Syncretism, Hybrid Identities, and Resistance within the Indigenous MayanCulture

The following paragraphs point to an additional problem that indigenous activists in Latin America are faced with. First, there is the need to demonstrate that the Mayan culture is different from the non-indigenous Ladino culture. This then requires the ability to reflect on one’s own cultural and ethnic background and to articulate and communicate its content to a broader audience. Two interview fragments that stem from a conversation with a Mayan activist who works within the Catholic Church in the pastoral indígena, an agency that promotes Mayan culture, highlight both issues.

Thus, boundaries blur when activists acknowledge that the Indian struggle for recognition is not fought in a historic and social vacuum. This acknowledgement further endangers the project to create a pan-American identity as well as the argument of being culturally distinct.

Syncretism is not only part of people’s biographies and personal experiences; it is also part of religious institutions. One such religious institution, which illustrates the blending of Catholic and indigenous traditions par excellence, is the cofradía (religious brotherhood, lay brotherhood, or saint society). Originally, the cofradías were brought to Latin American during the colonial period by Catholic priests or friars from monastic orders. Later, due to the shortage of Catholic priests, this religious institution moved far away from Catholic orthodoxy and control and became the guardian of Mayan traditions and what these days is called popular Catholicism.⁵⁹⁰ Because of the shifts in cultural ownership, first Spanish and then Mayan, interpretations about their importance among indigenous culture vary. Interestingly, these shifts in interpretation also indicate the importance of the past for the present. Whereas in the 1970s the cofradías were forcefully rejected and interpreted by many, e. g., the Catholic Action movement, as a hindrance to promoting the cause of modernity, these days they are, at least for some, crucial to the survival of indigenous culture, self-representation, and autonomy. Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil, a prominent Mayan intellectual, said in this respect:

Again, while there is no debating that the cofradías were an important institution that represented customary law and traditional religious practices and customs in the past, there is much debate as to what extent the religious brotherhoods represent ‘authentic,’ pre-colonial religious thought and the practice of Mayan people in the present. Consequently, and contrary to Cojti Cuxil’s statement, other ethnically engaged activists accuse current cofradía members and leaders of serving tourist interests. Not surprisingly, this argument is often heard in the villages around Lake Atitlán, where most of the tourism industry is located.⁵⁹² For these critics, the contemporary cofradías have a folkloristic function that cannot be reconciled with the aim of revitalizing a pre-colonial Mayan past. Kay B. Warren points to this ambiguous character when she describes the shifts in interpretation within efforts towards revitalization and recognition of the indigenous culture:

One way of dealing with a situation in which it is highly problematic to verify that ‘authentic,’ ‘pure,’ pre-colonial indigenous culture – or at least elements of this culture – still exist is to simply state that this culture or these elements of indigenous culture are proof of a cultural resistance on the part of the Mayan population. Flavio Rojas Lima, a non-indigenous (Ladino) anthropologist, was the first to introduce this interpretation and apply it to the cofradías.⁵⁹⁴ In his view, the cofradías are a ‘cultural relic’ of a pre-colonial indigenous culture, an institution that was originally introduced by the Spanish clergy but appropriated by the Mayan population and used by them as a tool to help the pre-colonial indigenous culture survive. Interestingly, not only cofradías but also the development agencies are understood by some to be a resourse for cultural resistance; one of these is the indigenous lawyer and congress member Amilcar de Jésus Pop:

This description indicates that for the Maya movement, the battlegrounds for indigenous affairs are not only transnational organizations such as the United Nations or state-bound arenas like the Asamblea de la Sociedad Civil (ASC, Civil Society Assembly) but also regional and even local organizations.⁵⁹⁶ This underlines the above-mentioned trend that religious organizations formerly bound only to the indigenous communities are becoming increasingly ethnicized, while at the same time a process of institutionalization is occurring, e. g., in the form of Mayan priest associations, NGOs, or the development agencies mentioned previously.

The cofradía is an excellent example of creolization,⁵⁹⁷ hybridization,⁵⁹⁸ and syncretism,⁵⁹⁹ fashionable theoretical terms that all describe a process of cultural mixing in modern or, depending on the theorist, post-modern times. Applying Flavio Rojas Lima to these concepts reveals that he is in accordance with current theories on creolization and hybridization but not with syncretism. Whereas the former underline that cultural mixing contains positive elements that allow colonized societies and subjects to both critique and appropriate elements of dominant cultures, syncretism has more negative and pejorative connotations, at least according to Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga. Syncretism usually denies the subordinated subjects the possibility of agency while it stresses the power of hegemonic forces to impose religious orthodoxy.⁶⁰⁰ Two things are important in this regard. One is that, in the new political environment and growing awareness of religious and ethnic identity, new organizations that claim to represent the indigenous population are emerging; some of them are indigenous, but some are not. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are probably the largest group in this respect. Second, the current social and political context is producing new religious interpretations. In other words, an increase in indigenous activism has changed traditional religious institutions, giving them a different meaning and acknowledgement.

The New Mayan Priests

This section deals with another traditional ethnic-religious institution, the Mayan priests, or in Spanish sacerdote mayas. Similarly to the cofradías, they gained a completely novel meaning and function due to changes in the political-ethnic environment. In order to describe the transitions that took place, I present the case of Audelino Sac Coyoy.

Audelino Sac was about fifty years old when I interviewed him. He is K’iche’, Catholic, and a trained Mayan priest. When I met him, he was working as a counselor for the International Labor Organization (ILK), an institution that is part of the United Nations. He lives with his family in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city, where he also grew up.

His thinking about Mayan identity and Mayan spirituality has been heavily influenced by Carlos Guzmán Böckler, a non-indigenous intellectual, who published the influential book Guatemala: A Socio-Historical Interpretation with the French sociologist Jean Louis Herbert in 1970.⁶⁰¹ He calls Guzmán Böckler his teacher.⁶⁰²

As a Mayan priest who is actively involved in asserting and revitalizing Mayan culture and spirituality, what are his views on Mayan spirituality? Is there a connection between the ideas of Gúzman Böckler, who is not explicitly religious in his writings, and Audelino Sac’s religious agenda? This is what Audelino Sac said in terms of his own Mayan identity and spirituality:

It is clear that for Audelino Sac, Mayan spirituality is inextricably connected to his descent, his ancestors, and his culture.⁶⁰⁴ For him, it conveys a feeling of affiliation while also providing fundamental answers to existential questions. He revealed that Mayan spirituality is more important to him than other religions – more important certainly than Catholicism – and it is also more authentic, because he views it as a part of his own identity. Other religions, e. g., Catholicism, are not part of his identity and not part of Mayan identity in general. He said that he had to study and to learn it, an argument often made by Mayan activists.⁶⁰⁵ Overall he makes an equation in which Mayan spirituality appears to be synonymous with self-identity, descent, and culture. Moreover, he assigns Mayan spirituality the status of a life philosophy, which influences his interpretation of the world. Additionally, by describing Mayan spirituality as a way of life he seems to subordinate his life to this philosophy and to plan his life accordingly.⁶⁰⁶

What are the similarities between the theoretical arguments of Gúzman Böckler, Herbert, and Audelino Sac? Similarly to Gúzman Böckler and Herbert, Sac views identity as a key concept determined by his descent and his past. Moreover, there is a strong ethnic antagonism in Sac’s argument, which is described in religious terms. The ethnic dichotomy appears to be a religious one: there are the Mayans and Mayan spirituality on the one hand and non-indigenous people and religions, in particular foreign Catholicism, on the other. Like Gúzman Böckler, the emphasis is on cultural and religious differences. In this regard, Catholicism – or religion in general – becomes a symbol for the identity of the others, the non-indigenous Ladinos. Viewed through the lens of sociological and anthropological theories, for Sac, those Mayans who profess Catholicism – and most likely Protestantism – profess a hybrid religious identity. By contrast, Mayan spirituality is the essence of what it means to be Mayan; it is a way of life and a philosophy. From this perspective, Mayan spirituality and religious identity can only be an essentialized version of faith, whereas other religions and their religious practices are always a bricolage, hybrid and implemented ways of believing and belonging. Sac also made a judgment of these hybrid forms of identity and presented them as post-colonial criticism. Catholicism is obviously viewed negatively and rejected because it was imposed by outsiders and – although he does not say so explicitly – subject to outsiders’ interests.

The division into religious identities that are based on essentialist (or pri-mordialist) versus hybrid theories emerges again later in the interview, when he distinguishes between two groups within the Maya movement. The first group consists of Catholics and Protestants who simultaneously practice Christian and Mayan spiritual practices. The second group, which he himself associates with, is characterized exclusively by its Mayan identity and completely rejects Christianity. Within this group, he said, there is a great enthusiasm to revitalize the Mayan culture and its customs, which have almost been lost.⁶⁰⁷

A strong irony emerges when we compare Audelino Sac’s own background with his views on Mayan religious identity, in particular his statement that he had to study other religions that were not originally related to his Mayan identity. In this case, he is deliberately ignoring the strong Catholic affiliation that exists in his family. His father Rodrigo Sac was a devoted cofrade in the Cofradía del Justo Juez, and prior to that, his grandfather Ramón had been an important member in the local religious brotherhood.⁶⁰⁸

Audelino Sac himself was never a devout Catholic, and his interest in Mayan spirituality was not part of his own personal history either. Surprisingly, Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, a Mayan anthropologist and journalist who chronicled the history of the Sac family in her manuscript From Caballo to Landrover, wrote that he actually had a mocking attitude towards indigenous spirituality:

At the beginning of the 1990s his demeaning attitude changed radically. Under the influence of new friends who were very active in the Maya movement and in particular with Mayan spirituality, he decided to become a Mayan priest. He completed his training under the special guidance of Gregorio Camacho and Jaime Lucas from the Gran Confederación de Sacerdotes Mayas. He specialized in the scientific aspects of Mayan spirituality, e. g., the Mayan calendar, mathematics, astronomy, and psychology, and started to offer seminars on Mayan spirituality. Additionally, he found an entry into academic circles and established contacts to development agencies.⁶¹⁰

Besides the fact that his own biography by no means reflects an inextricable link between Mayan spirituality and ethnic identity, there is a striking religious pluralism within the Sac family. In her family chronology, Irma Velasquez Nimatuj describes the effect of this religious pluralism within the Sac family. When the above-mentioned Cofradía del Justo Juez celebrated its 75^th anniversary, the cofradía committee decided that its patron saint should visit all the houses of former presidents, including that of the Sac family. Rodrigo Sac, who had reached quite an age at this point and was strongly marked by the final stages of cancer, was overjoyed. The saint had played a central role in his life. When the statue arrived in the house he asked his son Audelino not to forget the Catholic heritage of his grandfathers and to commemorate it. When Rodrigo Sac died that same night, his children were present: two daughters who converted from Catholicism to Protestant-Pentecostalism and Audelino, who had already started his training as a Mayan priest. He performed a Mayan ceremony in front of the coffin, whereas the two converted daughters prayed to God to petition eternal peace for the deceased.⁶¹¹

From Velásquez Nimatuj’s family chronicle we can grasp that it was not Sac’s immediate ancestors and family who introduced him to Mayan spirituality. At this point he clearly engages in a re-interpretation of his own religious past, defining it in a way that suits his present spiritual views, including a complete negation of his Catholic education and family values. Now his frame of reference consists of an idealized, romanticized, and generalized past. Interestingly, his biography and his views on Mayan spirituality are astonishingly similar to those of Christian converts.⁶¹² Analogous to typical Protestant Pentecostal conversion narratives, he says that he has subordinated his life to the cause of Mayan spirituality, turning from no religion to belief. In fact, conversion is a term used by Mayan intellectuals. Victor Montejo, for instance, explicitly uses the concept when he talks about the need to revitalize Mayan culture. Although he is using it in a cultural rather than a strict religious sense, the call for a radical change in beliefs, values, personal identity, and worldview is apparent.

An additional thought-provoking aspect is Montejo’s reference to the divide between Mayas from an urban and rural environment. A person who also mentioned this urban-rural Mayan divide was the indigenous Catholic priest Tomás García. According to his view, radical Mayans who reject syncretism and define Mayan spirituality as something entirely different from Catholicism acquire this attitude when living outside their rural communities, for instance, while studying at the university in the city. In other words, contacts beyond the rural community are an important factor, pushing a reassessment of and self-reflection about one’s own ethnic and religious self-identity. Father Tomás acknowledged that he himself had this experience while studying theology in Canada. In sum, these and other cases indicate⁶¹⁴ that it is not only descent and origin that are responsible for religious and ethnic self-ascription but also people’s life course, especially their contact with ethnic others.⁶¹⁵ From this perspective, ethnic and religious assertiveness can only develop in a society that possesses a certain degree of ethnic-religious pluralism; in fact, pluralism emerges as a necessary pre-condition.

Audelino Sac represents a new type of Mayan priest, one who participates in academia, travels in and out of Guatemala, and looks at Mayan spirituality from a scholarly, some might even say esoteric, perspective. Certainly, Sac does not belong to a rural Mayan community but is part of an urban, indeed global, network. He actually distinguishes himself from traditional and ordinary Mayan priests who use a mix of religious references, from pictures of Catholic saints to all sorts of other daily objects, as long as they think it increases spiritual effectiveness. ⁶¹⁶ Interestingly, on this point there is another parallel to charismatic Catholics and Protestant Pentecostals. The latter also reject everything that appears hybrid or syncretistic. Aura Marína Cumes, a Mayan UNESCO employee and, like Sac, a person who discovered her interest in Mayan spirituality only recently and in adulthood, made this comparison herself. She said some of the new Mayan priests have fallen into an extreme viewpoint in which they, like Guatemalan Protestants, reject any expression that conflicts with their image of how a Mayan priest should look.⁶¹⁷ As an example, she referred to Mayan activists who established the dictum of wearing the typical Guatemalan sandals (caites) instead of ordinary shoes.

Coming back to the previously discussed concept of conversion, there are two other striking parallels between Mayan priests and Protestant Pentecostals, religious agents who seem, at first sight, to be totally distinct. First, according to the general research consensus, conversion involves a process of radical change in belief, values, and to some degree personal identity and worldview.⁶¹⁸ The biographic details given above certainly coincide with such a description, conveying the transformation of the original way of life similar to an experience of secondary socialization. The training to become a Mayan priest then epitomizes this process. On a more general level, and again similar to conversion processes among other religions, the person starts to base and orient important acts and decisions according to the new religious belief system, its norms and values. These become the convert’s center of life. In turn, all other life decisions, e. g., concerning career and family, are grouped around it. In this regard, the strong connection between aspects of identity and religion can be described as a heightened religious consciousness. Second, Mayan spirituality has attained the status of a religion for those Mayan constituents who identify with it. They define it as a coherent religious belief system, making exclusive and absolute claims about it, and contest explicitly hybrid elements within it, e. g., influences of Catholicism.⁶¹⁹ Again, a conversion process, namely a transition from one religious community to another, seems to take place. Furthermore, an obvious element is the quest element. That is, conversion is the outcome of this quest for a new identity.⁶²⁰ Finally, affiliation with a group – in this case belonging to the Mayan ethnic community – is of great significance. Without this collective factor, it would be impossible to achieve this new ethnic-religious identity, nor could it survive over time.⁶²¹

The profound transition provokes a series of questions. What are the social effects of this ethnic religious activism? Do the new actors and agents possess certain legitimacy, a legitimacy that is supported by the broader Mayan population and not just part of a new political agenda in which ‘ethnic’ agents who represent the indigenous population are needed? For instance, what about the religious identity of Mayans who are not part of the movement? Can they identify with the religious discourse of the Maya movement and their religious practices? The following section discusses the complex and contradictory relationship between agents of the Maya movement who are searching for a religious-ethnic mobilization and the Mayan community of a small indigenous town. It demonstrates that religion is by no means uniform among the Mayan people.

The Decline of Traditional Mayan Spirituality in Comitancillo

Comitancillo is a Mayan town located 2,280 meters (7,480 feet) above sea level. Including all the surrounding hamlets, the population amounts to approximately 50,000 inhabitants. The town is situated in the Northwestern Highlands of Guatemala, in the province of San Marcos. Similarly to other indigenous communities, it experienced an enormous transition in the execution of traditional religious practices. Not only has there been a tremendous decline in the number of traditional Mayan priests and people who perform traditional rituals, but these days numerous Protestant churches are part of the town and the surrounding hamlets. At weekends, the sound of prayer groups fills the air via loudspeakers. They are not all Protestant, as one might expect given their exuberant form of worship and their use of megaphones. Many of the prayer groups are indeed part of the Catholic parish, led at the time of my research by an energetic eighty-year-old Ladino priest and member of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a personality who also turned out to be a key figure in implementing Catholic Action.

In order to understand the current religious pluralism in Comitancillo, I will start with an account of what happened to traditional Mayan practices in this area and the factors that are responsible for their disappearance. I seek to answer two primary questions. First, where are the traditional Mayan priests located in the picture described above? Second, how do all of these religious players interact with each other?

Comitecos, that is the locals, mentioned three major factors responsible for the decline of costumbre, the traditional cultural (including religious) customs. Although these factors are all different in nature, they concur on one point: Non-indigenous agents and institutions arrived with the explicit goal of dismantling and eliminating traditional Mayan religious practices. Moreover, this whole process took place within a decade, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, a synergy in time that enhanced the destructive force of the various measures applied.

It was most likely a Catholic missionary campaign, part of the Catholic Action movement, which was most detrimental to religious practices. In this region, Catholic Action was set in motion during the 1950s and early 1960s. Additionally, the local primary schools, which are staffed by Ladino teachers, tried to ban Mam, the local indigenous language, by establishing a Spanish-only policy in the schools. Children who did not obey this rule were often punished physically. ⁶²² At the same time, a health center opened in town. This factor had a huge impact on traditional indigenous authorities, e. g., midwives,⁶²³ and affected a series of cultural practices. Feliciano Pérez, a Comiteco and former employee of a Canadian aid agency, gave an example of how the health center staff tried to prevent people from using the chuj, a traditional steam bath,⁶²⁴ or using plants to treat health problems.

Daniel Muñoz, an elderly Ladino who had been mayor of Comitancillo twice in the 1960s and was still a shopkeeper at the time of my stay, mentioned another aspect responsible for the decline of traditional religious practices. He told me that while he was mayor, he himself had initiated a personal campaign against the Mayan priests, in particular against the objects they used. At the time, he was concerned about what he called the atmosphere of suspicion and conflict emanating from the work of the Mayan priests. He said that many of the villagers lived in constant fear of having been cursed. They considered bad things that happened to be the result of curses invoked and spells cast by the Mayan priests. The Catholic priest Eric Gruloos from the neighboring municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacán argued in a similar fashion, saying that in indigenous villages full of poverty, economic and social gains are often viewed with jealous eyes and attributed to the losses of someone else. He also thought that belief in transcendental powers such as curses and spells would add to the tensions and conflicts already present in the villages.⁶²⁵ For Muñoz, a seemingly good solution was to confiscate all indispensable objects used in Mayan rituals. He assigned this task to the auxiliary mayors. They did not like this assignment because they attributed special powers to these artifacts and were afraid to touch them. Muñoz laughed as he recounted the incident and obviously did not believe in the power of Mayan priests or the objects they used. As he recalled, it was not easy to convince the auxiliary mayors to execute his order, but in the end they did, and the objects were stored in the office of the local justice of the peace.

Compared to the campaign of the Catholic Church, Daniel Muñoz’s initiative only had a minor impact on local religious traditions, at least if we believe local indigenous Catholics. They have little doubt that it was first and foremost the tactic used by the Catholic Church that contributed to the demise of traditional Mayan religion and the success of implementing orthodox Catholicism. Unlike Protestant missionaries who went from house to house to gain converts, the Catholic Church tried to convert the traditional Mayan priests first. With this strategy, the Catholic Church soon damaged the traditional communal structure of the surrounding villages, because the Mayan priests were important authorities, vital for the collective organization of the communities and important advisors for the individual village member. Furthermore, when a Mayan priest converted, the whole village (or hamlet) often followed. In doing so, whether consciously or unconsciously, the missionaries made use of the cultural significance of family and kin structures as well as generally acclaimed authorities among the Mayan population.

The narrative of the locals, who stress that the religious institution responsible for the decline of Mayan spirituality in Comitancillo costumbre and the reduced number of Mayan priests was initially the Catholic Church and not the Protestant missionaries, offers two challenges to prevailing academic assumptions. The first is limited to incidents in the past, namely the conquest, colonialism, and periods of liberal governments in the nineteenth century, in short, incidents that happened between five hundred and one hundred and fifty years ago; the second describes the loss of indigenous cultural elements as part of the recent armed confrontation in which an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans, most of them indigenous, lost their lives. These versions of events are, of course, not mutually exclusive and in fact often prevail in the same writings. This is not to say that anthropological and ethnological accounts do not cover the modernizing role of the Catholic Church in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. However, the ways in which the missionary efforts of the Guatemalan Catholic Church contributed to the decline of traditional Mayan religious practices and institutions largely remain a blind spot.⁶²⁶ Only a few publications, such as Ricardo Falla’s study on San Antonio Ilotenango, reveal how the Catholic Church as a key player influenced the religious fate of its indigenous constituency a few decades ago.⁶²⁷ Even though some academics mention Catholic Action as a part of this missionary campaign,⁶²⁸ the efforts of Catholic Action are mostly described in terms of combating communism in the 1950s, establishing development projects (e. g., peasant cooperatives) in the 1960s, and later fostering a new indigenous activism in the 1970s. In sum, how the Catholic Church itself contributed to religious pluralism, and how it implemented a massive campaign to gain converts among the indigenous population, were not issues on the radar screens of most academics. ⁶²⁹

Another factor that merits attention is the self-perception of Catholic Comitecos, their own religious identity, and their thoughts on the implementation of orthodox Catholicism through the above mentioned missionary campaign. Interestingly, a series of comments indicate that older people did not identify as Catholic before the 1950s. One remark often made was: “The saints have a different meaning these days than they had before. Today they are part of religion; before they were not.”⁶³⁰ Moreover, Comitecos and Comitecas constantly used the formulation that ‘religion,’ by which they meant Christianity, became part of the village only a few decades ago. This clearly indicates that there are different perspectives regarding religious affiliation, ascriptions, and self-ascriptions. While anthropologists usually describe the popular Catholicism of the indigenous population, including the Mayan priests, as a fusion of pre-colonial elements with Spanish Catholicism, the indigenous villagers clearly do not share this interpretation. For them, the town became Catholic only recently, not five hundred years ago. What marked the transition towards becoming Catholic was the above-mentioned missionary campaign and the subsequent arrival of a permanent priest.

In the endeavor to implement orthodox Catholicism, the priest targeted important local customs, such as those related to ancestor worship. The belief that dead ancestors influence the life of the living has an important place in Latin American popular culture. According to this belief, ancestors can support the bereaved, or, when they are not worshiped or adequately remembered, they can castigate and punish them. The belief in the influence of ancestors is therefore directly related to the life of the living. Strictly speaking, this belief is incompatible with Christian doctrine, because religious practices ‘for,’ ‘with,’ or even ‘from’ the dead contradict the sole saving efficacy of Christ, implying that the lives of the living are still influenced by the dead and communication with the dead is possible.

One example of ancestor worship are the ceremonies on the Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos), when in Comitancillo and elsewhere people make pilgrimages to the cemeteries and organize picnics on the graves, leaving food for the deceased. In Comitancillo, typical indigenous food is usually prepared for this event, such as tamales and chile ayote. The villagers remember that in the past people would visit a Mayan priest on this day. The Mayan priest would then communicate with the ancestors in order to petition for health, a good harvest, or other things that were important to them. They said that the local Catholic priest tried to ban this important ritual, but as we can see, he was not very successful:

Thus, from the perspective of the Catholic Church, the belief in the power of the ancestors constitutes a heresy, a false, pagan view. The important point here is not only that the position of the villagers is at variance with the doctrine of Catholicism but also that the continued worship of ancestors epitomizes the point at which the influence of Catholic doctrine on people’s lives ends. From this perspective, ancestor worship is a religious space that is not permeated by Catholic doctrine, a space where Mayan belief reigns. Therefore, it exercises an important social function, because it shapes collective identity and harmonizes social action independently of institutionalized religion. Ancestor worship also connects the past with the present and guarantees the link to the past through kin. The following quotation from an interview with a Mayan priest highlights the connection between the continuity of norms and values and the belief in the power of the ancestors. My question to the Mayan priest was whether ancestors are able to do harm to the living. He responded:

Other situations in which Comitecos believe that ancestors can do harm to the living occur when a person dies before God’s appointed time. These dead suffer in the mountains, and sometimes their spirits come back to their families to gain attention by making noise. “Those dead have not arrived in the kingdom of God,” was the description in one interview.⁶³³ The Mayan priests then try to appease the spirits and to prevent them from harming the living. Clearly there is syncretism and religious mixing embedded in these remarks, e. g., the blending of the belief in God’s exclusive power and the belief in the powers of the ancestors.

The last aspect of the Catholic missionary campaign describes the course of action taken by the Catholic Church. In the area of Comitancillo the missionary campaign was launched from other parishes – in particular the small towns of Tejutla and San Lorenzo – adjacent to Comitancillo. Comitancillo did not have a permanent priest during the early 1960s, so the infrastructure of the neighboring parishes was used. According to witnesses, every traditional Mayan priest (Aj Q’ij) who lived in the area was visited. The ultimate goal was to convert the Mayan priests to orthodox Catholicism. Part of the process included convincing them to give up their ‘pagan’ practices. This meant, among other things, the burning of traditional cult objects, as Javier Llamazares remembers:

The campaign had both individual and collective effects, because traditionally Mayan priests perform rituals for both an individual and a collective audience. Older locals remembered the execution of collective ceremonies. They remembered that collective ceremonies targeted needs that almost every villager had, e. g., good weather for farming. For specific purposes, like petitioning rain, the whole village gathered on symbolically important mountains, riverbanks, and entrances to caves. A fire would be lit, chompipes (turkeys) would be slaughtered, and their blood would be poured into the fire. People would also throw pom, estoraque (raisins that are mixed with herbs), and miches (red beans) into the fire. The villagers did not mention the Mayan calendar (tzolkin), a calendar with pre-colonial roots that is still in use in some indigenous communities to organize ritual and agricultural life (e. g., planting and harvesting).⁶³⁶ It seems that in Comitancillo its use vanished from collective practices decades ago.

These days, mountains, caves, and riverbanks are still important for Mayan ceremonies performed on an individual level. In this sense, the Catholic missionary campaign fostered a process of individualization of traditional religious practices. Nevertheless, collective ceremonies have not completely disappeared but rather have changed their purpose and intention. Mayan organizations are responsible for these changes and for the revitalization of ceremonies. Indigenous activists and their groups – often organized like NGOs – have started to set up an increasing number of training sessions and workshops to mobilize and educate rural locals regarding ritual performances. In other words, in the process of unifying ceremonial rituals and other Mayan cultural practices, new religious specialists have emerged to represent the indigenous population, claiming expertise and knowledge of indigenous culture. These new religious experts are constantly producing new meanings, e. g., in introducing colors for candles that have not been used before in rituals conducted by local Mayan priests or in the application of fragments of the Popul Vuh as well as anthropological and archeological literature. They also introduced a series of conflicts based on different notions of rationality and knowledge. These conflicts and their effects in the social sphere are discussed in the next section.

The Social Effects of Essentialism: Conflicts over Meaning at the Local Level

Workshops offered by urban Mayan priests in rural Mayan communities illustrate well the above-described conflicts over contextualized versions of faith. Thus, the following paragraphs pick up on the dynamic that is attached to the implementation of workshops. A short account, given by a Mayan priest, ethnic activist, and employee of the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) provides some insight into how someone who is not from a rural community understands his contribution.

Obviously, the goal of the seminar is to foster a conscious reflection on Mayan spirituality and practice. In a way, this process is comparable to the development of a Mayan theology and liturgy. It is also apparent that the underlying theoretical framework offered here does not emanate from rural Mayan communities but rather from Mayan professionals trained in the city. Differences in meaning appear precisely at this juncture; what is performed at a local level has followed a traditional logic created by the locals over centuries.⁶³⁸ What this traditional logic tried to achieve using Mayan ceremonies was the solution of typical problems for villagers in a rural environment: sickness, conflicts with neighbors, domestic problems, and a better climate to secure a good harvest. In contrast, the logic of the Maya movement follows the principles of a national political agenda, whose ultimate goal is not necessarily the revitalization of local Mayan spirituality but rather increased political clout for indigenous people in the nation-state. A unified frame of reference is required to achieve this, one that is interested in ethnic distinctiveness and not in communion with the divine.

In the current context, religious practice and spirituality are tied to the rural community, oral history, and local knowledge; my argument is that the workshops organized by urban Mayan activists ultimately delegitimize local religious expertise instead of promoting it. This is not only the result of conflicting logics –one oriented towards a national and the other towards a local agenda – but also of attempts by the new religious experts to replace the local knowledge of Mayan priests; in so doing they perpetuate existing asymmetries. More precisely, the urban Mayan elite, who act on behalf of political interests on the national stage, are professionals endowed with knowledge from books and the Internet and are often paid by international agencies; Mayan priests from rural villages represent the opposite end of the spectrum, in that they are often illiterate and live in precarious conditions. Thus these two types of Mayan priests occupy different social positions and are equipped with a different symbolic, cultural, and economic capital. These asymmetries are promoted in the case of the modern type of Mayan priest. Now the transfer of knowledge takes place between urban and local actors, with the local Maya at the bottom of the hierarchy. In this scenario, the transfer of knowledge between Mayas of the same rural community does not occur. Thus, in the end, these new urban Mayan priests not only delegitimize knowledge, they also erode the existing capacity of local Mayans to act, to have an impact and represent local spiritual affairs; sociologically speaking, they diminish local agency.

The new ethnic-religious discourse rehearsed and practiced in workshops is, not surprisingly, largely devoid of any Christian references. Christian elements are associated with colonial times and perceived as not authentically Mayan. Nonetheless, ignoring Christianity also means denying the social reality, namely, that popular religion is heavily permeated with Christian elements, functioning according to a logic that follows the principle of ‘whatever works best.’ What is also ignored is that practices that are commonly described as witchcraft, e. g., the casting of spells and curses, do exist in Mayan communities. Before I illustrate the consequences of this disregard, let me briefly supplement this last aspect by describing the types of religious office there are in Comitancillo. Depending on the tasks they perform, locals differentiate between an Aj Q’ij, a Yux (pronounced Yoush), and a curandero (male) or curandera (female). The curanderos or curanderas are equal to healers and are consulted when people have a physical problem and think that a biological dysfunction is responsible. An Aj Q’ij is sought for health problems whose origin is thought not to be physical. What the Aj Q’ij does not do, however, is invoke curses, cast spells, etc. This is the job of a Yux. Therefore, if a person has a conflict with a neighbor, their spouse, or other problems, the decision about where to go to find a solution depends ultimately on the person’s interpretation and wishes. In other words, if the person wants to inflict harm on someone in order to solve the problem or serve as revenge, he or she might go to the Yux. Therefore, along with Christianity, this last aspect of spirituality is obscured in the ethnic discourse of revitalization. A positive image is necessary in ethnic politics, and the fact that traditional religious practices intend at times to do harm to people does not suit the ethnic cause.

As previously mentioned, for some villagers the revitalization efforts create problems based on conflicting religious understandings. Midwives are a case in point; this is a group that is usually addressed by the Maya movement because they fill traditional leadership roles in the villages and are thus traditional carriers of Mayan culture. Some of these midwives are orthodox Catholics, which is an important reason why workshops potentially create tensions with their religious identity. Aj Q’ij or Mayan priests are another group addressed as a key audience. Compared to midwives, they do not have the same problems participating in the workshops, since being a Mayan priest and orthodox Catholic or Protestant Pentecostal at the same time is mutually exclusive.

The aim of the Maya movement is that these target groups will serve as mediators by virtue of their authority and leadership position. Consequently, spreading the knowledge attained in the workshops to the broader Mayan community is one of the goals. Still, some participants in these workshops only find out about the spiritual content and ideas after they have begun attending. In other words, if converts to orthodox Catholicism or Protestantism had known that Mayan ceremonies would take place, they would never have participated. The following interview with a Mayan midwife from Comitancillo presents such a case.

One might call what happened simply a misunderstanding, since we do not know if the organizers intentionally held back certain information. Notwithstanding this possibility, the woman’s religious biography is a remarkable case that describes how religious pluralism is embedded in people’s lives and the conflicts it can generate on a personal level when these diverging religious identities and assumptions suddenly converge. Again, her remarks highlight the differing social meanings connected to diverging belief systems as well as the boundary discourses associated with orthodox Christianity and the Maya movement. Clearly, the midwife attributes transcendental effects to the performance of Mayan ceremonies, effects that differ from the aims of the ethnic agents organizing these workshops. Her own religious identity is directly tied to the Catholic Action conversion campaigns that began in the 1950s, targeting non-Catholic and syncretist Catholic traditional religious ritual practices and denouncing them as sin and devil worship. So from her perspective, participation means committing sin. At this point, it is also important to consider that popular knowledge about Mayan ceremonies includes witchcraft. For this midwife, Mayan ceremonies can potentially provoke malicious powers (either as a punishment from God or because the performer provoked malicious spirits). For her these Mayan ceremonies are not a demonstration of ethnic empowerment and distinctiveness; they are carried out in order to communicate with ancestral spirits or other powers for a specific end. This local knowledge is obscured by the pan-Maya movement, which in the end creates confusion or even fear among participants.

The New Mayan Ceremonies

Mayan ceremonies also epitomize shifts in local spiritual practices and their meaning. At least in Comitancillo, two notable differences between traditional and contemporary ceremonies include audience and motive. Whereas in the past occurrences such as droughts might have necessitated the celebration of a Mayan ceremony attended by an audience that included most of the villagers, the situation is different today. Now Comitancillo’s largest Mayan ceremony is dedicated to the Mayan 260-Day calendar, the beginning of the Mayan New Year. Local Mayan activists also call the ceremony Wajxaqib’ B’at’z. A clear indication that this ceremony is new in purpose and content is the assertion of elderly people that they do not remember ever celebrating the Mayan New Year in the village.⁶⁴⁰ The Mayan priest Don Carlos Pérez Alvarado described the changes from his perspective:

Sometimes I went to the ceremonies with Don Constantino.⁶⁴¹ I went to pray there. During the ceremonies, however, they did not solve the problems of the people; that is to say, people were not liberated from their problems. It was rather similar to a Catholic mass.⁶⁴²

Don Carlos’s remarks indicate the high degree of formality that characterizes these new ceremonies, resembling that of Catholic liturgy. Don Carlos again points to the differences between the goals of traditional and modern Mayan ceremonies; that is, the new ceremonies are not performed for the purpose of solving concrete problems concerning the environment and life-world of the villagers. Ordinary Catholics share his opinion. Aurelio Maldonado, an older villager who watched the ceremonies out of curiosity, commented, “Well, I went to the mountain Tui Tz’unin to see what they are doing, what is happening. What they did has nothing to do with traditional ceremonies. It was totally different.” ⁶⁴³

Who is organizing these new Mayan ceremonies? In Comitancillo, most of these events are planned and carried out by former students of the local school, Colegio Juan Diego. This group has multiple contacts to the capital, to other Mayan organizations, and to people in neighboring provinces. Because of their contacts, the first ceremonies they organized were not performed by local Mayan priests but by guests from the neighboring province of Huehuetenango. This constitutes another major change, since in the past traditional Mayan priests seldom traveled outside the borders of their local municipality to perform ceremonies.⁶⁴⁴

The relationship between the local revitalization group and local Mayan priests is ambivalent. During the time this research was carried out (March 2001– 2002), there were only three local Mayan priests involved in the work of the group. It was obvious that the local activists did not want more local Mayan priests to participate. I asked the leader of the group why there was no such interest and dialogue. He answered point-blank, “These local Mayan priests do not have any consciousness” (no tienen conciencia). With this assertion, he indirectly referred to what he obviously thinks local priests are missing, namely a political agenda. In other words, those who practiced ceremonies to solve villagers’ problems and not to enhance cultural revitalization were not the right participants. Interestingly, some Catholic villagers who take part in the cultural revitalization group gave completely different reasons as to why an effort to include more local Mayan priests was never made.

The ugly side of the local history of religious pluralism, including former Catholic Action conversion campaigns, is alive in these remarks. Yet they also indicate that a process of reflection on their own cultural and religious identity has begun among some Catholic converts. These developments have not resulted in a total rejection of Catholicism, however.

The efforts of the Mayan activists are concentrated, as mentioned before, on Mayan ceremonies and workshops. They bought a little piece of land for the performance of ceremonies on the top of Tui Tz’unil Mountain and erected a Mayan cross.⁶⁴⁷ As already mentioned, the group started to organize the celebration of the Mayan New Year. The ceremony turned out to be a huge success, with hundreds of people participating. Nevertheless, there was fierce resistance from parts of the Catholic and Protestant community, in particular from Charismatic Catholics and Protestant Pentecostals, who are strictly opposed to Mayan traditional rituals that they consider pagan and diabolic. According to one of the organizers, Protestants responded with derogative comments, some of which were aired on the local Protestant Pentecostal radio station Eben-Ezer. He also said that the station went as far as making the ceremony the object of a live program, describing the ritual as worshipping the devil and announcing that those who participated would go to hell because of their spiritual practices. He added that the Catholic catechists of the parish also condemned the cultural revitalization activities by desecrating the altar with human excrement. Moreover, he claimed that local Catholic neighbors of Mayan priests had installed loudspeakers, using the Bible to defame them as sorcerers.⁶⁴⁸