He feels the ill person’s pulse and then conducts the appropriate ritual: passing eggs in a pattern over their body, sacrificing a chicken and then spitting firewater or Coke over the dead bird, chanting prayers and lighting coloured candles. The sight is as pagan as it is heartening. After more than 300 years of oppression at the hands of Christians, these people have co-opted the religion and reclaimed it for themselves. The churches have no priests and conduct no services. The Indians don’t read the Bible. The Vatican has sundered relations with them. But they are still deeply religious people. For them, Jesus is the God of the Sun, and Mary of the Moon. The saints represent more minor Mayan gods. The Mayas’ main worry is that modern evangelism is trying to replicate the conquest that Catholicism attempted in the 17th century. Evangelical missionaries are gaining hold in Mayan villages, and demanding that converts relinquish their traditional beliefs. It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. These indigenous people have fought so hard for so long not to join the Western world. As we saw on the Day of the Dead, Mexico and Guatemala are enriched, not impoverished, by their pagan beliefs. If the brutal Spanish conquerors failed to extinguish these noble people, surely the modern world should be broadminded enough to allow them their difference. You can’t help thinking: why can’t the Church just leave these people in peace? Dig this buried treasure... When I spoke of paganism lying just below the surface in Mexico, I wasn’t aware of how literally this was true — until we took a bus journey to the Guatemalan border. On our right lay a spine of absurdly conical foothills, like the overlapping triangular mountains you see on the horizon in children’s drawings. Closer up were smaller hillocks, also surprisingly symmetrical. One was not even triangular, but trapezoid, with sloping shoulders and a flat top. The bus driver gestured casually in their direction. “That’s an archeological site,” he told us. The triangular hillocks, it turned out, were actually Mayan pyramid temples, overgrown with grass and trees. Talk about buried treasure. What a shame the Mexicans can’t afford to excavate it... <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1071-1874905_2,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art..._2,00.html</a>

by **Corvidaerex** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 4:26 pm

On this subject, I highly recommend a book I've been tearing through this week, "1491." Here's the Amazon page: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140004006X/">www.amazon.com/gp/product/140004006X/</a> It's a very readable argument that the Americas were wildly different than we were taught in grade school (and are still being taught today, apparently). Cities bigger & grander than Paris or London (and so much cleaner), hundreds of complex religions and languages and writing styles -- and in the central and south American empires, a style of governing, farming and planning that was vastly different from the European, Asian or African models. And there's lots of mystery that will appeal to people who liked the "Sinister Forces" stuff about the mounds & such. (Where Peter Levenda goes off into entertaining guesses about the mound builders, Charles Mann fills in a lot more gaps, especially using recent finds & research that for some reason haven't penetrated down to the level of text books or Time Life histories or whatever.) "1491" avoids political arguments pretty well so far, other than touching on the benefits to European colonists and conquerers of having us all believe the Americas were barely populated by savages, while also demolishing a lot of hippie nonsense about how Mesoamericans never hurt or altered the landscape, etc. But the scope of the disease-caused die-off is just incredible. 25 million people? 100 million people? The coast of New England so packed with Indian towns that early European explorers wrote the whole place off as too crowded, and then a few years later it's an abandoned wilderness ... spooky & incredible.

by **Avalon** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 4:49 pm

I heard a radio interview with the author last week. One of those "driveway" radio pieces, where it is impossible to leave the car and head inside until it's over.

by **Ted the dog** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 8:05 pm

Sounds like a great book...I'll check it out this weekend. "I heard a radio interview with the author last week. One of those "driveway" radio pieces, where it is impossible to leave the car and head inside until it's over." gotta love those.

by **Gouda** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 8:46 pm

The chamulans are rebels. The church is amazing. Vatican is pissed off that their diocese has refused to pay the required 10% "tithe" for the last 100 years. They have synchretized all the catholic saints, who in the church hold mirrors to reflect the soul. Chamulans have also booted fundamentalist protestants from the village (but also any Mayan who has taken up with a fundie). Primarily a money and control thing, according to ladinos or other outsiders. These displaced villagers have resettled in and around San Cristobal de las Casas.

by **Gouda** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 9:09 pm

...and in chichicastenango, guatemala, the other world is as thick as the incense and familiar as the vendors. in no other place i have visited has the divide between the living and dead been so thin; (though would love to visit Oaxaca some day). Chichi is explosive with energies - and it seems as if the village is shielded totally from the death rays of the outside, modern world. Spirits are allowed recognition and respect, and they seem happy about that. Then there are those possessed by spirits (very high number of town drunks). Families picnic with their dearly departed, INSIDE the churches, on the floor, with fanta, coke, beer, candles, eggs, maize, rice. to see the church of san tomas whitewashed against the sky is infinitely more timeless, valuable than seeing the eiffel tower.

by **Gouda** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 12:08 am

Ms. Sieghart is silly, in the way most travel/lifestyle section writers are. (& You should see Joyce Maynard’s piece on Lake Atitlan for the NYT - there is a huge new age center there that has taken over prime property from the village of San Marcos, and she loves it, just the best place on the lake ever! I'll have to dig that up.) Sieghart: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>They do death differently in Mexico.<hr></blockquote> Cool! Get your ass down there and see how paganism can work for you. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The Mayan Indians, who predominate in Mexico’s Chiapas and Guatemala, are highly spiritual and nominally Catholic, for the Spanish conquistadors imposed their religion on the indigenous people just as they imposed everything else.<hr></blockquote> I don’t think they see or refer to themselves as “spiritual”, at least in the sense she means. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The sight is as pagan as it is heartening. <hr></blockquote> Huh? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>After more than 300 years of oppression at the hands of Christians, these people have co-opted the religion and reclaimed it for themselves.<hr></blockquote> Huh? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>You can’t help thinking: why can’t the Church just leave these people in peace?<hr></blockquote> Huh? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Talk about buried treasure. What a shame the Mexicans can’t afford to excavate it...<hr></blockquote> Huh? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>These indigenous people have fought so hard for so long not to join the Western world. As we saw on the Day of the Dead, Mexico and Guatemala are enriched, not impoverished, by their pagan beliefs. If the brutal Spanish conquerors failed to extinguish these noble people, surely the modern world should be broadminded enough to allow them their difference.<hr></blockquote> Sure, while entrenching control over the socio-economic situation. What a swindle.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 1:22 am

Mexican people have been doing syncretism with Catholicism ever since the first vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe, if not earlier. After all, by the time of the conquistadors, Roman Catholicism was pretty far gone into syncretism already. The richness of imagery associated with the saints, the relics, and other symbols of the faith are obvious indications of that, and as religions from Vietnames Cao Dai to Caribbean Santeria to Medieval European Satanism have shown, it's easily appropriated and put to use in all sorts of ways. Along with the "nonsense about the Mesoamericans never injuring or altering the landscape", I hope that 1491 also gives an equally unsparing and accurate depiction of some of the more unsavory religious rites of the Mayan and Aztec religions. Personally, I consider "paganism" to be more of an art movement than a religious practice- up to the point where the priests begin taking political control and doing things like dictating ritual sacrifices to their societies. Polytheistic theocracy isn't any less of a threat to people than monotheistic theocracy, or humanistic-State theocracy. Read up on the emphasis on captive torture and sacrifice by the Mayans. It's grisly reading. Then there are those strange practices that arose to such prominence in the Mayan civiliation, which still existed as survivals long after that civilization had declined and fell, and the Roman Catholic missionaries arrived to find the Mayans living among the ruins- ritual acts such as stabbing oneself through the tongue, lips, penis, or other soft tissues with stingray spines, running thorns through them, and collecting the blood of the wounds on bark strips that were dried and burned- apparently in some sort of effort to contact "extradimensional entities". Or at any rate, that's the prevailing viewpoint of present-day anthropologists and linguistic researchers (I did a bit of work for one of them, about 12 years ago.) That sort of "pagan revival" I can do without...but like other forms of religious reformation/revision/revilaization, syncretism often possesses progressive characteristics, leaving the worst excesses of the past behind. Still, I think people need to be wary of romanticizing paganism- I've heard quite enough about how the Mayans must have been a superior and advanced society in comparison to the modern world, simply because their astronomer-priests possessed and intricate and accurate calendar. That's like arguing for the spiritual benevolence of American society, because we were the ones who invented the atomic bomb first...

by **Corvidaerex** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:40 am

robertdreed: I was hoping the book would get into that subject, too. While I haven't finished -- about 100 pages to go -- it did spend some time on the human sacrifice stuff. The author makes no apologies (hell, it wasn't *his* religion) but does put the stuff into perspective. At the time of conquest, he says various European capitals (London, Paris, etc.) were killing thousands more people in public executions per year than the Mayans were slaughtering in the temples. The victims were the same: prisoners. But the European executions happened more frequently, and with far bigger audiences (it was a day out), despite smaller populations than the big mesoamerican cities had at the time. He doesn't exactly say it, but the conclusion is, "Nobody should be too proud about how they lived in 1491." That's what I'm liking the best about this book: I think I've made a common mistake in comparing mesoamerican cultures to *today's* European cultures, while he smacks you with what Europe was like in 1491. Hell, it was the tail end of the Dark Ages, and it's interesting to read how shocked the Spanish invaders were by the clean city streets in Mexica ... they were used to ankle-deep human feces in the streets back home.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 7:26 am

Who was that medieval European king who said "I bathe twice a year, whether I need to or not?" Or maybe it was only once, I don't remember the exact quote... At the conclusion of one of the Indian Wars, the victorious Dutch beheaded the Indian sachems, and the governor of New Amsterdam and his family and friends used their heads for bowling balls and footballs. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 11/19/05 4:28 am

by **proldic** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 6:45 pm

Dia de los Muertos is celebrated every year on the first two days of November. The observances traces their origins to the beliefs of ancient indigenous peoples of Mexico (Purepecha, Nahua, Totonac, and Otomi) that the souls of the dead return each year to visit their living relatives. A Look at 'Day of the Dead' Artist Posada Author: Barbara Russum People's Weekly World Newspaper, 10/27/05 10:04 <a href="http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/7996/1/292">www.pww.org/article/artic...7996/1/292</a> Compared to the medieval European plague-inspired, scary skeletons of Halloween, the skeletons of Día de los Muertos are a whimsical lot. They drive cars or play in small orchestras; the guys smoke cigars and the ladies wear enormous hats. And through the art of José Guadalupe Posada, they engage in political debate as well. Posada was born in the central Mexican city of Aguascalientes, capital of the state of the same name, on Feb. 2, 1852. He was always fierce supporter of the downtrodden. At the age of 14, he apprenticed as a printmaker and began producing satirical illustrations. In his 30s he moved to Mexico City where he began work for several publishers including Ireneo Paz, a liberal journalist and grandfather of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. He produced thousands of illustrations and editorial cartoons for Mexican popular newspapers of the day. From the onset of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 until his death in 1913, Posada worked tirelessly at cartoons dedicated to the working-class and revolutionary struggles. His political work landed him in jail on several occasions. Posada’s ingenious cartoons focused on the injustices of the government of President Porfirio Diaz and his high society supporters. By using skeleton figures to portray political figures and contemporaries, Posada emphasized their mortality and brought them down to size. “In death we are all equal. Blond, brown, rich, poor, we come to the same fate,” he said. One of his best known images is Calavera de la Catrina (“Skeleton of the Female Dandy”), which satirizes the life of the upper classes. Posada was admired for his range and technical skill. His compositions are filled with movement and confident gestures. His lines reflect the message he was expressing: smooth and harmonious in scenes of daily life, or harsh and thick to imply denunciation or violence. His political cartoons provoke laughter and indignation. Posada produced an enormous body of work estimated at over 20,000 items, including not only his political cartoons but also commercial and advertising work (such as cigar box covers), book illustrations, posters and images of historical and religious figures. Since Posada never catered to wealthy sponsors, his work never made him rich. When he died he was buried in a sixth-class grave (the lowest category) where, ironically, after seven years, his own bones were removed and discarded. But in 1973, the Posada Museum opened in Aguascalientes, and today in Mexico there are collections of his works at the National Institute of Fine Arts, the Biblioteca de Mexico (the national library) and the National Library of Anthropology and History, as well as in museums in the U.S. and other countries. The political legacy of Posada’s satirical skeletons, which influenced such Mexican artists as Orozco, Siquieros, Rivera and Kahlo, continues to inspire artists and cartoonists to this day. <a href="http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/7996/1/292">www.pww.org/article/artic...7996/1/292</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=proldic@rigorousintuition>proldic</A> at: 11/19/05 3:47 pm

by **professorpan** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 6:45 pm

I was lucky enough to visit the village church in San Juan Chamula over a decade ago. It remains one of the most transformative experiences of my life, along with my night spent in a teepee as a guest to a Native American Church peyote ceremony. The church in San Juan Chamula is devoid of pews or seats, and the floor is covered with pine needles. Copal incense hangs in the air. The statues of the saints around the perimeter of the church are draped in traditional Mayan clothing. Shamans sit, surrounded by candles, and those who need healing come to them and sit with them. Sometimes the people who come bring a chicken, or other small gifts, but they always bring one particularly odd gift -- a bottle of Coca Cola. The shamans have integrated Coca Cola into their rituals, mixing it with a fermented pineapple liquor called posh. It sounds ridiculous, and even perverse (corporate behemoth pollutes ancient customs), but it is an integral part of their beliefs, and seeing it in person didn't ring false at all. Our guide, a woman named Mercedes, had grown up in the village before moving to San Cristobal de las Casas. She sized us up before offering to take us to the village, because once a group of U.S. tourists had freaked out inside the church, yelling out that it was an "abomination" and "not Christian." After that, she made sure to ask questions before taking visitors (esp. U.S. tourists) to the church. It was a beautiful, otherworldly visit. The Mayans accepted certain Christian beliefs and motifs because the iconography was very similar to their own (crosses are sacred symbols, for instance, in both religions), and seeing the syncretism, I couldn't help but feel that the melding of the two systems works. One fact that impressed me -- the shamans will send someone to the local medical clinic frequently. So even the two forms of medicine -- shamanic and high-tech Western -- meld together. After the visit to the church, we met a group of women living in a mud-coated hut the size of my bathroom. 3 women, living in that small space. They wove textiles for sale in the market, and invited us in. Though they were dirt poor -- literally -- they offered to feed us and were gracious and kind. It made a tremendous impression upon me. To this day, whenever I get uptight about money or possessions, I think back to those women and their generosity. I highly recommend visiting the Chiapas region of Mexico if you get a chance. It was life-changing for me, for many reasons. Beautiful land, beautiful people, and a rich history.

by **Dreams End** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 7:59 pm

I've been to Chiapas, though saw a shaman of a different sort. A poet and revolutionary partial to his pipe. Here's a Diego Rivera Image of the day of the dead: <img src="http://www.charlesmontgomery.ca/Diegopanel.jpg" style="border:0;"/> Diego is one of the reasons, I'm sure, that the CIA was into funding "abstract art".

by **Gouda** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 8:22 pm

Pan, did you visit Casa na Balom in San Cristobal? (Former home, now museum, cultural center, library, of the late Lancadon anthropologists, Frans and Trudi Blom). Odd, intriguing place. Frida and Diego were often guests. As were the Mitterrands, and James Baker. James Baker? The library was renovated with funds from Rockefeller, and our tour guide indicated that the Lancadon Maya have strong Mongolian facial characteristics. The Bloms were inspirations to be sure. But interesting also that Frans worked as a cartographer for an oil company, and it was work with them that brought him to Mexico - and at Palenque, he fell in love with the pyramids, and decided to dedicate his life to study of the Lancadon Maya. It seems they acquired some trust from the Zapatistas, as they were recipients of one of the first faxed communiqués informing various groups of their impending uprising on Jan 1st, 1994.

by **professorpan** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 4:16 pm

Gouda, Not only did I visit Na Bolom (House of the Jaguar), I met Frans Blom's wife, Trudy (Gertrude). She invited us to dine at the giant communal table. It was primarily or fully vegetarian, I can't remember, but the food was delicious. Sitting to my left was the French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, director of "The Red Balloon." Some Lacandon also ate with us, dressed in their white robes, sitting quietly and smiling the whole time. It was a fantastic experience, and I felt very lucky to have been invited. Na Bolom didn't seem sinister to me -- it was very much an artists' colony at the time. I didn't find anything sinister about Trudy, either -- she was a very sweet woman, and very dedicated to helping the Lacandon and giving artists a place to work. I'd judge them by their deeds rather than the occasional company they kept.

The pagan beliefs that enrich Mexico and Guatemala

The pagan beliefs that enrich Mexico and Guatemala

The old, weird America

radio interview

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chamula

Re: chichicastenango

Re: chichicastenango

Syncretism in Mexico

pagan sacrifice v. european sacrifice

barbarians

A Look at 'Day of the Dead' Artist Posada

San Juan Chamula

Re: San Juan Chamula

Re: San Juan Chamula

Re: San Juan Chamula

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