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RaÍces
roots of Contemporary
tz’utuhil Maya painting
By
Joseph Johnston
i
RaÍces
roots of Contemporary
tz’utuhil Maya painting
by
Joseph Johnston
•
2012
San Francisco
i
Arte Maya Tz'utuhil
P.O. Box 403911
San Francisco, CA 94140
[email protected]
First Published 2012
All paintings and photographs
Copyright © 2012 Arte Maya Tz’utuhil
All photographs taken by Joseph Johnston
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2012 Arte Maya Tz’utuhil
Front Cover:
“El Pintor” by Domingo Garcia Criado. 2003
ii
Contents
Maya Painting
1
History
2
Religion
5
Guatemalan Painting
11
First Maya Artists
13
Tz’utuhil Painting
17
Conclusion
22
Glossary
23
Bibliography
25
iii
Maya Painting
The popular painting of Guatemala emerged
in the latter part of the twentieth century, the
first time since the Conquest that the Maya of
Guatemala used painting to express themselves.
Self-taught Maya artists, who identified them-
selves as Maya first and as artists second, gave
a voice to every aspect of their culture and their
lives. The Maya painters of the Lake Atitlán
region spoke Tz’utuhil as their first language
and Spanish as their second language. None of
them learned to paint in art schools. Tz’utuhil
painting depicts Maya cultural traditions that
through passive resistance still exist, despite the
dominant Spanish culture.
One of the paintings that most clearly represents the relation of the Maya to the dominant Spanish culture is Pascual Abaj by Antonio
Ixtamer. It is an interesting contrast: the brilliantly lit, white Catholic church at the center
of town and the secret Maya ritual performed
at night in the nearby forest. This stark contrast
makes one realize that the Spanish dominance
of Maya culture was not complete. The Maya
today still nurture beliefs and customs rooted
in the pre-conquest culture. Acts such as performing an ancient ritual demonstrate what
Robert Carlsen calls the “passive resistance to
the occupying culture” (Carlsen 1997).
Figure 1: Antonio C. Ixtamer’s painting “Pascual Abaj”
a pre-Conquest site just outside of Chichicastenango where
Maya rituals are still being performed.
1
Tz’utuhil History
Many examples of pre-Hispanic Maya architecture, sculpture and pottery still exist. The surviving paintings of ancient Maya are mainly on
clay pots, although a few are found on temple
walls, most notably at Bonampak, and in a few
surviving codices. The ancient Maya style of
painting is distinctive and easily recognizable.
The Maya were the only civilization in the
Americas to have a complete written language
system, and possibly only one of two or three
civilizations (Sumerians and perhaps the Chinese) on our planet to have independently created a writing system (Diamond 1997). With
the exception of three known surviving codices,
all pre-Conquest Maya books were destroyed.
Maya writing had been done by scribes, members of the Maya elite, but because the Catholic Church suspected the Maya scribes would
encourage continued heretical religious beliefs,
the use and understanding of the written Mayan glyphs quickly and completely disappeared.
Most of the Maya writing we have, therefore, is
either carved as part of sculpture or on pottery.
The great Classic Maya cities, such as Tikal
and Palenque, had been abandoned for around
500 years when Pedro Alvarado arrived in
Guatemala in 1524. At that time, the K’iche’,
Kaqchikel, and Tz’utuhil Maya had been living
in the highlands of Guatemala for three to six
hundred years. Construction of the Kaqchikel
city of Iximche’ was started in the 1480s, less
than fifty years before the arrival of Alvarado
(Schele and Matthews 1998). Although not as
spectacular or finely constructed as the Maya
cities of the Classic Period, Iximche’s style and
method of construction are the same. Upon his
arrival, Pedro Alvarado attacked and burned
the K’iche’ city of Q’umarkah, now more
commonly known as Utatlán. The Kaqchikels,
enemies of the K’iche’, initially welcomed
Alvarado but by 1526 the Spanish had also
Figure 2: Ruins of the Kaqchikel city of Iximche’ a few miles
outside of the present day town of Tecpan.
2
burned Iximche’ and by 1530 had hanged the
Kaqchikel kings. After defeating the K’iche’
and the Kaqchikels, Pedro Alvarado conquered
the Tz’utuhil city of Chutinamit on a hill overlooking Lake Atitlán. On April 22nd 1525,
three days after the conquest of Chutinamit,
the Tz’utuhils surrendered to Pedro Alvarado
in Iximché. He moved the Tz’utuhil people to
a new location a short distance across a bay
on the lake. No records mention the date of
the destruction of Chitinamit, but it is known
the Spanish destroyed it before 1585 (Orellana
1984). Archeologists excavated and restored
the ruins at Iximche’, but the Tz’utuhil site of
Chutinamit lies unexcavated and abandoned
under farmers’ fields on a promontory at the
foot of the San Pedro volcano.
The Conquest ended the independence of
the Maya people of Guatemala and Mexico,
but the Maya people and many aspects of Maya
culture survived. The Maya on the south side
of Lake Atitlan continued to speak Tz’utuhil as
a first and often the only language. As a visible
sign of their Maya heritage, the Maya continued
to wear clothes of their own distinctive design
that the Maya women wove on traditional
backstrap looms.
The first Spanish institution imposed on
the Maya was the tribute or encomienda system.
The Maya had to pay a tribute and work for the
Spanish. There was little gold in the Guatemala
highlands, but because of the vast cacao fields
held by the Tz’utuhil Maya on the Pacific coast
side of the mountain range, the Atitlán encomienda was one of the most lucrative (Orellana
1984, 137). When an easier source of cacao
became available, the Tz’utuhil area became
less important to the Spanish. As long as the
tributes were paid, the Spanish viceroys seldom
visited the highlands of Guatemala. This lack
of important resources (sources of income for
the Spanish) allowed Maya culture to continue
without much contact with the Spanish elite
who lived elsewhere.
After the Conquest, the Spanish grouped
chinamits, the basic pre-Columbian unit of
social and political organization, together to
form towns. Chinamit comes from a Nahualt
Figure 3: The site of Chutinamit, the Tz’utuhil capital. It
sits at the foot of the San Pedro volcano across the bay from
present day Santiago Atitlán. The site, which sits under
farmers’ fields, has not been excavated.
3
word, meaning to fence in an area with corn
stalks, and would signify a group of people
living and working closely together. Territory
was held by the chinamit which entailed rights
and obligations of its members. Although not
strictly lineage based, membership in a chinamit allowed use of the leader’s surname. The
Spanish accepted chinamits because they made
the raising and collection of the tribute to the
crown easier. The pre-Hispanic Maya leaders
had an interest in preserving the chinamits in
order to enforce recognition of their descent
from Maya royalty and retain influence in the
community (Orellana 1984; Carlsen 1995). This
helped to unite each town as an independent
entity, separate from its neighbors.
Each town had a independent civil-ceremonial system. Each man had to contribute a year
of service, servicio, about every four years to
either the civil side or to the religious cofradias.
As men from important or rich families grew
older, they obtained higher and more important positions. The civil government blended
the Spanish positions with the Maya hierarchy
so that, initially the Maya Lords still held on
to much of their influence. Over the centuries
after the Conquest, the system began to permit
common people to rise up the ranks (Carmack
1981). The different offices of the civil government were: alcalde, regidores, mayores, sindicos,
interpretes, alguaciles, and regidores auxiliaries
(Paul 1989).
Guatemalan independence from Spain in
1821, after three centuries of colonial rule, did
not significantly help the Maya. In the 19th
century, the Guatemala government offered
free land to Europeans who wished to emigrate
and start coffee plantations. The land given to
these immigrants was in the Piedmont area on
the Pacific coast side of Guatemala, where the
Maya had traditionally held land communally.
After this in order to earn money, the Maya
had to travel to the coast and work under harsh
conditions for small wages (Wilkensen 2002).
When in the 1950s Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, tried to
rectify the marginalization of the Maya with
land reform, the United Fruit Company, fearing
loss of their plantations, maneuvered the CIA
to back a coup. This led to the time of violence
during the first half of the 1980s. Under the
dictatorship of Rios Montt, over 200,000 Maya
were killed mainly by the Guatemalan military
(Wilkinsen: 2002). In the 1990s, guerrillas and
the Guatemalan government reached a truce
and signed a peace accord. After 500 years
of exclusion, the Maya of Guatemala gained
an opening to participate in the government
of Guatemala. An indigenous Maya woman,
Rigoberto Menchú, won the Nobel Peace Prize,
and the first Maya, also a woman, was elected
to the Congress of Guatemala.
4
Religion
Intertwining of Catholic and Maya Beliefs
After the Conquest, the Catholic Church was
the dominant Spanish institution in the Maya
highlands of Guatemala. Within a hundred
years of the conquest, every Maya town and
village in the mountains had Catholic churches.
The largest Tz’utuhil town, Santiago Atitlán,
completed their church building in 1582.
Sometimes Maya beliefs coincided with
Catholic teachings; other times they were incompatible. The Catholic priests considered
idolatry and human sacrifice to be the work of
the devil. Between 1545 and 1550 many Maya
carved images in the Tz’utuhil towns were
burned in public, and the Church put an end
to human sacrifice (Orellana 1984, 206). Perhaps the biggest help in converting the
Maya to Christianity was the Catholic cofradía
system. A cofradía is a religious guild sanctioned
by the church. Each cofradía would honor a
patron saint. The earliest documented Tz’utuhil
cofradía was the Cofradía de Concepción in
San Pedro la Laguna in 1633 (Aguirre 1972,
343). Because Spaniards and Maya always
belonged to separate cofradías, the Maya could
incorporate elements of ancient Maya religious
customs in the ritual of their cofradías (Orellana
1984, 209).
The Catholic Church restricted non-Chris-
tian religious observances, and ancient Maya
religious beliefs had to be hidden under the
cloak of Catholicism. The Catholic priests, in
order to facilitate the conversion of the Maya to
Catholicism, tried to incorporate some aspects
of Maya tradition within the church. The steep
and rugged terrain of the highlands of Guatemala made travel in the Maya highlands difficult, and at times most churches in the Tz’utuhil
communities were only visited intermittently
by a priest. As a result, the Maya became devout Catholics but they saw no conflict with
also continuing to practice their pre-Hispanic
religious beliefs.
The Maya incorporated some of their religious beliefs into the Catholic Church through
a process that anthropologists term syncretism,
which is the blending or incorporating of religious beliefs from two unrelated traditions.
Examples of syncretism include: Maximón
becoming Judus Iscariot; guardian animal spirits associated with Christian saints; the Atitlán
altarpiece as a symbol of the volcano; and the
tree of life and the Christian cross. Other aspects of Maya beliefs—such as worship of idols
and divinations—survived as secret practices
hidden from outsiders.
Maya deities often coalesced with figures in
5
Catholicism. In Santiago Atitlán the Tz’utuhil
people revere the Maximón icon, also known
as the pre-Columbian god Mam, the creator of
the universe. The very old, but probably not preHispanic, body of Maximón was carved from
the wood of the sacred coral tree. His face is
an wooden mask, and he smokes a cigar. He
is dressed in the traje (traditional hand-woven
attire) of Santiago Atitlán, and adorned with
a multitude of scarves. Maximón is considered
very powerful and a trickster. The Catholics initially associated Maximón with Judas Iscariot
(Prechtel 1998). This connection revealed a lack
of understanding of the Maya deities, and of
importance of Maximón to the locals. Most
Maya deities have at the same time both good
and bad attributes. At times Catholic priests
tried to ban Maximón, as his Judas incarnation, from the church building during the Easter procession, but it has always caused unrest
within the local population, and in the end the
Tz’utuhils prevailed (Tarn 1997).
The belief in animal spirits still persists
among the Maya. Many Maya believe that each
person is born with a guardian animal called
a nahual. Many Christian saints are associated
with animals, and when the Maya saw a saint
portrayed with an animal they probably assumed that the animal was the saint’s nahual
(Orellana 1984, 207). Nahual/animal syncretism occurs in the life-sized figure of St. John
with a lamb that belongs to the Cofradia of
San Juan in Santiago Atitlán. The saint wears
the typical male tz’ute (headdress) of Atitlán.
The lamb, although white, also has black spots,
whiskers, and fangs. The lamb is thus also a
jaguar, and St. John is included in the aspects of
a more inclusive Maya deity Rjawal Pek’chila
Chkop, the lord of the wild animals (Carlsen:
1995. p.98).
The altarpiece of the church in Santiago
Figure 4: "Rilaj Mam," a painting by Pedro Rafael Gonzalez
Chavajay of a procession honoring Maximon in Santiago
Atitlán.
6
Atitlan is a recent example of blending of the
two religions. After an earthquake damaged it
in the 1970s, much of it needed to be replaced.
Brothers Diego and Nicholas Chavez, woodcarvers, altered the replacement to form a shape
similar to the Toliman Volcano that rises above
the town. Carved figures of cofrades with their
staffs climb the volcano/altar. A cornstalk, the
symbol of yearly rebirth, grows at the pinnacle
of the altar. For the local cofradía members,
the statues of the saints in the niches of this
altarpiece would symbolize the caves hidden
on the side of the volcano where Maya priests
still perform rituals. One of the carved panels
in the lower portion depicts an ajq’iij (a Maya
shaman or daykeeper) casting a divination
(Christiansen 2003, 98-99).
In the Garcia Ixmata family, typical of
Maya Catholic homes, the pre-Hispanic practices and beliefs live on combined with Catholicism. Descendants of the first Spaniard
to marry into the town, the family inherited a
17th or 18th century crucifix in the 1970s from
cousins who had converted to an evangelical
church. The crucifix now serves as the center
of their household altar, always adorned with
fresh flowers. Other townspeople frequently
come over to pray at the cross. The cross is
not flat like the typical Catholic cross, but is
round and colored green. For the Maya, the
cross represented the world tree, and symbolized the four directions. It had its roots in the
underworld and its branches in the heavens.
Traditionally the world tree was a ceiba tree,
the national tree of Guatemala. The Yucatek
Maya word for ceiba, yaxché, is also the word
for green (Miller and Taub 1993). The Gracia
family has hung two stunted ears of white corn
from the nails in Christ’s hands, and another ear
Figure 5: Atitlán altarpiece is shaped like the volcano that
rises above the town.It is a clear example of syncretism—a
mix of Maya and Catholic beliefs.
7
flowers that look like small ears of red corn. In
the Popul Vuh, the hero twins are beheaded, die
and return to the underworld: each year they
are reborn as elote, the living corn plant. Like
the story of Jesus, the Popul Vuh is a story of
rebirth. Christ died on the cross but was resurrected; the hero twins die each year and emerge
again as corn plants.
The pre-Conquest Maya worshipped a
variety of deities. Some of the most important
were the patron deity of each lineage. These
deities were often represented by idols of carved
wood or stone and were worshipped in caves.
After the Conquest, the priests discovered such
carved figures behind altars (Orellana 1984).
More commonly the Maya placed these carved
figures on household altars, and they carried
Figure 6: The Garcia-Ixmata Christ adorned with ears of
dried red and white corn.
of red corn from the nail in his feet. Carvings of
a rope twine around the arms of the cross and
bind red blossoms, probably representing roses,
to the front of each arm. A closer look at the
inflorescences shows them to be very strange
Figure 7: Tz’utuhil sculptor Feliciano Pop with a few of his
carvings that resemble pre-Hispanic idols.
8
small figures around in bundles for their protection. Carved idols still exist. An ex-mayor of
San Pedro, Feliciano Pop, carves figures that
look like the pre-Hispanic idols depicted in
drawings in Orellana’s book. Pop intends the
small figures to be carried around as a protection.
The Maya continue to believe that a god
or spirit resides in everything—the sun, the
earth, mountains, the lake, the wind, and
grains of corn. Mayan languages have words
expressing this idea. In Tz’utuhil, ruuk’u’x
generally is translated as “heart of,” “root of,”
or “center of.” Ruuk’u’z ya would be “heart of
the lake” and ruuk’u’x ulew would be “heart of
the earth.” In some of his paintings, Tz’utuhil
artist Diego Isaias Hernandez portrays these
spirits, giving them human faces. Pedro Rafael
Gonzalez Chavajay recalled when his grandfather Chavajay conducted the church service,
he would begin the service asking for the blessing of the spirits of the mountain, the air, and
the lake. The converse is also true: in Maya
ceremonies at sacred sites, one usually hears
“Jesus Cristo” appearing among the Tz’utuhil
words during the invocation.
Robert Carmack (1981, 334) wrote about
the religion of the Maya after the Conquest.
He states: “The priests who were aware of the
clandestine practices…considered them to be
part of a religion separate from the church. For
the natives, however, the two formed a single
Figure 8: Diego Isaias Hernandez often personifies the spirits
of the sun, moon, wind, rain, and mountains in his paintings.
He portrays animals as being more aware of their presence
than humans.
system of belief and ritual.” From another perspective, the Catholic Church did not succeed
in converting the Maya religious belief; rather,
the Maya incorporated the Catholic Church
into their religious system.
There are many sites in Guatemala where
the Maya performed rituals. Pablo Garcia
Ixmata is the eldest son of the Garcia Ixmata
family. Pablo Garcia studied with Nora England from the University of Iowa, and became
a scholar and world expert on the Tz’utuhil language. He took on his Maya name Ajpub’ and
devoted his life to preserving not only the Maya
languages in Guatemala, but also knowledge of
Maya religious beliefs. He recently documented
and photographed sites around each highland
9
hidden away and hard to find. Some are in
caves. Many are on spectacular promontories or
rocks that have a direct line of sight to another
ritual location. Rituals marked special days in
the Maya calendar for blessing children, crops,
or marriages. Since the signing of the peace accords, the Maya have become more open about
their sacred sites and practices. A contemporary Maya spirituality is arising, one that ties
spiritual beliefs to a respect for the nature and
the planet (Moslesky Poz 2006).
The syncretism of the Maya and Catholic
beliefs created the Maya culture of the twentieth century. That blended culture and belief
system forms the basis of the Maya traditions
depicted in the Tz’utuhil paintings.
Figure 9: The places where the Maya perform rituals were
considered sacred. The sites often are at the most striking
natural formations such as boulders or caves, and they often
are at the highest point with incredible views. This ritual
painted by Pedro Rafael Gonzalez Chavajay is near Santa
Clara la Laguna.
town where the Maya performed religious rituals. Garcia discovered that around each Maya
town at least five and sometimes as many as
thirty sites exist. Some sites are no longer in
use, but each town has places where the local
Maya still perform rituals. The sites are often
10
Guatemalan Painting
After the Conquest, Maya painting disappeared. During the colonial period, the Catholic Church sponsored the only painting. These
paintings depicted the lives of Christ and the
saints, and scenes from the Bible. It was not
until the late 1800s after Central American independence from Spain that Guatemalan artists
began painting non-Christian art.
At the beginning of the twentieth century,
most people in Europe and the United States
held ethnocentric attitudes—thinking of other
cultures as inferior. The European culture labeled anything tribal as Primitive Art including the art of Africa and Oceanaic art. During
the twentieth century, these attitudes generally
underwent a shift and the art of non-Europeanbased cultures accrued more respect. The syncretism of the Spanish and indigenous cultures
influenced Latin American art especially in
countries—Peru, Mexico and Guatemala—that
have large indigenous populations. Most Latin
American artists trained in the European art
tradition, often spending time in Europe as part
of their early development. Many of these artists then returned to their native country and
found inspiration from its indigenous culture.
Early in the 20th century, indigenismo, praising native values, became the official position in
Mexico. The Mexican muralist movement drew
themes from indigenism and in the traditions of
the indigenous populations of Mexico. Indigenismo also influenced the arts in Guatemala,
where artists drew from Maya culture in painting, dance and music. Indigenismo, however,
did not translate into better treatment of the
Maya in Guatemala, nor did it foster Maya arts.
Oppression and marginalization of the Maya
continued, most recently erupting in a period
of guerrilla warfare and genocide in Guatemala
during the 1980s.
Unlike Diego Rivera and the Mexican
muralists, the twentieth century artists of Guatemala are among the least known of all the
Latin American artists. Among those famous
within Guatemala are Humberto Garavito, Alfredo Galvez Suarez, Antonio Tejeda Foseca,
and Carmen Pettersen. Constant among their
themes are the Maya of Guatemala and their
traditions. All of these artists, however, were
trained in the European art tradition. They
observe the Maya as sympathetic outsiders.
Perhaps the best known internationally of
the Guatemala artists is Carlos Merida, a mestizo of Spanish/K’iche’ Maya descent. In 1910
while still in his teens, Carlos Merida traveled
to Paris with his teacher, artist Carlo Valenti,
11
who introduced Merida to Pablo Picasso and
the exciting Paris art scene. In 1914 Merida
returned to Guatemala, married, and moved to
Mexico after his wife’s family opposed the marriage. In Mexico he worked with Diego Rivera
and the Mexican muralists (Escobeda Mendoza
2002). His early work was representational
with many of his themes derived from Maya
traditions. He returned to Paris in 1927, and,
under the influence of Paul Klee, abandoned
his figurative style in favor of an abstract style
he called “mestizo” (Merida 1976). His later
work became more cubistic. Even so, he still
produced a representational series of prints
of both Guatemala and Mexican indigenous
dress. Although he had largely abandoned figurative painting, most of his paintings still had
their roots in Maya culture, dance and music
(Koeninger 1076). In the 1950s, he painted
many of his smaller paintings on a hand-made
native paper called amate. Even though his art
drew on his Maya ancestry, Carlos Merida
spent most of his life living outside contemporary Maya culture.
Figure 10: "San Juan Cotzal, Quiche" one of the prints by
Carlos Merida from the portfolio o”Traje de Guatemala.”
12
The First Maya Artists
What conditions brought Maya painting into
existence and fostered it? Ancient Maya artists
painted murals and pottery, but neither of these
traditions continued after the Conquest. The
inspiration for the first Tz’utuhil Maya paintings must have come from the oil paintings of
saints that they saw in the Catholic churches
and from the weavings of the Maya women.
From ancient times to the present, Maya
women wove their own cloth. Few pre-Hispanic examples of Maya weaving have survived.
Most of what we know about the style of the
clothes the ancient Maya wore comes from
sculpture, paintings on pottery, and the surviving codices. Lintel 24, temple 23, Yaxchilán
shows Lady Xoc in a bloodletting ceremony.
She wears a patterned huipil (blouse) similar to
the longer ceremonial huipiles worn by Maya
women today. The clothes worn by the ancient
Maya probably indicated class and rank (Blum
Schevill 1997).
The Maya weavings strongly influenced
Tz’utuhil painting. Every day the artists saw
women weaving cloth on backstrap looms
every day. They saw the amount of attention
that the women gave to color, design and detail,
and how a piece progressed over the weeks or
months it took to finish. The Tz’utuhil artists
Figure 11: Dolores Sapalu wove the clothing that she and
her husband, Santiago Atitlán artist Manuel Reanda, are
wearing.
borrowed from the brilliantly colored weavings
to create a palette for the paintings, and they
were not afraid to spend weeks on a painting.
13
Because these artists wished to depict Maya
people wearing traje, the weavings influenced
the paintings in another important way. Depicting the traje accurately is important because the
style of the traje indicates which Maya town a
person lives in or, in other words, a person’s
lineage. The people in the paintings, therefore,
needed to be painted large enough to show the
detail in the designs of the traje.
Indigenous painting began in the late 1920s
when an indigenous man Rafael Gonzalez y
Gonzalez, from the Tz’utujil town of San Pedro
la Laguna, began to paint. In the late 1940s,
another Tz’utuhil man, Juan Sisay from nearby
Santiago Atitlan, also took up painting. Each
of them inspired others in their families and
communities to take up painting.
What conditions allowed these two artists
to begin to paint? These two artists come from
families of campesinos (famers) who live off
the land. What little cash a campesino family
earns each year would not be spent on creating
oil paintings. Oil painting requires a considerable outlay of money for canvas, brushes and
oil paints. In order for these artists to continue
painting, they needed a market for their paintings. This market would come from tourism.
Neither of the originators of Tz’utuhil
Maya painting started out painting in oil. Oil
painting as a technique originated in European
around the time of the Renaissance. Before
Gonzalez began painting, he had worked re-
Figure 12: Juan Sisay, the first painter from Santiago Atitlán,
started painting on stiff paper called “cartulina.”
pairing statuary for the church. At first Rafael
Gonzalez improvised materials making his
brushes from his own hair and mixing aniline
dyes used in weaving with the sap of a gavilea
tree to make his paints. In 1929, around six
months after Rafael finishing his first painting,
a tourist bought the painting for fifty cents, a
considerable sum at the time. With the sale of
this painting, he decided painting might be a
way to earn extra money (Paul and Johnston
1998). In the early 1940s Gonzalez, who then
worked on a finca (plantation) near Chicacao,
received his first oil paints from the wife of the
plantation owner in return for a painting Rafael
gave to her husband (Paul and Johnston 1998).
By the time he switched to oils, Gonzalez had
begun selling his paintings to foreigners he met
14
began painting as a result of a seeing a tourist
painting the church in Santiago Atitlan with
watercolors. Fascinated, Sisay managed to get
the tourist to give him some of his paints, from
which he created his first painting (Dary 1998).
For the first decade, Sisay painted in gouach
or watercolor on cartulina (a stiff paper). The
regular stream of tourists coming to Santiago
Atitlan provided a ready market for the paintings he did.
Rafael Gonzalez painted the world around
him. He not only depicted Maya traditions
such as a marriage ceremony in San Pedro la
Laguna, but also painted festivals and markets
that would include ladinos and tourists.
It will be instructive to compare Tz’utuhil
artists to that of Carlos Merida. Carlos Merida
grew up in Quetzaltenango, the second largest
city in Guatemala, and a city that is essentially
Mayan. In order to pursue his vocation as an
artist, he first studied at a university in Guatemala, and then travelled to Paris, the center
of the art world at the time. Patty Koeninger
(1976) writes about his Mayan roots:
“Even though he turned away from folkloric
elements for abstraction, Mérida never really escaped
his Guatemalan origins, for to do so would be to deny
his identity, his concept of reality. To rid himself of
all [Maya] folkloric elements would be to remove the
color, rhythm, poetry, magicality of his painting.”
Figure 13: Rafael Gonzalez carved and repaired wooden
sculpture before he became a painter. This black Christ ,
modeled after the black Christ at Esquipulas, was on an altar
near his bed until his death in 1996.
on the plantations.
In the 1940s Santiago Atitlan was beginning to be a tourist attraction, mainly for
tourists from the United States. Juan Sisay
Carlos Merida drew on his Maya roots for
themes to his paintings. He created his own
style of painting that fit into the Modern move15
Figure 14: Rafael Gonzalez painted what he saw. The second generation of artists, trying to record vanishing Maya traditions,
only depict people wearing their traditional attire.
ment. He did not depict the Maya culture. By
contrast the Tz’utuhil artists would depict the
Maya traditions that were a visible part of daily
life. Their paintings came directly out of their
lives not out of formal training. These artists
started an art movement that truly was part of
contemporary Maya culture.
16
Tz’utuhil Painting
Maya painting did not take off until the 1960s
when, due to improved roads and air travel,
tourists began coming in numbers to Guatemala. Selling the art was still a real struggle
for the most of the artists until around 1967
when Ruth Bunge, a German woman who had
a small gallery in Guatemala City near the big
hotels, began buying paintings from the artists
in San Pedro la Laguna and San Juan Comalapa. This allowed a generation of artists to
make a living. By the early 1970s no less than
sixty Maya artists created paintings in the three
Tz’utuhil Maya towns: San Pedro la Laguna,
Santiago Atitlán, and San Juan la Laguna. The
Tz’utuhil Maya artists had an additional outlet.
They could sell their paintings to the galleries of
artists in Santiago Atitlán that on a daily basis
were visited by crowds of tourists.
After the middle of the twentieth century,
changes as great as the Conquest began affecting the culture of highland Maya of Guatemala. In San Pedro during the 1960s, the
cofradía system that had functioned for over
four hundred years completely disappeared.
The younger generation became more educated
and at the same time tended to speak Spanish
more often than Tz’utuhil. The fundamentalist
Christian churches made inroads in the high-
lands of Guatemala. A guerrilla war resulted
in the deaths of 200,000 Maya in Guatemala.
Because they were easy targets for the Army
in the 1980s if they wore their traje (traditonal
attire), most Maya men stopped wearing traje.
The highland Maya towns, which were once
isolated, became connected to the rest of the
world via at first roads, and then later cell
phones, computers, and the internet. This
global connection has accelerated the rate of
change in the Maya communities.
By the 1960s when the second generation
had begun to paint, many of the Maya traditions were disappearing. Pedro Rafael Gonzalez Chavajay, a good spokesperson for all
the Tz’utuhil artists, says that because Maya
customs and traditions are threatened with
extinction, he wants to document all aspects of
Maya life. So that he can accurately depict those
customs in his paintings, Pedro Rafael Gonzalez listens carefully to the stories of the town
elders who know the details of the traditions
that have already disappeared. To document the
way it was, Pedro Rafael Gonzalez only paints
Maya people wearing traditional traje. Ladinos,
tourists, and Maya people in western attire are
never portrayed in his paintings.
The activities that the artists depict have
17
Abaj depict pre-Conquest customs.
The masked dances derive from both preConquest Maya rituals and dances, and from
Spanish dances. We do not know exactly how
the Maya performed the pre-Conquest Maya
dances, many of which the Catholic priests
Figure 15: “Tejedora” by Domingo Garcia Criado shows a
woman spinning, in much the same way as her pre-Hispanic
ancestors.
changed little from the pre-Hispanic era.
Women’s activities such as weaving and making
tortillas are the same. Likewise most paintings
of harvesting crops (corn, bananas, maguey,
cacao, mango, avocado and papaya) are crops
the Maya have always grown. The Spanish,
however, introduced coffee the most important
cash crop. The paintings of medical themes—
comadrona, curandero de huesos, and dentista—are
of traditional Maya healers who are drawn to
their profession by fate (a sign at their birth)
and their dreams (Paul 1976). The paintings
of rituals at sacred Maya sites such as Pascual
Figure 16: “Palo Volador” by Matias Gonzalez Chavajay is
a pre-Hispanic dance riutal. The angel costumes made the
performance acceptably Christian.
18
banned. The earliest text we have is by Thomas
Gage (1648) who described a dance about
the hunt for a wild animal where the dancers
dress in animal skins. Such a dance, somewhat
tamed, and with the hunt dedicated to Christ to
satisfy the Catholic priests, is the post-Conquest
Baile de Venado. The themes of the Baile de Venado, Baile de los Animales, and Palo Volador are
Figure 17: Contemporary themes have entered Tz’utuhil painting. Victor Vasquez Temó’s painting “Tren de la Muerte”
depicts the experience of a neighbor who lost a leg trying to reach the U.S.
19
all pre-Conquest Maya themes. In the Baile de
los Animales, the dancers believe that they are
taken over by the spirit of their animal during
the dance. Other dances—the Baile de los Moros
y los Christianos, Baile Mexicano, and El Torito—
are all dances of Spanish derivation. The most
important dance to the Maya, Baile de Conquista,
is the Conquest from a Maya perspective.
Paintings of the cofradías may look Catholic on the surface, but the cofradías often have
Maya undertones that are not obvious to outsiders. Processions, likewise, often look Christian,
but they also have roots in the pre-Conquest
Maya processions.
While the themes of the majority of paintings deal with subjects derived from the blend
of the Spanish and Maya cultures, a few do not.
Tz’utuhil artists have created paintings dealing
with such current topics as war, hurricanes,
and illegal immigration. The atrocities that
occurred in the 1980s during the time of violence are sometimes subjects. A painting from
San Juan Comalapa showing men in military
uniforms routing residents and burning houses
is unsigned probably because the artist feared
reprisals. Pedro Rafael Gonzalez Chavajay
traveled to San Francisco to finish a large painting showing the massacre in Santiago Atitlan
because he feared an army informant might see
it in Guatemala. After the peace accords were
signed, some of the artists felt safer dealing with
such subjects, and occasionally they return to
events of that era.
Art movements are never static. Artists
within them eventually branch out and explore
different directions. Juan Fermin Gonzalez
Morales used his military experience riding in
helicopters to create the widely copied birdseye-view perspective. Julian Coche Mendoza
started out as a Tz’utuhil painter, went to art
school which left him lost about his direction
until he created a Guatemalan version of
cubism with the same Maya themes. Victor
Vasquez Temó was the first Tz’utuhil artist to
feature cars and buses in his paintings. Diego
Isaias Hernandez was obsessed with accidents
and natural disasters, but also branched out
with paintings of animals sensing the spirits
of the sun, the moon, and the wind. Chema
Cox switched from oil to watercolor, taught
his nephew to paint, and created technically
brilliant, detailed, photo-realistic watercolors.
Pedro Rafael Gonzalez Chavajay borrowed the
idea of a triptych, but used it in a completely
new way. He showed a traditional procession
(three panels together) that changes in society
had caused to fracture into three separate activities (each one a panel).
20
Figure 18: “Parto” by Juan Fermin Gonzalez depicts a typical campesino household where a midwife assists in the birth of
a child. The bird’s eye perspective, however, is non-tradional and completely original.
21
Conclusion
Contemporary Tz’utuhil Maya painting has its
roots in both the pre-Hispanic Maya religion
and traditions, and in the Spanish Catholic
Church. Five hundred years after the Conquest,
the Maya may be devout Catholics, but they
did not abandon their Maya religious beliefs.
By passively resisting the Spanish after the
Conquest, the Maya have managed to preserve
a considerable portion of their pre-Conquest
culture. They have blended some of their pre-
Hispanic beliefs with those of the Catholic
Church, but have resisted giving up other beliefs even if they had to practice them in secret.
The Tz’utuhil paintings are a compendium
of these traditions both Mayan and Spanish,
documenting them using a European medium,
oil painting. This painting movement, however,
is completely Mayan. More importantly, the
paintings are by the Maya people depicting
themselves and their culture.
22
Glossary
Abaj. Mayan. Rock.
Aguacil. Spanish. Constable or lower grade police officer.
Alcalde. Spanish. Mayor.
Aj’iitz. Mayan. Maya priest.
Atitlán. From Nahuatl (atl, water or liquid, and -tlán,
place of).
Baile. Spanish. Dance
Cacao. From Nahuatl, cacahuatl. The cacao tree. The
bean from which chocolate is made.
Campesino. Spanish. Peasant. A person who basically
lives by farming the land.
Cartulina. Spanish. A stiff white paper that artists use
for watercolors and drawings.
Cofrade. Spanish. Member of a cofradía.
Cofradía. Spanish. Religious brotherhood of laymen
dedicated to the care of a patron saint.
Comadrona. Spanish. Midwife.
Costumbre. Spanish. Custom. The Maya apply the word
to their traditions, especially their Maya religious
rituals.
Curandero. Spanish. Traditional healer..
Finca. Spanish. Estate or agricultural plantation.
Fracaso. Spanish. Failure, defeat, collapse.
Hoy. Spanish. Today.
Huella. Spanish. Footstep, tread, treading, impression.
Hueso. Spanish. Bone. Curandero de hueso, bonesetter.
Huipil. (Guipil). From Nahuatl, huipilli. Sleeveless
blouse worn by Maya women. Many are handwoven,
and as a result the huipil is the most personal, communicative and significant part of a woman’s attire.
Those of San Pedro la Laguna used to be made of a
handwoven white cloth with a machine-made collar,
but now most are made from commercial cloth.
Iglesia. Spanish. Church, church building.
Kaqchikel. One of the Maya tribes and languages. The
ancient capital of the Kaqchikeles was Iximche
ouside of modern Tecpan. The north side of Lake
Atitlán is populated by Kaqchikel speaking Maya.
K’ichee’. One of the Maya ethnic groups and languages.
The great Quiche’ Maya king Tecun Uman was defeated by conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in 1524.
The ancient capital of the Quiche’ Maya was Utatlan
outside of the modern city of Santa Cruz de Quiche’.
Ladino. Spanish. Used in Guatemala to refer to a nonMaya person. It can also refer to a person of Maya
descent who no longer speaks a Maya language, no
longer wears Maya traje, and no longer identifies
themselves as Maya.
Maiz. Spanish. Corn.
Mam. Maya name for Maximón.
Mano. From Nahuatl (man-a meaning to spread or
flat or smooth or to pat out tortillas). Stone grinder
shaped like a rolling pin and used with a metate to
give the masa the right texture to make into tortillas.
Masa. Spanish. Ground corn meal used to make tortillas
and tamales.
Maximón. (Also known as San Simón and El Rilaj
Maam). Ancient Maya god revered especially in
Santiago Atitlán where many residents believe he
is the creator of the Universe.
Mazorca. Spanish from Arabic, masurqa. The dried ears
of corn.
Mayordomo. Spanish. Cofradía official.
23
Mercado. Spanish. Market place.
Metate. From Nahuatl (metlapil, grinding stone). Large
stone used in working or grinding corn masa.
Mestizo. Spanish. A person of mixed blood.
Milpa. Nahuatl. Field of maiz.
Milpero. From the Nahuatl. A person who works in
the cornfields.
Mujer. Spanish. Woman, female.
Municipalidad. Spanish. Town hall.
Nahual. From Nahuatl (nahual, a socerer using spells
or incantions).
Obra. Spanish. Painting or work of art. Obras commericiales: paintings quickly done for the tourist market.
Obras originales: fine art paintings that are claimed to
be one of a kind and carefully painted.
Palo. Spanish. Pole.
Parto. Spanish. Childbirth, delivery.
Pescador. Spanish. Fisherman from pez, pescado for fish.
Patron. Spanish. Boss.
Principal. Spanish. A town elder, typically a man who
has previously served as mayor or head of a cofradía.
Pueblo. Spanish. Town, village, people, nation.
Quiche’. See K’ichee’ .
Regidor. Spanish. Officer of the town council.
Raiz, Raíces. Spanish. Root; Roots.
Santa. Spanish. Holy.
Semana. Spanish. Week.
Servicio. Spanish. Obligatory term of service to the town
or church. It usually lasted for a year, and alternates
between the church and the municipal government. Tejedora. Spanish. Weaver.
Texel. A woman member of a cofradía.
Traje. Spanish. Maya attire, most often hand woven.
Each town’s style and design are unique.
Tzute. A square headcloth worn by Maya men.
Tz’utuhil. One of the Maya ethnic groups and languages. The Tz’utuhiles live on the south side of Lake
24
Atitlán. The ancient capital of the Tz’utuhil Maya
was Chiya’ on a hill at the foot of the San Pedro
volcano across from present day Santiago Atitlán.
Venado. Spanish. Deer.
Vista de pajaro. Spanish. Bird’s-eye-view.
Volador. Spanish. A person who flies. A performer in
the masked dance Palo Volador.
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