I His name is Chan K'in. Chan means "little" and K'in is "sun, prophecy, prophet." He lives at a place called Naha’ (Great Water) on the lake of the same name. Chan K'in ti' Naha’ could be translated Little Prophet of the Great Water. He is the firstborn son of the previous "great one," Bol Kasyaho'.
The "great one" - t'o'ohil in his own Maya language - is the religious and civic leader of the northern Lacandon Indians, a small ethnic group in the jungles of the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Chan K'in's community has no written traditions, so his genealogy becomes lost after a very few generations, but where it comes to an end it points directly back to the throne of Palenque, one of the most important archaeological sites of the so-called Old Empire of the ancient Maya civilization, which flourished in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D.
There is disagreement among the specialists, but every day it becomes a bit more clearly substantiated that the Maya civilization was a direct continuation or evolution of the ancient Olmec culture, whose origins are as yet lost in antiquity, some three millennia ago. The Olmec civilization rose from 1260 to 1200 B.C., although its formative stages reach back centuries earlier. By 1000 B.C., La Venta, one of its major cities, was built on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Gigantic megalithic stone heads remind us of the Olmecs' presence in the remote past, but no one really knows who they were or where they came from. The remains of all the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America - those of the Toltecs, the Aztecs, the Zapotecs, the Otomi and the Mayas - indicate that the Olmec culture was their point of origin. The pantheon of Lacandon gods, and the manner in which they are worshipped in Naha’ today, also come, directly and without Christian or any other known influence, from the ancient Mayas.
Chan K'in of Naha' is in his eighties. He is the oldest and the most respected of the Lacandon elders, and the highest authority and spokesman for the religion and cultural traditions of his people. Other Lacandon men a generation younger have lost their vitality and are drifting into senility, while he still has not a single gray hair in his thick, black mane. His eyes, his mind and his voice are still clear and firm, and the youngest of his three wives still bears his children.
He speaks familiarly of the Maya gods, of their individual personalities and functions, and of the details of their proper cult and the manner of addressing them. These are part of the living tradition of Lacandon culture, which came down to them without interruption from antiquity. Chan K'in recites the stories, sings the songs, and dictates the ceremonial formulae of his ancestors just as he learned them from his father.
Sometimes he says things which seem childish and innocent, as when a rainbow arcs across the rainy sky: "It is the road of the Luumkab [rainbow spirits]. See! They were caught in the rain, and the water makes the colors of their clothes fade and run."
Sometimes he pronounces simple truths with dazzling clarity: "How can the missionaries say men shouldn't drink liquor if the gods had liquor first and showed men how to make and drink it? They say liquor makes a man loud and mean, but it isn't true. Liquor only makes a man show how he really is. It is being loud and mean that the gods despise, whether one drinks or not."
Sometimes he overlaps physical and metaphysical realities: "They are only stones, but they are not only stones. Long ago the Chucuch Nok' " - the Long Tunics, as he calls the southern Lacandones - "used to behave correctly in the homes of the gods. They would say, 'If a person breaks a stone, he dies,' and they knew that it was true. But now the young Chukuch Nok' break the stones and shout, 'It is not true! See! I break the stones in the house of the gods and I do not die.' But they do not see that they die each time they break a stone."
* The term "lacandon" is used indiscriminately to refer to both the northern and the southern Lacandones, two of the groups that comprise the Peninsular Mayas - the Mayas that live on the Yucatan Peninsula and in the adjacent lowlands. Only the Lacandones escaped assimilation or extermination during the Spanish Conquest and the nationalizing influences that came later. The southern group remained culturally intact on the Lacanja (or Chan Sayab) river, not far from the ruins of their ceremonial center, Yaxchilan; the northern group lived not far from the ruins of Palenque. Each speaks its own dialect of Peninsular Maya, the language of the region. Culturally and linguistically, the degree of difference between them might be compared to that between a New Yorker and a Texan. The two belong to the same culture and they speak the same language. Just as the natives of New York and Dallas all speak English and can converse, so can northern Lacandones and southern Lacandones speak and converse in Peninsular Maya, though they often misunderstand local terms and always despair of each other's "atrocious pronunciation." Inevitably, when members of the two groups converse, there will be one who has no immediate wish to understand the speaker of the other dialect, and will categorically declare it "totally unintelligible."
The origin of "lacandon" is the Maya plural form ah akan-tun-oob*, which derives from the agentive ah, meaning "the" or "they"; akan, "standing" or "set up"; and tun, "precious stone" or "stone idol(s)." Thus the ah okantunoob were "those who set up (and worship) stone idols." This name was simply a term by which their Christianized Maya neighbors called them the "stone worshippers" or the "pagans." The term also may - or may not - have implied or alluded to "masons" or "builders of temples." Early Spaniards wrote of the Acantunes (the "Pagans" or "Maya wild Indians") and referred to their jungle habitat as El Acantun*. Then at one time or another, some early author heard this form as El Lacantun (one of the major rivers in the area still bears this name), Finally, El Lacantun became further deformed to El Lacandon and its inhabitants became the Lacandones.
*[In preparing this text for the Internet, various accents used in spanish and by linguists have been left out.]In the beginning, at the time of the Conquest, the Lacandones were simply the Mayas. Eventually, however, the Spaniards began to distinguish between already dominated and Christianized Maya groups and others - among them the ancestors of the present-day Lacandones who continued the practice of their traditional, "pagan" religion. Just how many independent groups of Peninsular Mayas may have at one time or another been known as Lacandones we may never know, but they were all Peninsular Mayas. Each group had regional peculiarities of custom and dialect characteristic of their individual city-states or communities, which centered about one of the ancient Maya ceremonial centers. It is probably quite valid to compare them with the ancient Greeks, who didn't consider themselves Greek at all, but rather Spartans or Athenians or members of whatever city-state.
* When there is agricultural work to be done, the Lacandon day begins with the first light of dawn. Thick white mist rises and gently billows above the mirror surface of Lake Naha, and the myriad leaves of the exuberant vegetation hang low and heavy with the cold dew over the jungle trails. Any shady place near Naha' is always cool because of its elevation (twenty-seven hundred feet above sea level). At this altitude the banana plants and similar tropical vegetation meet the pine forests, which thrive on the surrounding hilltops. But the sun of latitude 15'1'20" N becomes uncomfortably hot in the open clearings when it reaches zenith, so work in the fields needs to be done by noon, or not long after.
Chan K'in's house has a two-sided roof some thirty feet long, thatched with leaves of the thorn palm (kun). Its rounded ends add another ten feet or so to its length. Rough planks of light balsa wood form the walls, which are without windows or other openings except for the several doors, but the cracks between the planks provide ventilation and, to the practiced eye, vision to the outside.
Apart from his three wives and their eight unmarried children, Chan K'in has three married sons and five sons-in-law living nearby, all willing to do for him any work that is required. But he takes pride in working his own land, his milpa. Milpa is a Nahuatl word which it is really only ninety percent correct to translate as "cornfield." The remaining ten percent of the milpa produces beans, squash, chili peppers, cassava, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and an ample variety of other fruits and vegetables. Chan K'in also raises tobacco, the traditional commercial crop, which is planted between corn crops.
With the help of his wives and unmarried children, Chan K'in lives a life made up of one yearly milpa cycle after another. An area of forest is cleared. When the cut trees and brush have dried they are burned, and seeds are planted in the bare ground among the blackened remains of the charred tree trunks, The milpa is then periodically weeded, and is visited almost daily to protect it from the depredations of deer and boar, parrots, squirrels, gophers and anything else that might eat the growing crops. Though the Lacandon traditionally lives from his milpa, he must also be a good hunter. A deer that discovers a Lacandon milpa must be killed. Either the family eats venison, or later it will eat no beans, as only a few nightly visits of a gluttonous deer will cost the Lacandon his entire bean crop, and then the squash and corn.
When Chan K'in returns from his work in the milpa, he sits in his short traditional hammock woven of majoua bark. It is slung near one of the fires that, burn between three hearthstones on the dirt floor at either end of the house. A calabash plate hangs from a thin fiber cord run through three holes in the edge and suspended from one of the roof beams near his hammock. It is full of hach k'uuts (real tobacco; original tobacco), as they call their traditional homemade and homegrown cigars. He is almost always smoking one of them, and generously offers them to the visitor who may come and sit in one of the nearby hammocks to chat and joke with him.
The visitor may often have a pressing motive for coming, but the traditional norms of Lacandon conduct demand that all things - especially the vitally important ones - be treated with calm and poise. Old Chan K'in has a well-earned fame among his people for his powers of k'inyuh (divination). In the Lacandon view, he has the ability to sound those realities that are not yet manifest (what any Occidental language calls foretelling the future).
When asked if he is the t'o'ohil, Old Chan K'in of Naha' usually denies it. He will say, "No. Today no one is the t'o'ohil. In my grandfather's time, and even in my father's, there were t'o'ohil who were clairvoyant and could speak with the gods." But should one ask any other Lacandon of Naha' or the other northern Lacandon community of Mensabak, "Who is the t'o'ohil?" the answer is unhesitating: "Old Chan K'in of Naha’!"
Old Chan K'in's manner is much like the simplicity and unpretentiousness of his house: He makes no display of his noble birth nor of the great respect in which his people hold him. The clear air, the uncontaminated environment and the privileged climate of Naha’, with the innumerable greens of its surrounding hills and the ever-changing blues of its lake, give it a unique place in the memory of the visitor. But the cultural and human atmosphere of the community - to the visitor who is sensitive to such things - is even more striking. One usually becomes aware that these people are somehow different from any others he has ever known, but to define and evaluate the differences is another matter.
* The Spaniards were not unaware of the Lacandon community, but it was too small and too poor to provide a proper incentive for repeated expeditions into the inhospitable, malaria- infested area. Unlike the Yucatan Peninsula, Lacandon was plagued with marshes, flooding rivers, rough outcroppings of rock and impenetrable vegetation. These conditions made the forest impassable for horses and extremely difficult for mules; gunpowder quickly became damp, and Spanish cannons and armor were more of a handicap than an advantage. The few incursions attempted were, no matter how brilliant the apologies and excuses, either partial or total failures.
If the Spanish conquistadores deserve our admiration for their courage, this admiration should not be confused with justification of their deeds, Their derring-do was so spectacular, and is so often recognized, that at times we tend to forget that the Conquest was one of the most immoral and criminal offenses that man ever perpetrated against man.
Fray Diego de Landa, bishop of Merida, was perhaps the Occidental who came the closest to the Mayas' extraordinary knowledge and to the grandeur of their civilization. He was even given some instruction by the Maya nobles in their hieroglyphic writing, and in their sacred calendar, which combined astronomy, astrology and all major physical and metaphysical phenomena into a single, harmonious system. He collected the greatest possible number of these native books, representing one of the most profound bodies of scientific, philosophical and aesthetic knowledge the world has ever known - and burned them in the Plaza de Mani when he became aware that they contained "lies of the devil."
In place of the extraordinary library he burned, Landa left us his book, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan (An account of the things of Yucatan). In this book we find, besides constant reiteration of farfetched apologies for the atrocities committed by the Spaniards, numerous data on the Maya culture at the moment it was being destroyed. Occasionally there will be lucid descriptions of ceremonies, rites, customs and beliefs, but they are inevitably followed by passages of ranting in which all the previously mentioned deities are called devils indiscriminately.
Once the Conquest had begun, the Spaniards were clearly in no position to expend too much admiration or sympathy on Maya culture; they had to destroy the Mayas' functional social organization before it would destroy them. Soon the deed was done: The great teachers and leaders were murdered, the books burned, the schools and temples razed, and from the fine limestone blocks of their rubble, new Catholic churches, chapels, monasteries and cathedrals were built. The traditional arts, sciences and ethnic values were lost. The people were confused, leaderless and enslaved.
Maya culture survived intact only in the most remote communities, and in ones small and economically unimportant enough to escape notice. These were cut off from traditional Maya commerce, and as the peasant population dwindled, the nobles had to lower their standard of living. From a leisured, esoteric elite, the astronomers, mathematicians and warriors became proletarians: milpa farmers, fishermen and hunters.
How long did their calendar, mathematics and hieroglyphic writing survive? Did they disappear in the first generation after the remaining Mayas lost contact with the Classic Maya city-states, which had been destroyed by the Spaniards? Or were they only slowly and gradually worn down, to become totally lost only a generation or two before the present? However the reduction of their cultural inventory may have occurred, it is clear that they clung to their religion and gave the metaphysical preference over the physical. Their hieroglyphic writing was reduced to a few abstract paintings on the backs of their incense burners. Their mathematics were reduced to the most basic elements. Their astronomy became only the recognition of the major planets and constellations - and an occasional declaration of awed admiration that their grandparents could look at the sky just after dark on the day a child was born and there read the child's destiny. Their vast calendrical lore survives only in a few lunar formulae for planting, and the few ceremonies that are determined by the solar year are not corrected by astronomical observation (with one or two exceptions), but by the time of flowering of one or another tree. Even so, the cultural fragments and incomplete formulae one finds fossilized in Lacandon culture are such that they could only have had their origins in a great civilization like that of the Classic Mayas. And the ancient Olmec civilization from which it derived could only have had its beginnings in some exaltation of human genius so radically different from our own that we are incapable of understanding it.
The Olmec-Maya calendar was an incredibly complex and sophisticated system of knowledge that tied together astronomy, astrology, climatology, meteorology and tellurological activity, together with the collective and individual destinies of men, in a single complex of interrelated, recurring cycles. It integrated the physical and the metaphysical, the natural and supernatural phenomena, in a single system that was the slide rule and computer of each and every Mesoamerican civilization. The same calendrical system was expressed in distinctive forms in the central Mexican plateau, among the Zapotecs, among the lowland or Peninsular Mayas, and among various groups of the southern Maya highlands.
This highly sophisticated system of knowledge is only conceivable (to the Occidental thinker, at least) as the product of a long and cumulative tradition of methodical, scientific observation and analysis of the highest order. It would seem logical to assume that this occurred during the thousand years that elapsed from the laying of the foundations of La Venta on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (about 1000 B.C.) to the carving, in Veracruz, of the two oldest Mayan objects with inscribed dates: a stela at Tres Zapotes carved in the Mayan year corresponding to 31 B.C., and the "Tuxtla statuette," a jadeite figure that bears a date only a few decades later. Both bear the Classic Maya style of writing, and both are Olmec. They can be thought of as the "missing links" between the Olmec and Maya manifestations of a single cultural tradition. It also seems reasonable to assume that any inscribed dates earlier than these were made on wood, paper, parchment, or other perishable materials - or on stones still awaiting the archaeologist. But we don't really know.
Current anthropological knowledge and methodology suggest that the present-day Lacandones of Naha' are in fact the direct descendants of the ancient Mayas of Palenque. Their language is the same Peninsular Maya, which is recognizable in some portions of the ancient Maya codices and in the inscriptions at Palenque. Their numerical system is also the same, down to the numerical classifiers and syntactic use. In addition, the Lacandones have no migration myth, and each group considers the nearest major ancient Maya ceremonial center (Palenque in the north and Yaxchilan in the south) to be the center of the earth and the place where the gods created man.
When Old Chan K'in of Naha' visited Palenque, he listed the gods who were the "owners of the houses." Each of the ruined temples was the house of a Lacandon god, Until the generation before that of Old Chan K'in, Palenque was the major site for pilgrimages. Pilgrimages are now made to secondary ruins and natural rock faces because Palenque is oc cupied by the tourists and guarded by the Mexican government.
Tourists in Palenque frequently ask: "But how could people live in such small, cramped rooms?" Of course, no one did. On the auspicious days indicated by the Olmec-Maya calendar - the Tzolkin and the Haab - religious theocrats donned the indumentary and the emblems, took their seats in the "houses," and there received offerings, and answered in the names of the gods they represented - or became - during the ceremony. Then they returned to their homes (probably much like Old Chan K'in's), where they actually lived, swung their hammocks, roasted venison and wild boar, and smoked their cigars, as their women ground the corn and patted out and baked tortillas on clay griddles.
The names, titles and functions of the Lacandon gods may frequently be recognized in the inscriptions of the codices and monuments, and in the chronicles of the "pagan beliefs" of New Spain at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Some of the present-day Lacandon ceremonies survive directly from their Classic Maya counterparts. Fray Diego de Landa's description of the "renewal of the idols in the month of Pop" may be considered a very nearly accurate description of the renewal of the Lacandon incense burners in Naha' in 1970. The differences are character istic of all the differences between the Lacandones and the ancient Mayas: Landa's description of the ceramic incense burners and their ceremonial treatment would be quite applicable to the Lacandon "godpots"; but Landa describes wooden idols, which the Lacandones no longer make. The Classic Mayas' temple was also larger and more sophisticated than the palm-thatched "god- house" of Naha'. The Lacandon variation constitutes a reduction of elements and quantities, and in this respect it is not unlike the modifications of the Christian church after Martin Luther's Protestant Reform. A religion exiled by that of a dominant culture can neither afford nor defend great cathedrals or monasteries or extensive collections of sacred relics.
For the preceding reasons, we consider Old Chan K'in of Naha' to be the direct descendant of the rulers of Palenque at the time of its Classic splendor, or of the rulers of some other ceremonial center very much like it. This view is not shared by all authorities.
At present, several hypotheses of the origin of the Lacandones exist besides the one accepted in this book. To enumerate, discuss and argue their many and varied contentions would require our becoming far more technical than we care to here. It is beyond doubt, however, that the northern Lacandones today are the last people to practice the ancient Maya religion, which was once common to all of the Yucatan Peninsula and the adjoining lowlands, in anything like its original form and content. There are no more unknown, unexplored jungles to yield any other Maya ethnic group that might compete with the Lacandones' conservatism. The Lacandones are the last and the only direct cultural heirs of the Maya civilization. As the t'o'ohil, whose authority is recognized by all other Lacandon t'o'ohil, Old Chan K'in is by virtue of this position, not only Lord of Palenque, but the last of the halach winik (great lords) of the Olmec-Maya tradition. And as such, he is also Lord of Yaxchilan, of Copan, of Tikal, and though millions of Yucatec Maya voices may be raised in protest, he is Lord of Chichen Itza and Mayapan as well.
In years to come, archaeologists and ethnohistorians may discover much more data and detail about the ancient Maya civilization, the shifts of power, migrations, wars and alliances, ends and beginnings of lineages, et cetera, and this will enrich our knowledge of Maya culture. But if Old Chan K'in is not, as we assume, descended by a direct line of primogeniture from one of the ruling families of Palenque, he is still the last traditional ruling lord of the Peninsular Mayas.
Part II
This page hosted by Geocities
Get your own Free Home Page