II
The northern Lacandones today number slightly over two hundred fifty -men, women and children. Even the greater number of a "total Lacandon population," arrived at by lumping northerners and southerners together, is still less than four hundred. Counting the number of scholarly and popular books, monographs and magazines and newspaper articles about the Lacandones brings one to the somewhat surprising discovery that there are more Lacandon publications than there are Lacandones.
What accounts for the worldwide fame of this small group of people, and for the passionate interest in them? Most of the ready answers must be recognized as rationalizations; for even persons who have dedicated years of their lives to studying the Lacandones are usually not sure what first sparked their curiosity and then grasped part of their being, never allowing them to lose interest in the hach winik - the true, or real, people, as the Lacandones call themselves. There are probably few places on earth where one finds more "seekers" than in the Lacandon jungle. Perhaps we sense that by studying the Lacandones we can discover where our sophisticated, Occidental civilization went wrong.
Naturalists contend that "six square miles of land is an adequate basis for knowing nature and reality." The trouble with this contention is that most of us require contrast in order to appreciate and understand the vital truths we have right before us all the time. Even the greatest possible extremes of geographic separation between Old World cultures, such as those of the Celts, Africans and Chinese, cannot provide the contrast possible between any of these and Mesoamerican culture, which is to say, the descendants of the various high cultures of Central America and of southern North America, all of which have their points of origin in the enigmatic Olmec civilization.
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As of the 1950's the formal contact between the Lacandon and occidental cultures had not changed significantly since its inception several decades before. Shortly after the tobacco was harvested, offered to the gods, and available for everyday use, traders would come from Tenosi- que, San Cristobal and other surrounding town. Usually it would be the same trader who had come for the tobacco the year before and who brought with him the ax heads, files, ammunition, salt, factory-woven cloth, needles and thread, and fishhooks that had been ordered on his last visit. Most of them also bought liquor. Some of the Lacandon men who acquired a lasting taste for the cheap rotgut or rum refused to do business unless the trader brought them a gift bottle to initiate the proceedings. Others learned to accept the gift bottle, but to refuse to taste it until after the business had been conducted and the trader was gone.
The attitude of the young Lacandones whom I saw watching their elders deal with the bearers of a strange new culture is difficult for the Occidental to describe. Indeed, the Lacandones themselves are a challenge to the capacity to describe and categorize in the Occidental languages in which we think. One is tempted to call their watchfulness from a cool and proper distance "shy," but the word has connotations of fear that are simply not applicable. We cannot even call the Lacandones "respectful" without feeling that the term is somehow insufficient. For while the Lacandon's culture provides an automatic respect for each person and each thing in its proper place, his respect for the rights of others comes with no withdrawal - or even temporary suspension - of his own rights. Moreover, something in his attitude and bearing evokes the occidentat's classifications of "haughty" or "proud," or even "insolent" or "arrogant" - though once again, the terms aren't totally satisfying.
The Occidental term that comes closest to being fully applicable is "poised." The Lacandon seems as much at ease and as confident among local muleteers in a small-town saloon, or with the Mexico City crowds on the subway, or at a presidential banquet, or at an international Jet Set garden party, as he is in his native rain forest. Something about his thought, language and habitual behavior seems to provide him with a basic certainty of being in his proper place and in his proper relation to all other entities he may encounter, a quality difficult for the member of an Occidental culture to grasp.
This poise was built into their language. In Occidental languages the basic principle is a relation between cause and effect. Noun subjects combine with verbal actions directed toward other nominal objects. People who speak in this manner, or see reality through this glass, act similarly. They impose their verbal will on the objects in nature, domesticating horses and making weapons. People, animals and inanimate objects are treated as grammatical objects, and recipients of the actions of verbs chosen by the grammatical subjects. In time, occidentals extended their verbal will over neighboring tribes, widening political control over ever greater geographic areas.
The basic principles of Maya grammar are possession and location. Each entity has its owner and its place in relation to all others, manifest or hypothetical. Instead of dynamic political empires, the Mayas built harmonious, well-balanced pyramids, with each stone in its proper place. Instead of a dynamic technology and utilitarian science, the Mayas excelled in astronomy and mathematics, which interrelate all the phenomena of the universe, defining where each thing belongs. While occidentals sought to extend their dominion and control over the universe, the Mayas sought to find their proper place in it in order to live in the greatest possible peace and harmony.
It is possible that the Lacandon's "poise" is at the root of all that occidentals find so enigmatic about his culture; that his traditional cosmology provides him with the ability to feel "in place" and in his proper relationship with reality no matter where he may be, and that this sense of orientation is so unique and incomprehensible to the Occidental that the vapors of his own failure to understand would appear to shroud the Lacandon in a cloak of mystery. If the ancient Olmec-Maya civilization is a thing of the past, its great cities now lying in ruins, overgrown with jungle vegetation and inhabited by the dumb creatures of the first creation, it is also a thing of the present, for it still lives at Naha'.
A few years after a Lacandon forest house is abandoned, it returns totally to the humus of the jungle floor, and the only archaeological traces that remain are the hearthstones or a few scattered potsherds. Somewhere near where the family god-house stood, an archaeologist might also find an abundance of flint chips, together with cinders and the residue of half-burned incense in what had been the god-house refuse dump. The more permanent traces of the Lacandones would be found at their local shrines - on rock faces - and would consist of petroglyphs and the ritual objects (mostly old incense burners) deposited there or in the ancient Maya temples. The Popol Vuh, perhaps the best-known source of ancient Maya traditions, tells how the gods tried several times to create the present generation of men, but that each of the attempts fell short of their expectations. So they ended the cycle and began again. When the second creation came to an end the descendants of these "men," who had been made of wood, returned to the trees of the forest in the form of monkeys. When the Lacandones, who were (according to their traditions) made of clay by the Creator, Hachakyum, live out their lives, they and all their material possessions return to the floor of the jungle. Only their ancient Maya ceremonial centers - the homes of their immortal gods - remain standing.
All of the Lacandones of Naha' are members of either the Ma'ax (Monkey) or the K'ek'en (Boar) onen, or lineage, and it is said that the one can be distinguished from the other by the characteristic form of the fingernails. The onen (also called the animal name) is sometimes termed the totem, but this is incorrect: The Lacandones do not consider themselves descended from the animal of their onen. Nor is it a nahual, since one cannot take the form of the animal by sorcery; nor is it a tona (or tonal), since one's life is not linked with that of a specific animal. Still, the Lacandon onen shows partial and incomplete similarities with all these other native beliefs.
The southern Lacandones of Lacanja are of the K'ek'en (Boar), the Yuk (Deer) and the K'ambul (Curassow) onen. The two last are said to be fierce and aggressive people, and even the Boar People are considered a bit less peaceful than the Monkey People - at least according to Old Chan K'in, who belongs to the Monkey lineage, A compatibility of onen is very important in determining marriage partners, since babies of the Boar and Jaguar lineages are said to have very large heads and can be borne with ease only from a Boar or Jaguar (Balum) womb. Babies of the Monkey onen have the smallest heads of all and are borne easily and quickly by a Boar or Deer mother, but a Monkey lineage woman can bear only a Monkey lineage baby without extreme difficulty. The onen to which one belongs is also important in determining which gods may be well disposed to cure him when he is sick. The gods, like people, have their onen and these must be compatible.
Another important factor in determining the possible supernatural causes of illness, and the chances of its being cured, is the recollection and analysis of recent dreams, either of the sick person or anyone associated with him. In the dream world one is able to see tendencies, poten tials and all that is hypothetical or not-yet-manifest reality. A dream, properly interpreted, may give the clue or the formula for escaping a potentially adverse destiny.
Part III
