So much has happened that I forgot to write about the trip I took with the students from the INHAT Seeds of Change school on Friday. It was a trip to get ¨tierra negra¨ or rich black earth, to replant a forest area near the farm. If you´re a teacher or school administrator used to high trip safety standards and you have a weak heart, I suggest you stop reading now.
I met Cara at the INHAT cyber-cafe with her students in the afternoon. We walked up the road toward the school and stopped where we were supposed to meet our ride. There were about 20 kids, so I thought there would be a bus, or at least a large truck with a cage. What arrived instead, after we´d waited about 20-30 minutes, was a mini-pickup with a cage around the bed.
The kids quickly jumped onto the cage. There was room in the middle of the bed, but the boys all preferred to hang off the side, while the girls sat on the wall around the bed, leaving the middle empty. I wanted to take a picture of this terrifying sight, but the truck was about to pull out without me. So I hung off the side as well.
I didn´t have a good grip or foothold, and the girl on the bed inside kept leaning against me as if to push me off the truck. Then the truck started climbing up the narrow, steep roads towards the bosque where we were going to get the tierra negra.
I will never be frightened of a roller coaster again. Most of the roads are just wide enough for the wheels of the truck to fit, and several times I found myself hanging over a drop of several hundred feet, which the children hanging off the truck didn´t even notice. The grade of the road in several places exceeded twenty degrees. Those who know something about road grades will assume I am being hyperbolic or making an uneducated guess. But on the way back when I was in a more secure position I measured with the level on my phone. For those who don´t know anything about road grades, in the United States a grade of six degrees will generate terrifying warnings about steep roads and runaway trucks. If you´ve ever seen those steep blocks in San Francisco where you have to put bricks under the wheels of your car to keep it from rolling away, those are about fifteen degrees. Twenty degree grades are normal around here.
Finally I chickened out and asked one of the girls to move aside so I could sit in the middle of the truck. There I talked to a boy who had spent several years in Tennessee, which has a community of Chuj Maya. I asked if he liked it better there or here, and he said he preferred the US.
We got there and started digging. The earth here is volcanic clay, rich, wet and black. I helped dig for awhile, and then I started carrying full feedbags of tierra negra to the truck bed. Cara said the plan was to get 48 feedbags of tierra negra; the bags were each between 25 and 50 pounds, depending how full they were. As I watched the bed fill with the bags I started doing the math in my head, and I started to worry about the suspension of the truck.
Fortunately the driver was also conscious about how much the truck could carry, and at some point said he couldn´t carry any more. Unfortunately, when he said he couldn´t carry any more that included the kids.
It occurred to me that this was the kind of thing you might plan ahead for if you´re making a trip to carry black earth and children from one place to another, but they hadn´t. So they left the kids in the middle of the forest; apparently they knew their way home. I was prepared to walk with the kids, but Cara said I could ride along if I was willing to unload the black earth by the farm. So that´s what I did.
After we´d unloaded the earth and walked back into town we ran into the kids who had walked back from the forest; they didn´t seem bothered or surprised by the walk. Nothing about this trip was outside the normal bounds of safety here. Among other things I´ve seen recently are children playing blind-man´s bluff with one kid stumbling around blindfolded next to a drop of more than 100 feet, and a 3-4 year old child running down a mountain road with a homemade kite in one hand and a 2-foot machete in the other. I´ve also seen the results: there are kids who are missing fingers, arms and hands. Child mortality due to accidents is no doubt very high.
I don´t want to give the impression that the Maya don´t care about their kids. But I think the people here just accept they live in a much more dangerous place. The men who work the milpas have to harvest corn on slopes that are so steep that if you slip you´ll just slide all the way down and go over a cliff. Kids need to learn to use machetes, because they´re used here for everything from harvesting to cutting wood for the stove to keeping away the hungry wild dogs that occasionally gang up and attack people at night.
It´s easy for us to judge someone else´s lifestyle. But I have also thought that I wish American kids (including my own) would get half as much exercise as the kids do here. Childhood obesity -- or adult obesity, for that matter -- is pretty much unheard of. I have not seen an overweight Chuj Mayan. I imagine diabetes would be equally rare.
I won´t say that one way or the other is better. But I do know that the next time I have to fill out fifteen different safety forms for a field trip and some administrator freaks out because a kid stands up in the bus I´m going to laugh inside.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The church and the altar
The Catholic church in San Mateo is about 5 centuries old by a conservative estimate. It is two stories high, painted a bright white and orange with a steepled facade featuring images of various saints and holy figures in recesses along the walls. The figures of the saints barely resemble whatever shape they must have originally had, because every year the church is plastered over with a new layer of limestone, rounding and blurring off any sharp edges. Inside it is like most Catholic churches I´ve ever been in, with two rows of pews and a stand of candles to light, with an A-shaped ceiling rather than an arch. Right now the beams in the ceiling are hung with purple cloth in preparation for Semana Santa, or Easter week.
The church has a Catholic school attached on one side, and in front of the Catholic school was a basketball court. Basketball is fairly popular here, almost as much as football, which is good news for me since basketball is going to be central to the next two books in my Popul Vuh trilogy.
Directly in front of the church, however, is a structure that I have never seen connected to a Catholic church before. ¨The altar¨ is a simple open limestone structure with metal roof above it. There is a fire constantly burning in it, and it is solid black from the smoke. Sitting around the altar are many older women in traditional Mayan dress, burning hundreds of long candles connected in bundles by the wicks. There are simple crosses about six feet high made of wood 4x4s nailed together stacked around the altar.
Angie showed me the church and the altar. The tradition of the monks that came through Latin America was to build their church near to where people already prayed. Always practical, the evangelizers didn't want to make it any more difficult than possible for their charges to come over to Christianity. With the Mayans they had plenty to work with; even before the first Christian came the Mayans already considered the cross a holy symbol, the shape of the world-tree, with each of the four points representing a different sacred direction.
If what Angie says is true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then the altar is something much older than the church. Which doesn´t mean the women around it aren´t good Christians. They light their candles in the church first.
But the altar might represent something more, as well. More than I can understand right now, if ever. I´ll have pictures tomorrow.
The church has a Catholic school attached on one side, and in front of the Catholic school was a basketball court. Basketball is fairly popular here, almost as much as football, which is good news for me since basketball is going to be central to the next two books in my Popul Vuh trilogy.
Directly in front of the church, however, is a structure that I have never seen connected to a Catholic church before. ¨The altar¨ is a simple open limestone structure with metal roof above it. There is a fire constantly burning in it, and it is solid black from the smoke. Sitting around the altar are many older women in traditional Mayan dress, burning hundreds of long candles connected in bundles by the wicks. There are simple crosses about six feet high made of wood 4x4s nailed together stacked around the altar.
Angie showed me the church and the altar. The tradition of the monks that came through Latin America was to build their church near to where people already prayed. Always practical, the evangelizers didn't want to make it any more difficult than possible for their charges to come over to Christianity. With the Mayans they had plenty to work with; even before the first Christian came the Mayans already considered the cross a holy symbol, the shape of the world-tree, with each of the four points representing a different sacred direction.
If what Angie says is true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then the altar is something much older than the church. Which doesn´t mean the women around it aren´t good Christians. They light their candles in the church first.
But the altar might represent something more, as well. More than I can understand right now, if ever. I´ll have pictures tomorrow.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Pictures from the farm
The farm from a distance:
The path to the farm -- a typical Highlands commute:
The ¨milpa¨ or field at the farm:
The fishpond at the farm:
I helped dig this ditch!
The path to the farm -- a typical Highlands commute:
The ¨milpa¨ or field at the farm:
The fishpond at the farm:
I helped dig this ditch!
More image from Las Ruinas
Ceremonial stones at Las Ruinas:
Some piglets having a snack at Las Ruinas:
A ceremonial window or recess in Las Ruinas. Notice the prayer candles in the lower left corner. Most candles were by crosses, but there were no crosses here.
Some piglets having a snack at Las Ruinas:
A ceremonial window or recess in Las Ruinas. Notice the prayer candles in the lower left corner. Most candles were by crosses, but there were no crosses here.
Pictures of Las Ruinas
The upper temple in Las Ruinas:
The lower temple in Las Ruinas:
El Calvario sign in Las Ruinas:
Kids doing recess in the ballfield at Las Ruinas:
The lower temple in Las Ruinas:
El Calvario sign in Las Ruinas:
Kids doing recess in the ballfield at Las Ruinas:
What am I doing here, anyway?
I´m writing this post for my friend Pamela, who said that she felt reading the blog she came in in the middle of the story. So here is some backstory. What the hell am I doing in a litte Chuj Mayan village in the middle of Guatemala?
For those that don´t know, I am writing a book based on the story of the Quiche Mayan creation epic the Popul Vuh, but set in New York. The characters are Guatemalan Mayan immigrants to New York City, and the monsters of the Popul Vuh are coming to New York: the crocodile demon Zipacna, his father Vucub Caquix the evil macaw who pretends to be the son, his brother the giant Cabracan who makes earthquakes, and worst of all the Lords of Xibalba, the land of the dead. I am actually writing it as a trilogy, with the first part being the defeat of Zipacna, Vucub Caquix and Cabracan, and the second two books being the defeat of the Lords of Death, first in a ballgame and then in battle.
I began writing the book because it´s such an engaging and fascinating epic. The heroes are the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque (in Mayan the ´x´ is pronounced as a ´sh´ sound). My goal was something not too different from the Percy Jackson books, just with a more unique mythology. But I researched as I wrote, and the more I learned the more I realized that this wasn´t the same as basing a story on the Greek gods.
The Greek gods are history to everyone, and at this point they are pretty much universal intellectual property, no longer attached to any particular culture. As far as I know, not a single Greek person still worships Zeus or Poseidon even in a syncretic indirect form. The Greek gods today have more in common with Superman and Spiderman than they do with any religious tradition. Kids like me grow up reading D´Aulaire´s and other mythological books much like comic books and see the gods and heroes of the myths as something like superheroes. The Norse and Egyptian myths would fall into the same category. Essentially, they are just pages out of D&D´s Dieties & Demigods book, another book I grew up reading.
But the Mayan myths are different, in that to some degree some people still believe in them. Don´t get me wrong: almost all Mayans today are either Catholic or some Evangelical faith, such as Pentecostal, Mormon or 7th day Adventist. But as best as I can understand, many of the ones that are Catholic practice a form of syncretist faith that combines belief in Jesus and the Christian god with belief in the older dieties and spirits.
There is nothing unusual about this, as it is what has happened in every single ¨polytheistic¨(1) culture that´s been converted to Christianity, from Rome to Ireland to Northern Europe and no doubt Asian and African cultures as well. But in some places it´s further along than others, and here the ¨old ways¨ are a lot closer to the surface than they are in others.
Not that it´s obvious. I´d be a fool to expect anyone to talk about it much. Angela knew a little, but even she didn´t know much, and she´s married to a Mayan man. There are lots of good reasons for being secretive about it. For one thing, I understand the Evangelicals are quite hostile to the old beliefs. For another it´s simply none of an outsider´s business what a family or a person believes.
But the old ruins are filled with crosses that people pray to, and as I said I have evidence that people pray at the old ruins in places where there are no crosses.
What all this means is that you just can´t treat traditional Mayan beliefs as you would ancient Greek legends. But I still think it´s a great story, and something worth telling. So what I want to do, most of all, is to do it in a way that honors a culture rather than appropriates it. I hope I succeed.
In order to do it, the first thing I realized was that the characters needed to be Mayans. That´s not a stretch, there are immigrants to New York from everywhere, including here. But in order to do that I needed to represent their culture and beliefs as authentically as an outsider could. And what I needed to write about was not ancient Mayans, which I can learn as much as anyone else could from a book. I needed to write about Mayans as they live now.
I would be afraid to do this, and would almost back down. But I am taking my inspiration from Nisi Shawl who wrote Writing the Other, a book about how to respectfully include characters, cultures and traditions from a background not your own. Nisi gave some great workshops at Clarion West about this topic, and I learned a lot. But one thing I know more than anything else is there is no substitute for research.
And so that´s what I am doing here. I am trying to write about a people and a place I knew only from books. Now, at least, I have a bit of firsthand experience. I don´t expect to come out of this an expert on Mayan culture. At best I hope to know enough to write about the story of their people respectfully. And I can only hope that my book will get people interested enough to go and learn more about the true stories Mayans, both in mythological history and today.
I use the term cautiously as I´m suspicious of the clarity of the poly/mono breakdown people so casually fall back on.
back
For those that don´t know, I am writing a book based on the story of the Quiche Mayan creation epic the Popul Vuh, but set in New York. The characters are Guatemalan Mayan immigrants to New York City, and the monsters of the Popul Vuh are coming to New York: the crocodile demon Zipacna, his father Vucub Caquix the evil macaw who pretends to be the son, his brother the giant Cabracan who makes earthquakes, and worst of all the Lords of Xibalba, the land of the dead. I am actually writing it as a trilogy, with the first part being the defeat of Zipacna, Vucub Caquix and Cabracan, and the second two books being the defeat of the Lords of Death, first in a ballgame and then in battle.
I began writing the book because it´s such an engaging and fascinating epic. The heroes are the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque (in Mayan the ´x´ is pronounced as a ´sh´ sound). My goal was something not too different from the Percy Jackson books, just with a more unique mythology. But I researched as I wrote, and the more I learned the more I realized that this wasn´t the same as basing a story on the Greek gods.
The Greek gods are history to everyone, and at this point they are pretty much universal intellectual property, no longer attached to any particular culture. As far as I know, not a single Greek person still worships Zeus or Poseidon even in a syncretic indirect form. The Greek gods today have more in common with Superman and Spiderman than they do with any religious tradition. Kids like me grow up reading D´Aulaire´s and other mythological books much like comic books and see the gods and heroes of the myths as something like superheroes. The Norse and Egyptian myths would fall into the same category. Essentially, they are just pages out of D&D´s Dieties & Demigods book, another book I grew up reading.
But the Mayan myths are different, in that to some degree some people still believe in them. Don´t get me wrong: almost all Mayans today are either Catholic or some Evangelical faith, such as Pentecostal, Mormon or 7th day Adventist. But as best as I can understand, many of the ones that are Catholic practice a form of syncretist faith that combines belief in Jesus and the Christian god with belief in the older dieties and spirits.
There is nothing unusual about this, as it is what has happened in every single ¨polytheistic¨(1) culture that´s been converted to Christianity, from Rome to Ireland to Northern Europe and no doubt Asian and African cultures as well. But in some places it´s further along than others, and here the ¨old ways¨ are a lot closer to the surface than they are in others.
Not that it´s obvious. I´d be a fool to expect anyone to talk about it much. Angela knew a little, but even she didn´t know much, and she´s married to a Mayan man. There are lots of good reasons for being secretive about it. For one thing, I understand the Evangelicals are quite hostile to the old beliefs. For another it´s simply none of an outsider´s business what a family or a person believes.
But the old ruins are filled with crosses that people pray to, and as I said I have evidence that people pray at the old ruins in places where there are no crosses.
What all this means is that you just can´t treat traditional Mayan beliefs as you would ancient Greek legends. But I still think it´s a great story, and something worth telling. So what I want to do, most of all, is to do it in a way that honors a culture rather than appropriates it. I hope I succeed.
In order to do it, the first thing I realized was that the characters needed to be Mayans. That´s not a stretch, there are immigrants to New York from everywhere, including here. But in order to do that I needed to represent their culture and beliefs as authentically as an outsider could. And what I needed to write about was not ancient Mayans, which I can learn as much as anyone else could from a book. I needed to write about Mayans as they live now.
I would be afraid to do this, and would almost back down. But I am taking my inspiration from Nisi Shawl who wrote Writing the Other, a book about how to respectfully include characters, cultures and traditions from a background not your own. Nisi gave some great workshops at Clarion West about this topic, and I learned a lot. But one thing I know more than anything else is there is no substitute for research.
And so that´s what I am doing here. I am trying to write about a people and a place I knew only from books. Now, at least, I have a bit of firsthand experience. I don´t expect to come out of this an expert on Mayan culture. At best I hope to know enough to write about the story of their people respectfully. And I can only hope that my book will get people interested enough to go and learn more about the true stories Mayans, both in mythological history and today.
I use the term cautiously as I´m suspicious of the clarity of the poly/mono breakdown people so casually fall back on.
back
Life insurance, San Mateo style
Last night and this morning on the way to the house I passed a crowd of people gathered around a table with a man holding an account book. There was music playing, except when a man with a microphone announced people´s names. The crowd was mostly adults, especially older people, and they were solemn in spite of the music.
I tried unsuccessfully to figure out what this was. Some kind of payday for something? Or a kind of off-track betting? Those were my two best guesses, but they couldn´t have been more wrong.
This morning I asked Luciano who works at at La Fonda de INHAT (INHAT´s restaurant) what was going on. Luciano speaks English pretty well, and explained to me it was a funeral.
What happens is this: when a person dies, everyone gets together and puts in some money into a fund. The man with the account book keeps track of what you put in.
Then, when you or someone in your family dies, your family gets a payout from the fund, presumably based on how much you have put in. Also, people make you food and give other gifts.
What this is is precisely a life insurance system organized entirely at the village level.
But what I can´t help but thinking is how valuable those account books are. Of course, they have the technology here to put everything into Excel, and maybe they have. But I bet it would be a serious data entry job to fill in all the contributions back to when the books begin, maybe more than anyone would take the time to type in. The records must go back at least 3 generations, perhaps 50-75 years, and maybe much, much more. And even if the data is in digital form somewhere, the books are almost certainly still the primary source.
What is in those books, really, is so much more than financial data. It´s a record of the generations of San Mateo for every family for as far as they go back. Presumably the better off a person is doing the more they will put in. Which means that the books would be a record of the rise and fall of every family in the village, which is the heart of the Chuj Mayans.
So in the red-lined pages of a leather-bound account book is a story of a people. How beautiful is that?
I tried unsuccessfully to figure out what this was. Some kind of payday for something? Or a kind of off-track betting? Those were my two best guesses, but they couldn´t have been more wrong.
This morning I asked Luciano who works at at La Fonda de INHAT (INHAT´s restaurant) what was going on. Luciano speaks English pretty well, and explained to me it was a funeral.
What happens is this: when a person dies, everyone gets together and puts in some money into a fund. The man with the account book keeps track of what you put in.
Then, when you or someone in your family dies, your family gets a payout from the fund, presumably based on how much you have put in. Also, people make you food and give other gifts.
What this is is precisely a life insurance system organized entirely at the village level.
But what I can´t help but thinking is how valuable those account books are. Of course, they have the technology here to put everything into Excel, and maybe they have. But I bet it would be a serious data entry job to fill in all the contributions back to when the books begin, maybe more than anyone would take the time to type in. The records must go back at least 3 generations, perhaps 50-75 years, and maybe much, much more. And even if the data is in digital form somewhere, the books are almost certainly still the primary source.
What is in those books, really, is so much more than financial data. It´s a record of the generations of San Mateo for every family for as far as they go back. Presumably the better off a person is doing the more they will put in. Which means that the books would be a record of the rise and fall of every family in the village, which is the heart of the Chuj Mayans.
So in the red-lined pages of a leather-bound account book is a story of a people. How beautiful is that?
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